Jul 26, 2022 2 min read

What does a fully-functioning go-to-market org look like?

Go-to market organizations typically have the following four sub-teams. Here's some things to keep in mind for each.

This team will often have SDR's (sales development reps) who pound the pavement with outbound, sales reps, and account managers (for once the sale is made)
Over time: you may want to vertical-ize (retail, sass) and/or have people focus on tiers (enterprise, SMB's), you can also have product specialists as a full time role or as a part of someone's role
Sometimes this org also houses: business development, partnerships

This team will have people actively doing ticket and those doing the scaled work that supports them (tooling, management, documentation, etc.)
Over time: you may want to have product specialists and/or dedicated agents for top users (this can be a career path opportunity into sales or account management)
Sometimes this org also houses: education/documentation, field/integration teams

This team has a lot of potential directions. The main differentiator for the marketing org is that they think company:many where sales and support teams are mostly 1:1. Here's an overview of the potential sub-teams:
Brand: look and feel of the company (works closely with design and comms), maybe writing (editorial and copy)
Product: launches and campaigns for new products and features, messaging across the portfolio, think in end-to-end flows for users throughout their life
Community: social, programs, events
Growth: website, acquisition (ads), lifecycle (email, nurture campaigns, etc.)

In my experience, companies are either comms-led or marketing-led, and that should be made explicit. Otherwise, it's really confusing (and tense!) around messaging.
This team will typically have some combination of brand comms, product comms, and internal comms. Some comms teams are naturally more reactive or proactive.
Comms teams typically need a process or person for crisis comms (when PR shit hits the fam) and executive comms (to make sure company execs represent themselves and the company well) too.

Here's a rough sketch of the org chart with an emphasis on marketing (since it's often the sprawliest of the gtm orgs)