I used to think the piggy in the nursery rhyme was off to the farmers market, tote bag on shoulder, hunting for overpriced cheese and a cinnamon bun.

He wasn't. He was off to the abattoir.

Go-to-market works the same way.
Get it wrong and you won't be off to Harrods to spend your bonus.
You'll be bacon.

—

Businesses typically blame execution first.

Sales blame marketing: wrong channel, wrong timing, poor content.
Marketing blame sales: lack of follow-up, butchering the pitch, never feeding anything back.

The actual failure happened before a penny was spent.
Before a word was written.

When someone asked the wrong question to kick it all off.

Lots of businesses ultimately ask: how do I get my product in front of as many people as possible?

The question that really needs answering is:

how do I reach the people who need what I'm selling, in a way that makes them want to buy it?

Sounds obvious. It isn't.
Because it sounds obvious, people treat it as answered when it isn't.
They borrow an answer from a competitor.
Go straight to tactics.

Then wonder why pipeline still looks like shit six months later.

—

Here's how I'd go about answering the right GTM question:

Start with the customer, not the product.

Before any messaging gets written.
Before any channel gets chosen.
You need to understand the person you're selling to with enough precision that you could sit across from them and predict what they'd say.

That means talking to people.

Not a survey.
Not a form.

Actual conversations.
Thirty to forty-five minutes, with people who already buy something like yours, or who have the problem yours solves, or who recently chose a competitor instead.

The questions that matter aren't about your product.
They're about their life.

What were they trying to do when they went looking for a solution?
What made them decide to act when they did?
What did they look at before they bought?
What almost stopped them?
What would they tell a colleague who asked?

You're listening for the language they use, not the language you use.

The trigger that made it urgent.
The fear that nearly killed the purchase.
The outcome they actually cared about.

What you're building is an ICP (ideal customer profile).
Done properly.
Not as a demographic sketch.

A real ICP captures the situation.
The trigger.
The motivation.
And the resistance.

Who is this person at the exact moment they're most likely to buy,
and what's true about their world in that moment?

A vague ICP produces vague messaging, which produces a vague pipeline.

One more thing the conversations will surface:
why people didn't act sooner.

That answer matters.

Your real competition in most markets isn't a named rival.
It's the decision to leave things as they are.
A prospect who agrees they have the problem but can't articulate why they'd fix it this quarter ultimately is not a prospect.

Then find the message.

Once you know who you're selling to and what makes them move, you can find the message.

Most product messaging is written from the inside out.
Here's what we built.
Here's how it works.
Here's why it's good.

Founders write this way because they know the product deeply and assume that knowledge transfers.

It doesn't.

Buyers don't process messaging as a feature list.
They process it as a quick answer to a question they're already asking.

Is this for me, and does it fix my problem?

If the message doesn't answer that in the first few seconds, they're gone.

The raw material comes from those customer conversations.

The phrases buyers use to describe their problem, verbatim, are usually better copy than anything a founder or agency would write.

The trigger that made them act is the opening.
The outcome they cared about is the headline.
The fear they had before buying is the objection to address.

You're not inventing a message.
You're finding the one that's already true and making it the first thing people see.

Then you test it.
Not by asking people if they like it, people are polite, and liking an ad is not the same as clicking on it.

Small budgets on paid social.
Cold outreach to a defined list.
A landing page with a single call to action.

You're looking for a signal, not a verdict.

Then pick the channels.

Channel comes last.

Most people treat it as the first decision.

They pick LinkedIn because that's what B2B companies do.
Paid search because they have a budget.
Outbound because they have a sales team.

All before the customer is understood, before the message is tested.
Then they wonder why it doesn't work.

Channel follows customer.

Where is this specific person when they're in the mindset to solve this problem?

That question has a different answer for every ICP, and it determines everything about where the money goes.

The sales motion matters too.

A high-value enterprise sale needs relationship, education, and time inside an account.
A self-serve conversion needs a frictionless trial and fast time-to-value.

Running the wrong motion for the price point burns money in one direction and leaves it on the table in the other.
The channel, the motion, and the customer have to fit.

AI is genuinely useful across all of this.
Synthesising interview transcripts.
Testing message variants before any media budget moves.
Modelling channel mix against margin.
Coding quick-test landing pages.

I'll write more about these bits soon.

—

But better tools still answer the same question.

If the answer is vague, the tools help you execute the vagueness faster, at greater scale, with better targeting, into a void.

The piggy didn't have a choice about where it ended up.

Business leaders do.