Bringing Products to Market: What Every Builder Should Know About Go-to-Market Strategy

Shipping a product often feels like the finish line. After weeks or months of focused execution, it is tempting to believe that the hardest part is behind you. In reality, the most consequential phase is just beginning.

Once a product enters the market, a different set of questions takes over. What problem does this actually solve? Why should someone choose it over an alternative? How do sales teams explain value without resorting to feature lists? And how do you price it in a way that reflects what it delivers rather than what it costs to build?

These questions sit at the heart of go-to-market strategies. The thinking that connects product decisions, pricing, positioning, and team alignment into one clear story that buyers can actually understand. In this episode, we sit down with Alain Mowad, Vice President of Product and Customer Marketing at Aspect Software, to unpack what go-to-market really means and why builders should be thinking about it much earlier than most teams do.

Go to Market Is Bigger Than Promotion

One of the most persistent misconceptions around go-to-market is that it is synonymous with promotion. Launch campaigns, landing pages, and announcements tend to get the spotlight, which makes it easy to assume that visibility is the strategy.

In reality, promotion is only one part of a much larger set of decisions that shape how a product enters and survives in the market. Alain described go to market through the lens of The Four Ps, a framework that helps teams think more holistically about what they are building and how it shows up for customers:

• Product: what you are actually offering, including the problem it solves, the quality of the experience, and how it is meaningfully different from alternatives.
• Price: how the product is valued and monetized, and whether that price reflects the outcomes customers expect to achieve.
• Place: how and where the product is sold, whether directly, through partners, online, or across multiple channels, and how accessible it is to the right audience.
• Promotion: how the product is communicated to the market, including messaging, campaigns, content, and sales enablement that bring the story to life.

Promotion is the most visible of the four, which is why it often gets mistaken for the whole strategy. But without clarity around the product itself, a price that makes sense, and a clear path to market, even the strongest promotion struggles to create lasting traction.

Go-to-Market Starts Earlier Than You Think

Another theme that surfaced quickly in the conversation was timing. Many teams wait until a product is nearly complete before seriously considering go-to-market. By then, most foundational decisions will have already been made.

According to Alain, that is far too late.

Go-to-market thinking should begin at product inception, when an idea is still being shaped and questioned. That’s when teams should be pressure-testing questions like:

• Is this something we can realistically sell?
• Does it fit our business and our customers?
• Where does it sit in the market?
• What white space are we actually filling?

When teams delay these conversations, they often find themselves trying to position their way out of unclear value. Messaging becomes a patch rather than a reflection of the product itself.

Stop Leading With Features. Start Leading With Outcomes.

One of the practical shifts Alain described was moving from feature-led thinking to outcome-led thinking. Feature lists are tempting because they feel tangible. They’re easy to write, easy to compare and easy to present. But buyers don’t make decisions based on features. They make decisions based on outcomes.

Leading with outcomes forces teams to listen more carefully and to understand what customers are actually trying to achieve. It also creates discipline across product and marketing, because outcomes are harder to fake and easier to test. When positioning is anchored in results rather than capabilities, it becomes easier to explain value and harder for competitors to reduce the conversation to feature parity.

In practice, outcome-led thinking sounds less like a feature checklist and more like a set of real-world improvements customers can immediately recognize. Instead of saying a product has advanced automation or powerful analytics, teams focus on what those capabilities unlock:

• saving teams several hours a week on manual work
• reducing operational costs over a quarter
• improving response times during peak demand
• or helping managers make staffing decisions with more confidence and less guesswork

Those kinds of outcomes give buyers something concrete to react to. They can picture the impact inside their own organization, which makes the value feel real long before they ever see a demo.

Differentiation Lives Beyond the Product

In many mature markets, products appear interchangeable at a glance. The feature sets overlap, the language converges, and differentiation feels thin.

Alain offered a helpful reframing here. Differentiation is not confined to the product alone. In complex environments, buyers are also evaluating the expertise behind the product and the process required to make it successful. Implementation experience, operational support, and the ability to demonstrate return on investment all shape how a product is perceived.

This is especially true for enterprise products, where customers are not simply buying software. They are buying confidence that the solution will work within their organization and will continue to deliver value over time.

Pricing Is Where Strategy Gets Tested

Pricing is often treated as a comparison exercise, but Alain pushed back on that framing. Even when two products look similar on paper, the value customers experience can differ significantly. That difference is what pricing should reflect.

As he explained:

“When you think about pricing, we always ground our pricing in value. It’s not the product. It’s the value that the product brings.”

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Customers pay for outcomes, not for features. Time saved, efficiency gained, risk reduced, and talent retained are all part of the value equation. When customers believe those outcomes are tangible, they are willing to pay a premium. When they do not, even a low price can feel unjustified.

Alain also spent time walking through different pricing models, not as theoretical options, but as strategic choices that shape how customers perceive value, risk, and commitment. What became clear is that pricing is never neutral. The model you choose sends a signal long before a customer experiences the product itself.

• Seat-based pricing, for example, is familiar and predictable. Customers understand it quickly, which can lower friction early in the buying process. At the same time, it often ties value to scale rather than impact, meaning customers may question the price as teams grow, even if the outcomes improve.
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• Consumption-based pricing shifts that relationship. Instead of paying for access, customers pay for usage. This can make value feel more directly connected to activity, but it also introduces uncertainty. Buyers have to trust that usage will remain reasonable and that the product will continue delivering value as consumption increases.
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• Outcomes-based pricing goes a step further by aligning cost with results. In theory, it is the clearest expression of value, because customers are paying for what they actually achieve. In practice, it requires a high level of confidence, strong measurement, and deep alignment between product and customer expectations. When done well, it reinforces trust. When done poorly, it can create confusion or skepticism.

What matters most is not which model a company chooses, but whether the pricing reinforces the value story being told everywhere else. If the pricing model contradicts how outcomes are described, customers feel that disconnect immediately. Pricing, in that sense, becomes another form of messaging, one that either strengthens or undermines the go-to-market strategy as a whole.

Go to Market Is a Lifecycle, Not a Moment

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the episode is that go-to-market is not a single motion. It is an ongoing, coordinated effort that spans the full product lifecycle.

From early ideation through launch and into post-launch growth, multiple stakeholders influence how a product shows up in the market. Product, sales, finance, customer teams, and external inputs all shape the strategy. Without alignment, messaging fragments, and pricing becomes inconsistent, and the story changes depending on who is telling it.

This is why go-to-market requires orchestration. Someone needs to connect the dots, maintain clarity, and ensure the strategy evolves alongside the product.

What Builders Should Take Away

A strong go-to-market strategy does not rely on being louder or more aggressive. It relies on being clearer, earlier, and more intentional. At its best, it allows teams to answer a small set of questions consistently and in plain language:

• Who the product is for and why that audience matters
• What problem does it solve, and why is that problem worth solving
• Why is it different in a way that customers can believe
• Why the price makes sense based on the value delivered

When teams treat go-to-market as an afterthought, launches feel uncertain, and momentum is hard to sustain. When they treat it as part of the product itself, the transition from build to market feels far more natural and far more durable.

That shift, from shipping to landing, is where great products start to separate themselves. If you're eager to learn more or have any questions, give us a shout! We're always here to help.