Beyond sales planning: The case for a holistic GTM approach

You walk into the quarterly planning meeting confident the sales plan is ready. Coverage is aligned, quotas are set, and headcount is accounted for. But as the conversation begins, the disconnects emerge: marketing is operating from a different set of assumptions, finance is referencing a separate forecast, and customer success is still waiting for clarity on account priorities and adoption targets. 

Each team has done the work — but they’re not working together. It’s an all too familiar challenge across many revenue organizations.

There was a time when sales planning could operate in isolation. Sales owned the numbers, and other teams followed. But today, growth is a shared responsibility. Customer journeys are more dynamic, markets shift rapidly, and the people influencing revenue — across sales, marketing, customer success, and finance — must be more connected than ever before.

The problem isn’t the people or the effort. It’s the planning model. Most organizations are still using legacy planning structures designed for a different era — where sales-led execution was the primary growth engine. But that’s no longer enough. Modern growth requires a more holistic approach.

Sales planning is essential — but it’s not enough

Traditional sales planning focuses on tactical execution — setting capacity, assigning territories, distributing quotas, and forecasting pipeline. But when done in isolation, it falls short. Sales, marketing, finance, and customer success often build separate plans based on conflicting data and timelines, making it difficult to navigate today’s complex go-to-market (GTM) landscape.

What’s needed is a broader, connected model, one that reflects how revenue is truly generated. This is the core of GTM planning: a connected, revenue-first approach that aligns all planning functions around shared data, unified strategy, and collective accountability.

ISG sums it up well in their viewpoint: “The shift from a sales-centric to a revenue-centric approach within the enterprise is crucial for competitiveness today, and it will require a holistic evaluation of how roles, processes, and technologies are able to adapt within the ever-evolving economic landscape.”

GTM planning is bigger than sales planning

Growth today is shaped by more than just sales. Modern revenue generation depends on how well your entire GTM organization works together: sales, marketing, customer success, finance, and operations. That’s where GTM planning comes in.

GTM planning aligns these functions around a shared strategy, turning siloed decisions into coordinated execution. It helps you answer critical questions like:

• Are we investing in the right markets and segments?

• Are marketing and sales aligned on how we generate and convert pipeline?

• Do our territories reflect actual opportunity?

• Are we building the right motions to retain and expand existing customers?

When planning happens in a vacuum, it’s nearly impossible to adapt quickly or accurately, leading to missed opportunities, slower execution, and reduced agility — especially in the face of shifting buyer behavior, competitive pressure, or changing market conditions.

Integrated GTM planning helps teams stay aligned and proactive, even in uncertainty. It turns planning into a continuous, responsive process — one that connects strategy to execution, and insights to impact. Done right, it can unlock meaningful performance gains. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Here are some real results from LinkedIn’s GTM planning transformation:

• 2x more frequent sales planning

• 75%+ faster territory planning

• 7,500 hours saved in GTM operations

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Ready to shift from siloed to strategic?

Don’t be caught off guard the next time you walk into a sales planning meeting. Growth isn’t a single-team effort anymore. It’s the outcome of connected planning across your entire enterprise, shared assumptions between your GTM teams, and cross-functional, vertical-and-horizontal execution.