In this episode, Abhishek Srivastava, a senior product marketing manager at Simpplr, joins Louise Liu to share his insights on why internal enablement is the hardest part of go-to-market. He breaks down what GTM really means, common mistakes product marketers make, and how strong enablement drives real business impact beyond the launch.
For more information, please check out Abhishek’s article: Your GTM Plan Is Only as Good as Your Internal Enablement.
Listen to the full interview above or read on for the highlights from the conversation.
There is this African proverb, when spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion. So all the small initiatives in your GTM plans are the strands or threads that can tie up the success you are aiming for.
Episode Highlights
When you say go-to-market, what do you mean? What do you think go-to-market is not?
I’ll take that question in two parts.
I believe GTM is the full cycle of bringing the customer’s voice back into the product and then taking the product to market while getting every function, especially the revenue functions, customer experience, marketing, and product, on the same page.
The best way to look at GTM is through the CEO’s lens. GTM is a strategic process, not an event, and it’s definitely not an initiative owned by a single function or department.
You need a GTM strategy when you’re entering a new market or region, targeting a new customer segment, changing your sales motion from sales-led to product-led, moving upmarket from SMB to mid-market or enterprise, restructuring pricing and packaging, or launching a product.
In short, any time there’s a change in how you reach customers, how you sell, who you’re targeting, or how you retain customers, you need a proper GTM motion to be successful.
On the second part, what GTM is not: you’re right, GTM is not a launch execution checklist. It’s not a single-function responsibility, and it’snot just a tactical play for a market launch.
It should never be a last-minute exercise where you’re simply publishing a blog post, posting on social media, or sending an email to sales. Those activities are part of the GTM checklist, but GTM is much bigger than that.
With that definition in mind, what does the full go-to-market process look like to you, from research to post-launch?
If we start from the very beginning, I see GTM in three phases: discovery and strategy, enablement and preparation, and launch and iteration.
The first phase is discovery and strategy. This includes research, customer interviews, analyst calls, competitive analysis, defining your ICP and segments, and building positioning and messaging. This is where the narrative gets built from the voice-of-the-customer and input from the team.
This phase can also include decisions around pricing and packaging, sales motion, and other strategic elements. Pricing and packaging may evolve later as you get feedback from early adopters or a customer advisory board, but I’ve generally seen the foundations established during the discovery and strategy phase.
The second phase is enablement and preparation. This is where PMMs need to invest heavily in enabling sales, customer success, marketing, and sometimes even customers in a CAB or early-adopter program.
You need to build collateral, training decks, battle cards, and align everyone around the launch plan. You also need a regular cadence with your GTM team and stakeholders to ensure everyone is moving in the same direction.
The third phase is launch and iteration. Every PMM knows the work doesn’t end with the launch. You publish the blog, share social media posts, run webinars, and send emails to customers and prospects, but the GTM motion goes far beyond that.
You have to monitor goals and collect feedback. One practice I follow is a 30-, 60-, and 90-day review cadence to determine whether messaging needs adjustment or if the enablement strategy needs to change.
This creates a continuous feedback loop around the GTM motion. We have to keep iterating based on what the market tells us and not treat launch day as the finish line.
What are the common misunderstandings you’ve seen product marketers have about the full go-to-market process?
The first one we’ve already discussed: treating GTM as a launch checklist. That’s probably the biggest misunderstanding.
The second is underestimating the research phase. During that stage, you’re listening to customer conversations, talking with analysts if possible, and gathering input from stakeholders and people in the field. You need to spend enough time with customers before jumping straight into messaging. Conversations with both power users and average users help define what will actually resonate. If you skip that work, your messaging is based on assumptions.
Another misconception is that GTM is solely a PMM responsibility. It’s not. PMMs are orchestrators. They’re responsible for bringing people together, aligning stakeholders, and making sure everyone’s expectations are understood. The entire company needs to move in the same direction.
I also see people overlooking the invisible work. If you focus only on external deliverables and neglect internal systems and enablement, the launch may generate attention but not revenue. The internal infrastructure is what determines whether an external launch is successful.
Finally, people often confuse informing teams with enabling them. Sending a Slack message saying, “We’ve launched something new,” is informing. Enabling means teams can confidently talk about the product, handle objections, and position it the way the business has agreed. That’s a very different level of readiness.
When we say internal enablement, most people immediately think of sales enablement, but in reality, it can involve multiple teams. How do you define internal enablement in your go-to-market process?
Sales is definitely the loudest part of internal enablement, but it’s important to make sure that every team that touches the customer can confidently speak about the product with accuracy and the right level of depth.
That includes customer success, support, account managers, professional services, solution consultants, and even the marketing team running campaigns. Internal enablement isn’t just for sales.
This is part of the invisible GTM work I mentioned earlier. Customers never see your enablement sessions, but they feel the results when a sales rep can clearly articulate value and differentiation, or when a CSM can confidently introduce a new feature and explain its benefits during a customer check-in.
There’s a big difference between a CSM who simply asks, “Is everything working well?” and a CSM who proactively shares product innovations and updates that create value for the customer. Customers are much more likely to stay engaged with the second type of experience and may even be more open to expanding their relationship with the company.
Enablement also extends beyond internal teams. If you have a customer advisory board, an early adopter program, or beta users, those groups should be enabled as well. The same applies to power users who often become product advocates.
You can see this with many successful products that have strong user communities. Those advocates are able to talk about new capabilities because they’ve been consistently educated and informed.
So for me, enablement should cover everyone involved in the customer journey: sales, customer success, support, marketing, and, where appropriate, customers themselves, including advisory boards, early adopters, and power users.
You have worked in companies of different sizes and maturity stages. How does internal enablement differ for product marketers in an early-stage startup versus a more mature organization?
The difference is massive.
If I look at a mature organization, internal enablement becomes much more complex because every function has sub-functions with different needs. Even within sales, you may have BDRs, SDRs, AEs, solution consultants, and sales engineers. Each role requires a different level of depth and a different perspective.
A BDR may only need enough product knowledge to spark interest and qualify prospects. An AE needs deeper knowledge around positioning, competition, and objection handling. A solution consultant needs technical depth to run demos and proofs-of-concept.
The same applies to customer-facing teams. CSMs need to drive adoption and upsell opportunities. Account managers focus on renewals and expansion. Support teams need troubleshooting knowledge. You can't give everyone the same deck and call enablement complete.
Mature organizations also tend to have multiple GTM motions running at the same time. You might be enabling a new product launch, a pricing change, and a geographic expansion in the same quarter. That means you need a plan, clear prioritization, and different enablement approaches for different initiatives.
One of the biggest challenges is making sure all of this doesn't become overwhelming. Things are constantly changing, so PMMs need to create enablement programs that help people absorb the information without creating confusion.
In an early-stage startup, it's very different. I remember being employee number 12 at SaaS Labs. Back then, enablement was much simpler. I would sit with the sales team, walk them through the value proposition and differentiators, hand them a one-pager or a few slides, and make myself available on Slack for questions. That was essentially the process.
In a startup, you're often a team of one or a very small team managing multiple work streams. You don't have the luxury of creating role-specific enablement materials, and that's okay.
What matters is building an enablement strategy that fits your stage, team size, industry, and customer base. You can be highly effective without creating separate tracks for every function.
Today, tools like ChatGPT and Claude can certainly help scale enablement efforts, but you still need to prioritize where your time and effort will have the greatest impact.
The biggest mistake is trying to run a mature-enterprise enablement playbook in a startup. The reverse is also true. A scrappy startup approach won't work in a large, mature organization. Your enablement strategy has to match the stage of the business.
If someone listening is a solo product marketer at an early-stage startup, what's the minimum viable internal enablement they should do for every launch?
For minimum viable internal enablement, I believe there are four things.
First, a cheat sheet. That's non-negotiable. It should include the key messages, target persona, top objections with responses, and a one-linerthat a sales rep can use in emails or calls. It only needs to be one page, maybe front and back, but you need a cheat sheet.
Second, a demo. If you or the product manager don't have time to run live sessions, create a short five-minute recorded demo or an interactive demo using a tool like Storylane. The goal is simple: a rep should be able to watch it once and understand what the product does, who it's for, and why it matters.
Third, a customer-facing one-pager. Whenever I talk to vendors and learn about a feature that interests me, I usually ask if they have something I can review later. Having a simple one-pager or article gives customers something they can refer back to after the conversation.
Fourth, a feedback channel. For any GTM motion, whether it's a product launch, a new market, or a new customer segment, you'll get feedback from people in the field. Having a Slack channel, Teams channel, or another communication channel where sales and customer success teams can share questions, feedback, and field insights is incredibly valuable.
That channel becomes an early warning system. If three sales reps ask the same question during the first week, that's a sign your enablement didn't fully cover that topic, and you need to address it.
Those four things- a cheat sheet, a demo, a customer-facing one-pager, and a feedback channel- are the minimum viable enablement assets I would recommend for every launch.
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