GTM Operating System principles have guided my work for years.
For decades, I’ve been in the corporate trenches with CMOs, boards, and executive teams.
I’m Alan Gonsenhauser, CEO of DemandRevenue, LLC. I’m a 12x CMO and 3-times P&L General Manager with experience in marketing, sales, finance, and operations.
I’m a CMO Coach & Mentor, an Interim / Fractional CMO, and a GTM Advisor for Private Equity portfolio companies.
At Forrester (previously SiriusDecisions), and afterward, I’ve mentored 150+ CMOs and marketing leaders to become indispensable to their organizations.
Since 2021 at Demand Revenue, I’ve been a CMO Coach and Interim CMO at 10+ private equity portfolio companies, focusing on infrastructure, driving value creation and customer-led growth with hundreds of models and frameworks to scale GTM alignment and intelligent growth.
I’ve seen the pressures organizations face and the mistakes that result when departmental functions drift apart.
What I’ve learned through the years of my career is that most companies and organizations don’t struggle because of bad ideas, lack of ambition, or intent.
Most organizations that struggle have a common problem: the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and by the time they realize it, millions of dollars have already been wasted, or, just as bad, left on the table.
That’s why I’m joining GoToMarket Partners in addition to my focus at Demand Revenue.
This isn’t a change of career direction for me; it’s the next logical step in what I’ve already been doing: coaching & mentoring CMOs and leaders, and supporting private equity portfolio companies as an Interim or Fractional CMO, helping to align their teams cross-functionally, and run the business as one cohesive unit.
Why GoToMarket Partners, and Why Now?
During my six years as a CMO executive advisor & coach at Forrester and SiriusDecisions, before starting Demand Revenue in early 2021, I worked with hundreds of B2B Marketing leaders. One thing I learned, as alluded to above, is that silos are the number one killer of most organizations’ growth.
I’ve seen these scenarios play out one way or another more often than I’d like to admit:
Product isn’t talking to sales, so new features are released without a single customer conversation behind them.
Sales isn’t aligned with marketing, so the funnel fills up with leads and names that will never buy, leaving reps wasting cycles on unqualified leads.
Marketing launches campaigns that look great in a slide deck but don’t map to what sales actually need in the field.
Customer success is often running its own playbook, stuck in firefighting mode to keep accounts that should never have been signed in the first place.
Finance is trying to make sense of forecasts that change weekly.
And the board? They’re frustrated because every function swears they’re hitting their KPIs, but the company as a whole is still missing its needed numbers.
I was drawn to GTM Partners because of my many-year friendship with Sangram Vajre, their CEO, and their commitment to breaking down the walls between sales, marketing, product, and customer success, as has always been my focus.
The very walls that keep companies from reaching their full revenue and profit potential, and what keeps the C-Suite and boards up at night.
I’ve seen it too many times: the misalignment doesn’t look fatal in the first quarter, but its cost compounds over time.
By the third or fourth quarter, the gap between organizational functions becomes a crater. Revenue misses pile up, customer churn creeps higher, and company-wide morale drops.
By this time, leadership realizes too late that the silos they ignored, or didn’t notice, are now the very thing holding the company back.
What stood out to me about GTM Partners is that they don’t just talk about the silo problem; they solve it with a robust ecosystem of models and frameworks that I now have access to.
They’ve built frameworks that force the tough conversations most leadership teams avoid.
I’ve recommended MOVE: The 4-Question Go-to-Market Framework, co-authored by Sangram Vajre and Bryan Brown, the two co-founders of GTM Partners, to others for years.
Not because “MOVE” (Stands for Market, Operations, Velocity, and Expansion) is just a catchy acronym; it gives executives a set of questions that cut through politics and ego. When paired with the GTM Operating System, it creates a shared language. Everyone must ultimately face the same truths, answer the same questions, and move in the same direction.
Curious where your organization stands? Discover your company’s go-to-market maturity and identify your path to sustained growth with this practical MOVE framework assessment:
Now I get to put those tools to work more deeply, helping to integrate them into how companies operate on a day-to-day basis in addition to all the models and frameworks I’ve already been using time and time again with my clients at Demand Revenue.
The Economics of Alignment
At SiriusDecisions/Forrester, I used to cite the Economics of Alignment study. We analyzed 400 B2B companies. The ones that became and stayed aligned grew 19% faster and were 15% more profitable. That’s the difference between ringing the bell at an exit with a successfully executed value creation plan and achieving an impressive MOIC (Multiple on invested capital) result vs. missing your numbers for the third straight quarter.
Alignment isn’t a slogan to merely give lip service to. It shouldn’t be a slide buried in a board deck. It’s the operating system of growth. Take this free, 10-minute assessment to see how your go-to-market maturity compares and what specific steps can accelerate your growth:
GTM Partners has taken that reality and built it into the 8-pillar GTM OS, a model executives can actually use to make decisions.
The 8 Pillars of the GTM Operating System
The GTM OS rests on eight interconnected pillars:
- Total Relevant Market
- Market Investment Map
- Brand and Demand
- Pipeline Velocity
- Customer Time to Value
- Customer Expansion
- Revenue Operations
- Leadership and Management
These aren’t theoretical pillars you stick on a whiteboard and never do anything with. They’re the levers that determine whether growth sticks or slips.
I’ve had to pull all of these “levers.”.
I hold a finance degree and have worked in finance, which has taught me how to earn a CFO’s trust and discuss marketing in terms of margin and cash flow.
I’ve carried a quota, which means I know the pressure of entering Q4 down 20 percent and wondering which deals will actually close.
I’ve been a general manager three times, which has given me the perspective that every function, from operations to product, has to interlock or the machine breaks down.
And I’ve been a CMO twelve times. That’s where you feel it most: when the pillars don’t hold, the CMO often becomes the scapegoat.
That’s why this partnership makes sense. The frameworks are comprehensive, and I can assist companies that hire me as a fractional or interim CMO, as well as the CMOs and marketing professionals I coach, in implementing them effectively.
What I Bring to the Table
Serving as CMO twelve times and coaching over 150 marketing leaders gives me a unique perspective. I know the mistakes because I’ve made them myself, and helped other marketing professionals overcome mistakes they were making.
I know the difference between a tactical marketing leader and a strategic executive, because I’ve lived both roles, and I’ve helped countless other marketing professionals ascend above being tactical to become indispensable to their companies.
Too many CMOs get stuck in reactive mode.
They’re running from one request to another, chasing fire drills, saying yes to whatever comes across their desk. And often don’t carve out time in their weekly calendar for strategy thinking, which is so important!
The calendar fills up, the to-do list gets longer, but the real work, helping the company move forward toward accomplishing its true objectives and being seen as an indispensable CMO by setting the agenda and leading the business strategically, never happens.
When that shift to strategic leadership happens, the perception of marketing changes. Suddenly, the CMO isn’t in constant budget-defense mode; they’re invited into conversations about enterprise value. They’re trusted to shape strategy, not just respond to it. That shift is why I love coaching marketing professionals and being brought on board as a fractional or interim CMO during leadership gaps.
Where I’ve Seen the Most Impact
I’ve worked in health tech, SaaS models, enterprise software, and professional services. However, the companies where alignment matters most are PE-backed firms with revenues between $50 million and $ 1 billion+.
During those stages, there’s no room for wasted motion. If you’re unclear on ICP, you’ll close deals with the wrong customers and spend the next year bleeding them out in churn.
If you underinvest in brand reputation, the pipeline will dry up one or two years from now, just when the board expects acceleration.
If sales and customer success don’t share a handoff model, expansion revenue gets left on the table.
This is where GTM Partners’ frameworks and my background align perfectly, because scaling at that stage isn’t about hustle; it’s about effective alignment.
Tackling the Big Challenges
The biggest challenges I see today show up everywhere:
Forecasts that change so often, the CFO stops believing them.
Sales and marketing are locked in a blame cycle over the quality of the leads.
Customer success deals with unnecessary churn because the ICP was never properly vetted and aligned across functions.
Boards obsessing over net-new logos while retention and customer-led growth quietly deteriorate.
And brand reputation investments, which are often underfunded, are the very thing that drives future pipeline, more sales opportunities when prospects are finally in buying mode, stronger pricing power, and higher win rates.
I’ve sat with CFOs who admit they don’t trust the revenue forecast but still have to present it to the board.
I’ve seen CMOs burn credibility by bringing in “lead volume” while sales say none of it is qualified.
I’ve seen companies double down on logo acquisitions only to realize the customers they’re winning can’t be retained or grown profitably.
These are the problems GTM Partners and I address head-on.
Fractional and Interim Leadership: The New Normal
The rise of fractional and interim CMOs has been fascinating to watch.
These roles aren’t meant to replace full-time leaders. They’re about accelerating them and giving companies the senior guidance they need, without the long-term overhead, while also mentoring the CMO already in the chair.
Large companies don’t hire me to sit in the seat forever. They hire me to fill leadership gaps, maintain momentum, strengthen their existing CMO, build credibility with the CFO, and establish operating disciplines and infrastructure that last.
GTM Partners provides a platform for individuals like me to deliver value at scale through its GTM ecosystem, which nicely complements the models and frameworks I already use with my clients at Demand Revenue.
Lessons That Still Matter
Back at Forrester and SiriusDecisions, one lesson never changed: alignment is never a one-and-done process. It takes constant discipline.
Service-level agreements between sales and marketing.
Shared KPIs with a common understanding of what good looks like.
Corporate goals that cascade down into day-to-day execution. Hard choices about which markets to chase and which ones to walk away from.
Those lessons weren’t academic. They were survival tactics. And they’ll be at the center of how I contribute to GTM Partners.
What Success Looks Like
For me, success isn’t about personal recognition. It’s about whether the companies and marketing leaders I work with end up stronger.
Ready to benchmark where you are today? This free 10-minute GTM assessment will show you exactly which areas need attention to unlock your next level of growth:
If a client can look back and say, “We grew faster, we grew more profitably, and our leaders became better executives,” then that’s success.
For CMOs specifically, it means breaking the three-to four-year cycle. Instead of being replaced or burned out, they evolve into strategic leaders the company relies on and highly values.
That ripple effect —stronger leaders, stronger companies, healthier growth—is the outcome I care most about.
Why I’m Still Motivated
After 12 CMO tours and years of advising, people sometimes ask why I don’t just step back. The answer is simple. I love the work.
When a CMO I’ve coached tells me they finally feel like a peer to the CEO and C-suite, that fires me up. When a company that’s been stuck finally finds alignment and watches its growth curve bend upward, I feel that win too.
That’s what keeps me motivated. GTM Partners provides me with more tools, frameworks, and a community to amplify my mission.
Final Word
Joining GoToMarket Partners isn’t about me. It’s about helping leadership teams break down silos, align on growth, and build companies that last.
That’s been my passion for years. Now I get to pursue it with people who share the same mission.
Ready to Break Down Your Silos?
If the challenges I’ve described sound familiar —misaligned teams, inconsistent forecasts, or growth that’s harder than it should be —you’re not alone.
The good news?
Alignment is measurable, and it’s fixable.
Start by understanding where you stand today. Take the GTM Framework Assessment to evaluate your company’s go-to-market maturity across all eight pillars and get a clear roadmap for what to tackle first.
You’ll join the ranks of over 1,200 companies that have taken this assessment and benefited directly from it over the past 3 years.
The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best ideas. They’re the ones where every function moves in the same direction.
Let’s identify your gaps and close them.
– Alan
