Executive Search for GTM Leaders

"Go-to-market leader" has become one of the most overloaded titles in the VP search market. It can mean the person who owns the revenue number. It can mean the person who builds the sales-marketing-CS alignment that a company has never had. It can mean a VP of Sales with a better title. It can mean a Chief Revenue Officer without the budget to match. It can mean someone who has run a full commercial function, or someone who has run one channel exceptionally well.

The search that opens with "we need a GTM leader" before defining what that means will run for fourteen weeks and produce candidates who look right until the offer stage, at which point the misalignment becomes visible.

The brief problem specific to GTM

GTM briefs are difficult to write because the function is inherently cross-functional. Whoever takes the role will touch product, marketing, sales, and customer success. Every stakeholder has a different view of what the hire needs to prioritise. The CEO wants revenue. Marketing wants someone who understands brand. Sales wants a leader who has run a quota-carrying team. CS wants someone who cares about retention, not just acquisition.

These are not competing requirements — they are all legitimate. But a brief that tries to satisfy all of them simultaneously produces a job description that describes a person who does not exist, or describes five people at once.

The most useful intake conversation for a GTM search is not "what do you need this person to do?" It is "what is the one thing that, if this hire gets it right in the first six months, makes everything else easier?" The answer to that question defines the search.

What GTM candidates evaluate before engaging

Senior GTM leaders evaluate opportunities differently from functional VPs. They want to know the commercial architecture before they engage seriously: what is the current ACV, what is the sales cycle, what is the mix between new logo and expansion, where does marketing hand off to sales, what is the state of the CRM data, what does the existing team look like.

They ask these questions because they have seen enough poorly-run commercial functions to know that the title is not the job. The job is what the company actually has when they walk in, and whether that starting point is something they can work with.

A search that can't answer these questions fluently to a candidate — because the brief hasn't engaged with them — produces candidate drop-off at the interest stage. The right person gets interested, asks two questions, and goes quiet. The firm interprets this as low candidate interest. It is usually poor information packaging.

What the GTM search that closes looks like

The searches that close fast have a precise commercial architecture documented before outreach begins. Not a pitch deck — a clear-eyed account of where the commercial function is, what the hire inherits, and what the mandate actually is. Candidates who receive this information make faster decisions, in both directions. The ones who self-select out do so early. The ones who stay engaged are seriously interested.

Majhi Group runs retained GTM leadership searches. 30–45 days against the 65–90 day industry median. The search assessment identifies whether the brief is currently built to close.

If a GTM or commercial leadership search is stalling, request an assessment.