Go-to-market
Go-to-Market Strategy Template: A Worked B2B AI Example
Blank templates are easy to find and hard to fill in. This one comes with every field completed for a real B2B example, so you can see what a useful answer looks like before you write your own.
A go-to-market strategy template should capture ten things: the buyer, the budget owner, the champion, the trigger, the current alternative, the message, the first channel, the price, the sales steps and the 90-day targets. Below, each field is filled in for one example product, a compliance tracker for insurance agencies.
The example is the sample product NELL walks through in its GTM strategy report and Sales Playbook walkthroughs: software that tracks license renewals and continuing-education (CE) deadlines for independent insurance agencies. The buyer details below come from that sample. Where a field is an illustration for this guide rather than part of the sample, it says so.
Key takeaways
- Fill in ten fields, from the buyer and budget owner to the 90-day targets.
- Separate the champion from the buyer. The person who feels the pain is often not the person who signs.
- Name the real alternative. In the example it is a spreadsheet, not a competitor.
- Write targets as leading signals, such as replies, calls and pilots, not only revenue.
- Mark every field as evidence or assumption, and test the assumptions first.
What should a go-to-market strategy template include?
Ten fields, each answerable in a sentence or two. If a field takes a page, the decision behind it has not been made yet.
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| 1. Buyer | Company type, size and situation, specific enough to list 50 by name |
| 2. Budget owner | The role that signs |
| 3. Champion | The role that feels the pain and argues for you internally |
| 4. Trigger | The event that makes the problem urgent now |
| 5. Current alternative | What they do today if you do not exist |
| 6. Message | One sentence comparing you with that alternative |
| 7. First channel | Where you will reach the first 50 buyers |
| 8. Price and unit | The number, and what it is charged on |
| 9. Sales steps | The stages from first contact to signed deal |
| 10. 90-day targets | Weekly leading signals and the outcome you expect |
Next to each field, mark whether it is evidence (a buyer told you, or did it) or an assumption (you believe it). The assumptions are your test plan.
What does a filled-in template look like for a B2B AI product?
Here are the first five fields for the insurance compliance tracker. Notice that the champion and the budget owner are different people, which shapes everything after it.
| Field | Worked example |
|---|---|
| 1. Buyer | US independent insurance agencies with 20 to 200 producers across three or more states |
| 2. Budget owner | The agency principal or COO |
| 3. Champion | The operations or compliance manager who keeps the deadline spreadsheet |
| 4. Trigger | A producer writing business on a lapsed license, or an upcoming renewal cycle across several states |
| 5. Current alternative | A spreadsheet reconciled by hand |
The sample also names a third party in the sale: IT, or an outsourced managed service provider, as the security gate. For an AI product that reads company records, plan for that review from the first call.
How do you fill in the message, channel, price and targets?
Each follows from the first five fields. The message compares you with the spreadsheet, the channel is wherever operations managers already look for help, and the price is judged against the cost of a lapsed license.
| Field | Worked example | Evidence or assumption |
|---|---|---|
| 6. Message | "Stop reconciling CE deadlines by hand. Every producer, every state, flagged before it lapses." | Assumption to test in outreach |
| 7. First channel | Direct outreach to operations managers at agencies that fit field 1, plus agency networks the founder can reach | Assumption (illustration for this guide) |
| 8. Price and unit | The sample uses a price of $400 a month per agency | Assumption to test in the first calls |
| 9. Sales steps | Discovery call with the champion, demo with the principal, security review, pilot, signature | Illustration for this guide |
| 10. 90-day targets | Weekly counts of outreach sent, replies, discovery calls and pilots started; a target number of paid pilots by day 90 | Set your own numbers before you start |
The template is only useful if field 10 is written before the work starts. Otherwise any result looks like progress.
What are the most common mistakes when filling in a GTM template?
Describing a market instead of a buyer, naming competitors instead of the real alternative, and leaving the price blank until the product is built.
- A market, not a buyer. "SMBs in financial services" cannot be listed by name. "Independent agencies with 20 to 200 producers" can.
- Phantom competitors. April Dunford's advice is to position against "what would customers do if your offering didn't exist?" (April Dunford), not against companies that rarely appear in real deals.
- Channels chosen for scale, not trust. Early B2B customers mostly come from the founder's own circles first (Lenny's Newsletter).
- No price. A price is an assumption like any other, and the cheapest one to test.
- Revenue as the only target. Weekly leading signals tell you which field is wrong long before revenue does.
How do you turn the template into a go-to-market plan?
Test the assumptions in order of risk, update the template weekly, and only expand to a second buyer or channel once the first one produces paying customers.
The template is the one-page version. A full plan adds the research behind each field: market size, named competitors and their prices, channel costs, and a week-by-week roadmap. Our guide to go-to-market strategy for AI startups explains the reasoning behind each decision.
NELL's Launchpad ($149) produces that full plan: a go-to-market strategy of 21 sections with a 90-day roadmap, plus two DeepValidate reports. The complete example this guide is based on is walked through in what you get in a NELL GTM strategy report.
Frequently asked questions
What is a go-to-market strategy template?
A one-page structure for the decisions behind selling a product: who buys, who signs, what they use today, what you say, where you reach them, what you charge, how deals close and what you expect in the first 90 days.
What is the difference between a GTM strategy and a GTM plan?
The strategy is the set of decisions: buyer, positioning, channel, price and motion. The plan adds the research behind them and the week-by-week actions to carry them out.
How long should a go-to-market strategy be?
The strategy itself should fit on one page. The supporting research can be longer, but if a single decision needs a page to explain, it probably has not been made yet.
Can I use the same GTM template for B2C?
Mostly. For a consumer product the budget owner and champion are usually the same person, and channels lean toward communities and content rather than direct outreach.
How often should I update my go-to-market template?
Weekly in the first 90 days. Each week, mark which assumptions became evidence and which were proved wrong, and change the fields that were wrong.
Start where you are
The template is the summary. The full example it came from is public.
Sources
- NELL AI Labs, What You Get in a NELL GTM Strategy Report
- NELL AI Labs, What You Get in a NELL Sales Playbook
- April Dunford, A Quickstart Guide to Positioning (2021)
- Lenny Rachitsky, How to win your first 10 B2B customers (2023)
The worked example is for illustration. Fields marked as illustrations were written for this guide and are not recommendations for any real product.