Go To Market vs. Go To Buyer
Everyone says "go to market."
Nobody asks "go to whom?"
That two-word phrase -- go-to-market -- has shaped how the entire B2B industry operates for twenty years. We have GTM motions, GTM teams, GTM playbooks, GTM reviews. We hire "GTM leaders" and build "GTM stacks." The phrase is so ubiquitous that nobody stops to examine the assumption buried inside it.
The assumption: the market is the audience.
It isn't. The market is an abstraction. Nobody in the history of B2B software has ever closed a deal with "the market." Deals close when a specific group of humans -- usually six to twenty of them -- inside a specific organization reach enough internal alignment to act.^1^ That group has a name. It's the buyer group. And everything about how you sell, market, forecast, and coach changes when you orient around it instead of the account, the lead, or the market.
The unit of analysis is wrong. And every metric built on the wrong unit inherits the same blindspot.
The ABM Promise (and Its Structural Flaw)
Account-based marketing was supposed to fix this.
The pitch was compelling: stop spraying and praying. Pick your accounts. Concentrate resources. Treat each account as a market of one. The logic was sound. The execution was not.
Here's why.
ABM targets accounts. An account is a company. A company is a logo on a list. You can score it, enrich it, tier it, sequence it. You can run display ads to it, send direct mail to its office, personalize your website when someone from its domain visits.
What you can't do is close it.
Because companies don't buy things. People do. Specifically, groups of people who have to reach consensus under conditions of competing priorities, incomplete information, and organizational politics. And ABM, for all its sophistication, has no mechanism for understanding who those people are, what they care about individually, where they agree, where they disagree, and what it will take to get them aligned.
The numbers bear this out. While 82% of B2B companies now run ABM programs, nearly half struggle to demonstrate ROI.^2^ The proportion reporting disappointing returns has been climbing, not falling. Most companies are simply repackaging traditional demand generation tactics under a trendy label. They got the account focus right. They got the unit of analysis wrong.
ABM got you to the right building. It never got you into the right rooms.
"Which Buyer Groups Are We Engaging?"
The clearest articulation of this problem I've heard came from Dan Mirolli, an Adrata advisor who spent years at Palantir navigating some of the most complex enterprise sales environments on the planet.
Dan and I were talking one evening about why so many well-resourced sales teams still miss their numbers. He'd been watching companies pour money into ABM programs, build elaborate account scoring models, and run sophisticated outbound sequences -- all oriented around the account as the unit of action. And he kept coming back to the same observation.
"At Palantir," Dan said, "we couldn't afford to think in accounts. The deals were too complex. You'd walk into a government agency or a Fortune 50 company and there was no single 'buyer.' There were twelve people across four departments, each with a different mandate, different budget authority, different definition of success. If you targeted the account, you targeted an abstraction. You had to target the buying group."
I asked him what changed when they made that shift.
"Everything simplified," he said. "When we stopped asking 'which accounts do we target?' and started asking 'which buyer groups are we engaging?', the noise fell away. Fewer wasted meetings. Clearer priorities. Better win rates. You'd look at a deal and instead of saying 'we're in good shape at Acme,' you'd say 'we have the CISO and the CTO engaged, but we haven't reached the procurement lead or the deputy director who controls the implementation budget.' That's a completely different conversation. It tells you exactly what to do next."
What Dan described wasn't a tactical adjustment. It was an operating system change. Palantir's enterprise deals were so high-stakes and so structurally complex -- spanning agencies, divisions, and sometimes entire governments -- that they couldn't hide behind account-level abstractions. They had to see the people. And when they did, the fog of war lifted.
That conversation crystallized something I'd been circling for a while. The distinction between Go-To-Market and Go-To-Buyer isn't academic. It's the difference between targeting a logo and engaging the humans who actually hold the pen. Dan saw it at Palantir. We've seen it across thousands of deals since. The pattern is the same everywhere: when you shift from account to buyer group, you stop guessing and start knowing.
What the Data Actually Says
We analyzed 2,847 enterprise deals over three years. Two findings changed how we think about everything.
Finding one: Pipeline coverage -- the sacred metric, the number every CRO presents to the board -- has a correlation of r = 0.23 with quarter outcomes. That's barely above noise.
Finding two: Stakeholder coverage -- average number of engaged stakeholders per deal -- has a correlation of r = 0.71. Three times more predictive.
Read that again.
The metric everyone obsesses over is nearly useless. The metric almost nobody tracks is the one that actually predicts whether you'll hit the number.
Teams with 4x pipeline coverage and low stakeholder engagement hit quota 34% of the time. Teams with 2.5x coverage and high stakeholder engagement hit quota 78% of the time. Less pipeline. More stakeholders engaged. Better outcomes.
This pattern shows up everywhere once you start looking. UserGems analyzed over 5,000 opportunities and found that multi-threaded deals -- those engaging multiple stakeholders -- had a 5x higher win rate than single-threaded ones.^3^ When five or more stakeholders were engaged, win rates jumped from 5% to 30%. Deal sizes grew 57%. Yet across their dataset, 70% of opportunities had only one point of contact.
Seventy percent. Single-threaded. In an era when Gartner says the average buying committee has eleven stakeholders.^4^
This isn't a marginal insight. It's a structural one. The entire operating system of most revenue organizations -- how they plan, measure, invest, coach, forecast -- is built on a metric that doesn't predict what it's supposed to predict.
The Paradigm
Here's the shift:
GTM (Go-To-Market) asks: Which accounts should we target?
GTB (Go-To-Buyer) asks: Which buyer groups are we engaging, and how completely?
That one word changes everything downstream.
| GTM Lens | GTB Lens |
|---|---|
| Target account list | Target buyer group map |
| Account score (firmographic fit) | Buyer group health (stakeholder coverage + engagement depth) |
| MQL: someone from the account engaged | MQL: a member of the buying committee engaged in context |
| Pipeline coverage: total dollar value | Pipeline coverage: dollar value weighted by stakeholder depth |
| Win rate: closed-won / total opps | Win rate: segmented by buyer group completeness |
| Forecast: rep-reported stage | Forecast: buyer group engagement signals |
| Coaching: "what did you do this week?" | Coaching: "who haven't you engaged yet, and why?" |
Every row in that table is a different decision. Different data. Different action. Different outcome.
ABM to BGM: The Core Distinction
If ABM is account-based marketing, BGM is buyer-group marketing. This is the central shift, and it's worth being precise about what changes.
ABM operates at the company level. It selects target accounts based on firmographic and technographic fit -- revenue, headcount, industry, tech stack. It personalizes by account: "We see that Acme Corp is growing rapidly in the healthcare vertical." Useful context. Completely generic to the fifteen people who will actually make the purchasing decision. ABM's implicit model is that the account is the buyer. Get in front of the account, and the deal follows.
BGM operates at the buying group level. It starts with the same account selection but then asks the question ABM skips: Who inside this account will actually make this decision, and what does each of them need to move forward? BGM's implicit model is that the account is the container, but the buyer group is the customer. Getting in front of the account is table stakes. Understanding the group dynamics is the game.
Here's how the difference plays out in practice:
| Dimension | ABM (Account-Based) | BGM (Buyer-Group-Based) |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of targeting | The account (company) | The buying group (people within the account) |
| Personalization | By company attributes (industry, size, growth) | By role within the buying committee (CFO, CISO, end user) |
| Content strategy | Account-relevant messaging | Group-alignment content that helps the committee converge |
| Success metric | Account engagement (web visits, ad clicks, email opens) | Stakeholder coverage (how many committee members are engaged, at what depth) |
| Definition of "qualified" | An account that shows intent signals | A buying group where enough members are engaged to drive consensus |
| Biggest blindspot | Treats the account as monolithic; ignores internal disagreement | None inherent, but requires deeper intelligence on buyer group composition |
| Where it fails | Deals stall because the wrong people (or too few people) are engaged | Requires more upfront investment in mapping stakeholders |
The CFO gets an ROI model anchored in their specific cost structure. The VP Engineering gets an architecture review scoped to their stack. The CISO gets a compliance matrix mapped to their regulatory environment. The end users get a workflow demonstration built for their actual daily process.
Same deal. Five different conversations. Each calibrated to the person who needs to say "I've done my diligence" before the group can move forward.
But here's the part most people miss.
Gartner's 2024 survey of 632 B2B buyers revealed something counterintuitive: content tailored for individual-level relevance actually hurts consensus. It creates a 59% negative impact on buying group alignment.^5^ Why? Because hyper-personalized content that speaks to one stakeholder's priorities can create confirmation bias that makes it harder, not easier, for the group to converge.
Content tailored for buying-group-level relevance -- content that helps members understand each other's perspectives and see the shared organizational need -- improves consensus by 20%.^5^ The difference between "here's why this matters to you personally" and "here's why this matters to all of you collectively" is the difference between feeding a conflict and resolving one.
This is the deepest insight in the GTB framework: the goal isn't to convince eleven individuals. It's to equip a group to reach alignment. ABM tries to win eleven separate arguments. BGM tries to facilitate one shared decision.
The ICP shifts. From "ideal customer profile" (a company description) to "ideal buying committee profile" (a group composition). You're not asking "is this a good account?" You're asking "does this account have an accessible buying committee with the right characteristics?"
Pipeline reviews shift. From "what stage is this deal in?" to "how many stakeholders have we engaged, and which roles are missing?" A deal in Stage 3 with one champion and no economic buyer contact is fundamentally different from a deal in Stage 3 with seven engaged stakeholders and executive sponsorship. But in a GTM pipeline review, they look identical.
Forecasting shifts. From rep-reported confidence to observable buyer group behavior. Is the economic buyer engaged? Have procurement concerns been surfaced? Is there an unidentified blocker in IT? These are verifiable signals. "I feel good about this deal" is not.
Why This Matters Now
Three forces are converging to make this shift urgent.
Buying committees have nearly doubled in size over the past decade. Gartner puts the average complex purchase at eleven individual stakeholders, sometimes flexing to twenty.^4^ Forrester says thirteen people are involved on average, spanning two or more departments in 89% of purchases.^6^ The exact number matters less than the direction: buying is a group activity, and the group is getting larger and more cross-functional every year.
The consensus problem is getting worse, not better. Seventy-four percent of buying committees exhibit what Gartner calls "unhealthy conflict" during the decision process -- conflicting objectives, disagreement on approach, external decision-makers overruling the evaluation team.^5^ Forrester found that 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process.^7^ These are not edge cases. They are the norm.
The result is massive value destruction through inaction. Matthew Dixon's research, published in The JOLT Effect and featured on 6sense, found that 40-60% of qualified pipeline ends in "no decision."^8^ Not a competitor win. Not a budget cut. Inaction. The group couldn't agree. And here's the twist that upends most sales training: only 44% of those lost deals were due to preference for the status quo. The majority -- 56% -- involved buyers who wanted to move forward but couldn't bring themselves to commit.^9^ The enemy isn't the competitor. It's the committee's inability to converge.
This is not a sales execution problem. It is a consensus problem. And you cannot solve a consensus problem by targeting accounts. You solve it by understanding the group that needs to reach consensus -- mapping its members, identifying its fault lines, and engaging each member on terms that help them do their part.
ABM was designed for a world where finding the right account was the primary challenge. BGM is designed for a world where the right account is table stakes and the primary challenge is navigating the buying committee inside it.
The Buyer's Side of the Problem
Here's an angle revenue leaders rarely consider: buyers are suffering too.
Gartner found that buyers spend only 17% of their total purchasing time meeting with potential suppliers.^10^ When comparing multiple vendors, each individual rep may get 5-6% of the buyer's attention. The rest is independent research, internal meetings, building consensus documents, managing stakeholder objections -- doing the hard, invisible work of getting a group to say yes.
And 81% of those buyers report dissatisfaction with their chosen providers.^7^ Not the rejected vendors. The winners. The companies they actually selected still left them frustrated.
Why? Because the buying experience was designed around the seller's funnel, not the buyer's committee. Nobody helped them navigate the internal politics. Nobody gave them the tools to build consensus among colleagues with competing priorities. Nobody mapped the decision to the group -- they mapped it to the account.
When buying groups do reach consensus, they are 2.5 times more likely to report the deal was high-quality.^5^ Buyers who feel confident in their purchasing decision are 3.6 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal and expand later.^11^
Helping the buyer group align isn't just good selling. It's what buyers are desperate for someone to do.
What This Means for Revenue Leaders
If you're a CRO reading this, the diagnostic is straightforward.
Pull your last quarter's pipeline. For every deal that was in commit or best-case, answer one question: how many stakeholders were actively engaged?
If the number is below five on average, your pipeline coverage ratio is masking a stakeholder coverage gap. You have breadth without depth. Accounts without buyer groups. Pipeline without substance. And somewhere between 40% and 60% of those deals ended in "no decision" -- not because your product wasn't good enough, but because the group inside the account couldn't converge.
The fix isn't more pipeline. It isn't better closing technique. It isn't another ABM platform that scores accounts by firmographic fit while ignoring the humans inside them.
The fix is changing the unit of analysis.
From account to buyer group. From GTM to GTB. From marketing to the market to engaging the people who actually decide.
ABM got you to the account. BGM gets you to the decision.
The Go-To-Buyer framework was shaped by conversations with Dan Mirolli, Adrata Advisor, whose experience navigating complex enterprise sales at Palantir provided foundational insight into why buyer group orientation outperforms account-based approaches.
Notes
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Gartner, "The B2B Buying Journey," 2024. Average buying group for a complex purchase involves 6-10 decision-makers; enterprise deals involve 11-20 stakeholders across multiple functions.
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UserGems, "65 ABM Statistics Every Revenue Marketer Needs to Know," 2024. 82% of B2B companies run ABM programs; 47% struggle to demonstrate ROI.
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UserGems, "How Much Is Multithreading Worth to Your Pipeline and Revenue?" Analysis of 5,000+ opportunities. Multi-threaded deals show 5x win rate improvement; 70% of opportunities are single-threaded.
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Gartner, "The B2B Buying Journey," 2024. Average complex B2B purchase involves 11 individual stakeholders, sometimes up to 20.
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Gartner, "Sales Survey Finds 74% of B2B Buyer Teams Demonstrate Unhealthy Conflict During the Decision Process," press release, May 2025. Survey of 632 B2B buyers (August-September 2024). Individual-level content creates 59% negative impact on consensus; group-level relevance improves consensus by 20%.
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Forrester, "The State of Business Buying, 2024," December 2024. Average of 13 people involved in purchasing decisions; 89% of purchases involve two or more departments.
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Forrester, "The State of Business Buying, 2024," December 2024. 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process; 81% of buyers report dissatisfaction with chosen providers.
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Matthew Dixon on 6sense, "Sellers Are Losing Up to 60% of Pipeline to No Decision." 40-60% of qualified pipeline lost to "no decision" outcomes.
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Matthew Dixon, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision (Portfolio, 2022). Analysis of 2.5 million sales conversations. 56% of lost deals due to customer indecision rather than status quo preference; FOMU (fear of messing up) outweighs FOMO.
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Gartner, "The B2B Buying Journey," 2024. Buyers spend only 17% of total purchasing time meeting with potential suppliers; 5-6% per individual vendor when comparing multiple options.
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Gartner, "Customers Who Are Confident in Their Decision Making Are 2.6 Times More Likely to Buy More," September 2019. Updated 2024 research shows 3.6x multiplier on high-quality deal completion.