by Paul van Hattem
Co-founder Sync
You started the year with a plan.
The strategy was sharpened. Targets were defined. Budgets were allocated. Perhaps you entered a new market, launched a new product, or refined your value proposition. In any case: there is direction. Decisions have been made.
That moment feels good. It brings energy. There is focus.
And yet, somewhere in the first quarter, a subtle doubt often creeps in. Not because the strategy is flawed. But because reality proves more complex than the plan. The first conversations are happening. The pipeline is filling. But the impact slightly trails behind the ambition.
And then the question arises: do we need to adjust our strategy?
It is a logical reflex. But not always the right diagnosis.
What a Go-To-Market strategy actually does
Having a strategy is essential. It forces you to make sharp choices: Who is our ideal customer? What value do we deliver? At what price? How do we structure marketing, sales, and customer success?
Venturise (www.venturise.nl), a Dutch consultancy specialized in GTM, defines it as follows:
“Go-To-Market is the strategic integration of product, marketing, and sales to effectively deliver a unique value proposition to the right customer. It is the process of activating a commercial flywheel and establishing the right structure to predictably reach, win, and retain your most valuable audience.”
That definition captures the essence. GTM is about direction and alignment. It reduces friction in how your commercial organization operates.
But even the most well-designed strategy remains, at first, a blueprint. The real challenge lies in translating strategic choices into the daily reality of your commercial team.
As Marko Kiers, Founder of Venturise, puts it:
“The real challenge of a GTM strategy lies in translating strategic decisions into the daily practice of the commercial team. At Venturise, we believe Sales Enablement is the critical link that makes the chosen direction truly workable. It ensures the strategy doesn’t remain in the boardroom but comes alive in every customer interaction.”
This is where the tension between strategy and execution becomes visible.
The gap between strategy and daily execution
In mid-sized B2B organizations, we often see that the strategic choices themselves are solid. The ICP is clear. The positioning makes sense. The plan is well thought through.
But once it meets reality, considerable work remains.
Sales conversations differ from person to person. Sales materials have grown organically over time. New hires build on existing knowledge without fully understanding the original foundation. Marketing and sales sometimes use slightly different language to describe the same story.
This is not about unwillingness or incompetence. It is what happens when the translation from strategy to concrete behavior is not made explicit.
The real question, therefore, is not only whether your strategy is correct, but whether your organization is capable of applying that strategy consistently in every customer interaction.
What Sales Enablement actually is
Sales Enablement is often reduced to training or tooling. In reality, it is something more fundamental: making explicit what has remained implicit and translating it into systems, messaging, playbooks, documentation, and ways of working.
In many SaaS environments, commercial playbooks have become a central focus. A playbook is essentially a structured guide that bundles relevant assets, process steps, messaging, tactics, and best practices to support the commercial team at specific stages of the customer journey.
But creating a playbook is not enough.
A document stored in a shared drive does not change behavior.
Sales Enablement only becomes meaningful when:
the commercial team is involved in designing the playbooks;
it becomes clear what the strategy means for concrete behavior in real conversations;
teams are trained in how to apply the playbooks;
and the use of these playbooks is embedded into daily routines.
Sales Enablement operationalizes your Go-To-Market strategy. It defines what your strategic choices actually mean in a first meeting, a discovery call, a proposal, a follow-up, and every stage of the funnel.
When this translation is missing, organizations become dependent on individuals. Success is tied to specific employees instead of to the system. Growth becomes less predictable and replicating success becomes difficult.
When the translation is explicit and structured, the results become visible: more consistent sales cycles, stronger alignment between marketing and sales, better forecasting, and ultimately improved performance.
Sales Enablement is not an additional layer on top of your strategy. It is how your strategy becomes operational.
Strategy is not static
There is another important nuance.
A commercial strategy is rarely static. It is, in many ways, emerging. In execution, you learn. You discover where assumptions do not hold. You see which messaging resonates and where friction appears in the funnel.
That requires a feedback loop.
Organizations that truly connect strategy and execution create mechanisms to feed insights from daily practice back into their GTM decisions. Adjustments are not a sign of weakness, they are a sign of maturity.
Professional Sales Enablement therefore also means organizing structured learning from the field.
The real strategic question
For commercial leaders with ambitious goals, the core issue is not limited to strategy alone.
A more important question to ask is: are we truly capable of applying our chosen strategy consistently and convincingly in every conversation, at every stage of the funnel — and do we systematically learn from what happens there?
If the answer is not a confident yes, there is likely significant untapped potential.
Organizations that consistently outperform are rarely those with the most plans. They are the ones that apply their chosen direction most effectively in practice and consciously manage the bridge between strategy and execution.
That is where Go-To-Market and Sales Enablement truly intersect.
Stay in Sync.
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