The short answer
A go-to-market consultant helps you decide who buys first, what you sell them, and what you say, and the time to hire one is right before the money moves.
- A go-to-market consultant makes three calls: who buys first, what you sell them, and what you say.
- The right moment is right before money moves: a raise, a plateau, a launch, a new market or a new technology.
- Hire a consultant to decide where to point the money, and a fractional CMO or an agency to run it once it is decided.
- The founder or CEO owns go-to-market. A consultant brings the method, the research and a second opinion.
On this page (9 sections)
- 01 What does a go-to-market consultant do?
- 02 When to hire a go-to-market consultant
- 03 Go-to-market consultant, fractional CMO or agency?
- 04 How the three calls get made
- 05 Two faster ways to make the three calls
- 06 Who should own go-to-market?
- 07 Go-to-market consultant questions
- 08 The bottom line
- Sources & Further Reading
A go-to-market consultant helps a company decide who buys first, what to sell them, and what to say, before the sales and marketing money goes out. It is also called go-to-market strategy consulting. Channels and the launch follow from those three calls.
This guide covers what the three calls are, the moments to hire a go-to-market consultant, how one compares with a fractional CMO, an agency and a big consulting firm, how the calls get made, and two faster ways to make them.
What does a go-to-market consultant do?
A go-to-market consultant gives you outside help with the three calls that decide whether your sales and marketing money works.
- Who buys first, and why now. Your ideal customer and your first market: the buyers with the most urgent problem, who can say yes soonest. Found with research inside and outside your company, not guessed. One common research method is Jobs to Be Done, which Clayton Christensen and his coauthors described in Harvard Business Review in 20161.
- What you sell them, so it’s hard to say no. Pricing and packaging: the first offer, what it costs, and what makes it safe to buy. Safety counts because people weigh a loss more heavily than a gain of the same size (Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory, 1979)2. More on that in what is an offering.
- What you say, so they get it in seconds. Positioning and messaging: the few lines your site, your sales team and your partners all use. That is where a product marketing consultant comes in.
A go-to-market consultant is not an agency. A consultant doesn’t run your campaigns. The job is to make the call with you, before you spend.
Three calls. Made before you spend.
When to hire a go-to-market consultant
Right before the money moves. These are the five moments when a go-to-market decision gets a budget.
| The moment | What it sounds like |
|---|---|
| Just raised | The round closed. Now comes the real bet. |
| Revenue plateau | Growth was easy. Until it wasn’t. |
| Product launch | The product is ready. The market is still a guess. |
| Market entry | It won at home. The next market plays by different rules. |
| New technology | The technology is proven. The use case isn’t. |
It fits B2B technology companies, software or services, with a product that already works. It is not for you if you have no product or buyers yet, or if you want someone to run your campaigns for you.
And if your market is right but deals stall on your own calls, that is not a consulting problem. That is enterprise sales coaching.
Go-to-market consultant, fractional CMO or agency?
Each kind of help does a different job. Here is how they compare, and how each one usually charges.
| A go-to-market consultant | A fractional CMO | An agency | A big consulting firm | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | The decision: who buys first, what you sell them, what you say | A part-time leader who runs your marketing | Campaigns, content, ads and leads | Research and a strategy, often across many markets |
| Who does the work | Decides with you. Your team builds from it | They lead your marketing team | They do the work | A team of consultants |
| How it’s priced | Usually a fee per project | Usually a monthly retainer | A monthly retainer or a fee per project | A project fee, usually for a long engagement |
| Best when | Money is about to move and the market is still a guess | You know your market and need someone to lead marketing | You know who to sell to and what to say, and need more output | A large company with a large budget and many markets |
Hire a consultant to decide where to point the money. Hire a fractional CMO to run marketing once that is decided. Many teams need both, in that order.
How the three calls get made
The calls are made in order, because each one narrows the next.
Who buys first. The buyers with the most urgent problem, who can say yes soonest.
What you sell them. The first offer, what it costs, and what makes it safe to buy.
What you say. The few lines your site, your sales team and your partners all use.
The decision. Then channels and the launch.
The research behind them runs inside and outside the company: interviews with buyers who bought and buyers who didn’t, the sales calls, the lost deals, the competitors buyers compare you with. For the full sequence, see the 11-step go-to-market strategy framework and how to build a go-to-market strategy.
Two published client cases show what the second call can change. They do not say which service produced them. ENCAMINA: x2 revenue and x8 EBITDA in under 3 years. Same market, same pipeline. New offering packaging, with risk-reversed proposals and pitches built on how buyers actually decide. Plain Concepts closed a $100K deal with a new client through a distribution channel they’d never cracked: its first new logo in 5 years.
Two faster ways to make the three calls
A long engagement is not the only way to make these calls. There are two faster ones, and both start with a conversation.
- With your team, in one day. The go-to-market workshop: 1 day, 7 hours, in person. Your team and Jose, in one room. You leave with a packaged offering: entry offering, expansion path, pricing model and risk-reduction stack. If your average client value is under $5K / year, this probably isn’t the right fit.
- Just you, in 90 minutes. The Power Hour: 90 minutes, live, on video. A sales pitch and storytelling challenge: you pitch, Jose roasts it live. It tests the third call, what you say, where it counts: in front of a buyer.
Both start with a free 15-minute fit call: apply for a 15-minute fit call. In Jose’s words:
I read every application and take every call myself.
Who should own go-to-market?
The founder or CEO, with the product marketing or sales leader next to them. A consultant brings the method, the research and a second opinion. The decision stays with the company.
That matters because the calls only hold if the people who sell believe them.
A plan handed down from outside gets quietly rewritten on the first hard sales call. A plan the founder made, with the sales leader in the room, survives it.
If the founder is still the main seller, the three calls end up in the founder’s own sales pitch first.
Go-to-market consultant questions
What does a go-to-market consultant do?
A go-to-market consultant helps you decide who buys first, what you sell them, and what you say, before the sales and marketing money goes out. The calls rest on research inside and outside your company, not guesses. Then your team, an agency or a fractional CMO builds and runs what was decided.
When do you need go-to-market consulting?
Right before money moves. After a raise, when growth stalls, or before a launch. Also when you enter a new market, or when a new technology needs its first use. In each case the plan is about to get a budget, and a wrong call gets more expensive with every hire and campaign that follows it.
Is there a shorter alternative to go-to-market consulting?
Yes. Jose M Bermejo offers two, and neither is a long engagement. The go-to-market workshop, with your team: $5,000, one day, 7 hours, in person. Or the Power Hour, just you: 90 minutes, live, on video, $950. Both start with a free 15-minute fit call, and he reads every application himself.
Should I hire a go-to-market consultant or a fractional CMO?
Hire a consultant to decide where to point the money. Hire a fractional CMO to run marketing once that is decided. Many teams need both, in that order. The expensive mistake is the reverse: a strong marketing leader executing well on a market or an offering nobody has decided on yet.
The bottom line
A go-to-market consultant earns their fee before the money moves: three calls on who buys first, what you sell them and what you say. Make them in order, make them with research, and keep the decision inside the company. Then hire the hands to run it.
Decide first. Then hire the hands.
Sources & Further Reading
- Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan, “Know Your Customers’ ‘Jobs to Be Done’”, Harvard Business Review, September 2016. hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
- Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk”, Econometrica 47(2), March 1979. doi.org/10.2307/1914185
