How Data Center Go-to-Market (GTM) Teams Effectively Bring Data Center Products and Services to Market
As a huge part of driving success and growth in data center businesses, data center GTM teams develop and execute strategies to help their teams, companies, and clients achieve their goals.
Data Center GTM teams focus on:
- Market Research: Understand the data center industry's trends, demands, and competitive landscape. Assess customer needs, identify target markets, and analyze emerging technologies.
- Product Strategy: Work closely with product development teams to align the development of data center products and services with market demands. Define product features, pricing strategies, and positioning in the market.
- Sales and Distribution: GTM teams design and implement sales and distribution strategies. They determine the most effective channels for reaching customers, such as direct sales, channel partnerships, or online marketplaces. And they may work on building a network of channel partners.
- Marketing and Promotion: They develop content and campaigns to raise awareness and generate leads and sales opportunities for data center offerings. This includes content creation, social media, digital advertising, and other promotional activities.
- Customer Engagement: GTM teams build and maintain customer relationships. They gather feedback, address customer concerns, and ensure a positive customer experience.
- Competitive Analysis: They continuously monitor the competitive landscape, identifying strengths and weaknesses. And they revise and pivot strategies as needed.
- Revenue and Growth: Ultimately, the primary goal is to drive revenue and growth by increasing market share and expanding the customer base.
Who's on Data Center GTM Teams?
Because go-to-market strategy is a highly competitive team sport, it takes a village to move the needle. Who are the key players you’ll need on your data center-related go-to-market team?
Data Center Sales Teams and Chief Revenue Officers (CROs): Sales professionals focus on selling data center solutions to customers. They may be responsible for account management and customer relationship building, although customer success teams generally address account onboarding, retention, and expansion.- Data Center Marketing Teams and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs): They handle the creation and execution of marketing campaigns, including content creation, digital marketing, and events.
- Data Center Customer Success (CS) Teams: They ensure customers have a positive experience with your product or service and help address any issues or concerns.
- Data Center Product Managers and Their Leaders: These individuals lead product development efforts, ensuring products meet customer needs and align with market trends.
- Data Center Channel Partner Teams and Channel Chiefs: These individuals establish and maintain partnerships with other businesses to help distribute or promote their data center products and services.
- Data Center Provider CEOs: As the company’s highest level of leadership, CEOs stay on top of strategic decision-making, organizational oversight, and the overall direction and success of the business.
Note: Larger enterprises within the data center industry often add market analysts to their GTM teams. Analysts research market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activities to provide valuable insights for decision-making. However, most small- to mid-sized companies typically divide these responsibilities between marketing strategists and product managers.
Why Data Center GTM Teams Exist
Data Center go-to-market teams exist for several reasons:
Alignment and Eliminating Silos: While the concept of sales and marketing alignment (smarketing) has been around for nearly 20+ years, it’s no longer enough. Sales, marketing, customer success, product, and channel partner teams must tightly align with the CEO. Why? Digital buyer journeys and customer happiness are significant drivers of future growth. Silos negatively impact the prospect and customer experience (CX), cause internal and external friction, damage the brand, and destroy revenue growth.- Maximizing Profit: GTM teams are essential for optimizing the profitability of data center offerings by identifying and capitalizing on market opportunities. Think of GTM teams as task forces that harness your company’s best thinking and most significant potential for innovation across sales, marketing, customer success, product management, channel partnerships, and the executive team.
- Market Complexity: The data center market is highly competitive and rapidly evolving. GTM teams help navigate this complexity and ensure a competitive edge. Moreover, different disciplines within your GTM will pick up on very different competitive signals. Integrating, prioritizing, and taking action on competitive intelligence enormously impact your company’s GTM success.
- Customer Focus: GTM teams help data center-related businesses understand and cater to the specific needs of their target customers, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Again, this focus is no longer optional in a world where so much of the buyer’s journey is self-guided and so much of the customer's lifetime value comes from account retention and expansion.
The Five Ways That Data Center GTM Teams Achieve Their Goals
Okay. So now that you know what GTM teams focus on, who’s part of GTM teams, and why GTM teams exist, consider these five best practices that help data center GTM teams with goal attainment:
Strategic Planning: GTM teams develop comprehensive strategic plans that outline goals, target markets (ideal client profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas), and action steps (typically anchoring to SMART goals, KPIs, and OKRs). SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. KPIs are key performance indicators. And OKRs are objectives and key results.- Cross-Functional Collaboration: They work closely, bringing together stakeholders from all relevant areas -- sales, marketing, customer success, product, channel partnerships, and executive leadership -- to ensure alignment and coordination. (Tip: Because executive leadership’s scheduling availability is often a limiting factor, and presence can sometimes have a chilling impact, the other five disciplines will many times build consensus first during working sessions -- and then loop in their executive sponsor as plans are being finalized.)
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: GTM teams rely on data and analytics to make informed decisions, track progress, and adjust strategies. Having truly integrated front- and back-office systems can help get everyone on the same page.
- Continuous Improvement: They continuously evaluate and refine their strategies based on market feedback and changing conditions.
- Customer-Centric Approach: GTM teams prioritize understanding customer needs and delivering value, which fosters customer loyalty and drives growth. To take this initiative to the next level, regularly include feedback from customer advisory councils or similar customer feedback programs.
About the Data Center Sales & Marketing Institute (DCSMI) and How It Empowers Data Center Go-to-Market Team
If you’re part of a data center go-to-market team, you play a pivotal role in the success of your data center-related business.
You and your colleagues ensure that products and services meet customer needs, get effectively promoted, and generate revenue in a competitive market.
Your team uses a combination of market research, strategic planning, collaboration, and customer-centricity to achieve its goals.
The Data Center Sales & Marketing Institute (DCSMI) is a boutique business advisory, consulting, and training firm for data center providers as well as IT, facilities, and sales and marketing companies that partner with data center providers.
DCSMI understands the unique go-to-market challenges and opportunities that GTM teams face in the rapidly evolving data center marketplace, and we're here to help you excel.
Welcome to DCSMI, your strategic partner in navigating the complex world of data center go-to-market strategy and the role of GTM teams.
