If you’re a vendor, it’s not all about you.
Medieval cities, as well as modern yuppified cities, often featured a market. Once a week vendors would congregate in the marketplace to sell their wares, and townspeople and others would go to the market and peruse what was on offer.
One Thursday morning, one prosperous vendor of apples announced to his workers, “Today we are going to GO TO MARKET!”
The trumpeter blew his trumpet, the workers assembled in a line, and the vendor mounted his horse and headed toward the city to GO TO MARKET.
His workers were already pre-briefed with internal sales enablement materials, and the vendor had printed flyers for the townspeople who could read. For the others, there were the trumpets.
Now THAT is how you go to market.
Except that by the time the vendor arrived at the market, seven other vendors were already selling apples at the market and doing a brisk business. The vendor and his wares were ignored, and the trumpets were reluctantly put away.
Too late.
Because while everyone planning the go-to-market initiative thought it was all about them, the prospects had other ideas.
Come-to-market
I have read hundreds of product marketing job descriptions, and they all describe the product marketer’s go-to-market duties as spearheading a go-to-market plan, and coordinating with internal departments to ensure the go-to-market runs smoothly.
Never mind the fact that the market itself may have other ideas.
And that the prospects, not the vendors, control whether sales happen.
Because in reality it’s not a GO-to-market exercise.
It’s an exercise in which the vendors COME-to-market to sell their wares to the prospects.
It’s about the prospects, not the vendors. (Customer focus.)
Bredemarket 