How to build a developer-led GTM strategy in 2026

Developer marketers are expected to influence an audience that actively resists being “sold to.” The real challenge isn’t demand generation, it’s redesigning B2D GTM motions to align with how developers actually evaluate and adopt products.

Developers are among the most evolved buying personas in B2B. While much of the B2B world has only recently shifted toward product-led buying, developers have long relied on self-directed research, hands-on product experience, and a deep understanding of how tools work. They prefer to explore, test, and even build with a product well before any purchase decision enters the picture.

But if someone does not want to be sold to, does not mean there is nothing for the sales and marketing team to do about it. In fact, the Modern GTM process by Unusual Ventures and a number of thought leaders in the space have been prescribing a redesign of the GTM process for modern software buying behaviour.

Hence, it would be useful to discuss how the Modern GTM Process looks for a Developer Led Sales Organization. So before you proceed we highly recommend you to read Understanding Modern GTM and The Modern GTM User / Buyer Journey by Unusual VC; although to put it very briefly:

• Modern GTM is needed since buyers today don’t want to be sold to; at least till they have experienced the product themselves
• It prescribes creating steps and action items specifically for 2 personas - the User (someone who will try your product but will not have the budgets and authority to purchase it) and the Buyer (someone who will listen to and be heavily influenced by the User, might only partially try the product themselves, but will have the budgets and authority to purchase the product.
• Also, organizations need to have Hybrid GTM processes, a mix of Bottom’s up and Top Down; where the User will need content, education and a strong self serve motion driven by marketing and product teams (Bottom’s Up); while the Top Down sales team driven processes get activated once the prospect has experienced product on their own.

What does the modern GTM process look like for developer led sales?

The Modern GTM process for B2D companies differs from the traditional approach in many ways including:

The B2D buying journey involves two distinct but tightly connected personas: the Developer and the Buyer.

• Developers don’t want to be sold to. They prefer discovering and validating solutions on their own terms. What they do value is fast, high-quality support, especially direct help from engineers when they ask for it. While developers often have limited or no purchasing authority, they exert significant influence over the final buying decision.
• Buyers, typically CTOs, CXOs, VPs of Engineering, or VPs of Product, control budgets and are more open to sales or discovery conversations. However, they rarely buy without their team’s validation. In practice, most sales outreach to buyers eventually gets delegated back to developers for trials, evaluations, and POCs.

This makes the motion neither purely bottom-up nor top-down. It’s inherently hybrid.

• Developers need a bottom-up activation motion that is educational, product-led, and community-driven.
• Buyers, especially in larger deals, need top-down support through a commercial motion, often involving sales at the right stage.

This GTM model is also deeply collaborative. Success depends on tight coordination across teams rather than siloed execution. For example:

• DevRel teams often hold critical feedback from trials, POCs, and community interactions.
• Product teams need that input to continuously improve the developer experience and embed in-product triggers that guide developers toward support or paid usage.
• Growth teams must identify which signups and accounts show real intent and surface those signals to sales.
• Sales teams then focus effort on accounts already qualified by developer activity and intent.

This is fundamentally different from traditional GTM models, where teams operated in isolation. In B2D GTM, alignment across product, DevRel, growth, and sales isn’t optional. It’s the system.

Understanding the stages of modern GTM for developer-led sales

Stage 0: A technical need emerges inside the organization

Every developer tool or infrastructure product exists to solve a technical need within an organization. These needs usually surface when teams are dealing with complex problems, building sophisticated systems that require the right building blocks, or when engineering leaders want their teams to focus on high-leverage work while offloading routine or repetitive tasks.

Stage 1: Developers search for solutions

Once the need is clear, developers begin exploring possible solutions. They start with the problem, ask peers for recommendations, search the internet, read technical content, and engage in developer communities or forums.

This is often where developers first come across your product, whether through a trusted recommendation, a community discussion, or content that helps them understand the problem and possible approaches to solving it.

What matters most at this stage is the quality of technical content a team puts out. Developers are scanning for clarity, depth, and practical guidance, not marketing language. Clear documentation, examples, and problem-focused guides help a tool earn attention and trust long before a trial even begins. Teams that treat documentation and technical content as a core part of GTM, not an afterthought, tend to show up more consistently during this discovery phase.

This is also why many devtools work with a developer marketing agency like Hackmamba, who focuses on helping technical products explain themselves clearly to developers during early research and evaluation.

Stage 2: Developers start trying out solutions

At this stage, developers move from research to hands-on evaluation. They begin writing code, forking GitHub repositories, experimenting with open-source projects, or signing up for free trials. Your product becomes one of several tools they are actively testing and learning.

Success here depends not just on product-need fit, but also on how quickly developers can experience early value. A well-designed trial, clear documentation, and a smooth path to “hello world” or first success can significantly influence how high your tool ranks in their evaluation process.

Stage 3: Developers build, buyers start paying attention

At this point, your product starts gaining real traction within the developer group as a potential customer. More than one developer is actively using it. They are reading documentation, running code, signing up, and asking more detailed questions in support or community channels.

This is also when buyers begin to come into the picture. They may become aware of the problem, respond to early discovery conversations, or sit in on demos. In most cases, though, the evaluation still moves back to developers, who continue testing and comparing tools. This is often the right time for sales teams to get involved, using developer intent signals to understand context and engage in a helpful, non-intrusive way.

Stage 4: Developers validate the product, buyers justify the decision

Developers don’t just try tools before buying them. They build real workflows with them. At this stage, your product gets a clear signal of approval from developers, often through sustained use of a free, open-source, or freemium version. Usage increases, and developers spend more time across your product, docs, and ecosystem.

Buyer interest is usually highest here. Teams can either let developers move forward naturally through a product-led motion or support buyers in putting together a business case. This makes it a strong moment for sales to help with pricing, value, and ROI discussions, without slowing down developer momentum.

Stage 5: Buyers enter deeper sales and commercial conversations

This stage looks a lot like a traditional enterprise sales process. Because of that, many developer-focused companies assume this is where revenue is really made. In reality, this stage only works because of everything that happened earlier.

When you step back and look at the full journey, it becomes clear how developer experience, product-led adoption, intent signals, and cross-team coordination all come together to enable sales at this point.

Stage 6: Developers and buyers see value and share it

This is when purchase and implementation are complete, and the customer starts seeing real outcomes from the product. Both developers and buyers begin talking about their success internally and externally, turning into advocates within their teams and across their networks.

How to build a GTM strategy for developer led sales

Think account first, lead second

Traditional marketing tends to react to individual signals: set up nurture flows after a lead is captured, trigger discovery calls after a signup. But in developer-led motions, these signals often indicate the opposite. They reflect developers who want the freedom to explore on their own and only engage when they actively need help.

The more effective approach is to look beyond isolated leads and triangulate developer intent across activities. By connecting these signals, teams can identify which accounts show real momentum and where meaningful opportunities exist.

This is where account-based GTM becomes powerful. With context from developer behavior, GTM teams can approach the right persona within an account, at the right time, with the right level of involvement, without disrupting the developer’s evaluation process.

Understand who is a buyer and who is a user in your lead database

The two core personas in a developer-led motion, the Buyer and the User (Developer), have very different goals and expectations from your product. Because of this, the same messaging and outreach approach rarely works for both.

The first step is to clearly distinguish buyers from users across your marketing and sales systems. This helps teams tailor communication instead of relying on one-size-fits-all nurture flows. Some practical signals to look at include:

• Designations: Job titles and seniority can indicate budget ownership versus hands-on usage.
• Delegation patterns: If discovery conversations consistently lead to developers signing up or starting trials, it’s a strong signal of buyer-led delegation.
• Product and documentation engagement: Leads spending significant time in technical docs, repositories, or hands-on guides are usually developers.
• Depth and intensity of usage: Frequency of usage, feature depth, and experimentation often separate evaluators from decision-makers.

Once these personas are clearly identified, teams can design distinct messaging paths. Developers can be nurtured through education, documentation, and support, while buyers receive context around value, risk, and outcomes, without crossing signals or breaking trust.

Set up a developer database to nurture aspirational accounts

Once you maintain a dedicated developer database, you can segment and nurture developers very differently from buyers. Traditional GTM tactics like retargeting, email follow-ups, or discovery call requests may work for buyers. For developers, however, nurtures should focus on education, faster problem-solving, and timely access to support.

This shift changes everything: the messaging developers receive, the content they are guided through, and even who engages with them when they ask for help. Instead of pushing conversations, the goal is to remove friction and help developers reach value as quickly as possible.

A separate developer database also helps DevRel and support engineers prioritize developers from high-value or aspirational accounts and offer better SLAs. Importantly, developer activity signals in your CRM should not trigger sales outreach to developers. Instead, these signals should help teams prioritize the right accounts and engage buyers more thoughtfully, knowing that developers inside those accounts are already active with the product.

Analyze and strategize account entry based on developer activity

By this point, your product, content, and community have done their job in attracting developer interest. A dedicated developer database ensures developers are educated and supported, rather than overwhelmed with marketing. You are no longer just tracking individual leads, but identifying accounts where developer activity signals real buying momentum.

This visibility helps you understand which accounts genuinely have the potential to convert. It also creates a natural, low-friction path to enter those accounts. We’ve written in more detail about how developer-led motions can enable warm entry points to buyers, once the right signals are in place.

As reflected in Stages 3 and 4 of the journey, this is where responsibility can shift to sales and account marketing teams. With the right context and level of maturity, they can focus their effort on accounts that are truly ready. Some signals that indicate it’s the right time to engage include:

• Developers from the account exploring advanced features or going deeper into the product
• Multiple developers within the same account actively evaluating or using the product
• Repeated developer activity from the same account over shorter time periods
• Developers spending time in documentation or asking questions in community channels

In practice, these signals tend to live in different places, product usage, documentation, GitHub activity, and community interactions. The real challenge is stitching them together at an account level to understand when interest has moved beyond exploration and into serious evaluation.

This is where developer-first GTM platforms like Reo.Dev come into the picture. They focus on translating developer activity into clear account-level and developer-level intent, helping teams engage at the right moment instead of reacting to isolated leads.

Together, these signals suggest that the account has moved beyond casual exploration and is ready for more deliberate engagement.

Collaborate and close

One of the most visible shifts in modern GTM is the level of collaboration it demands. No single team can make developer-led sales work on its own. Without a product-led, bottom-up motion, developers are unlikely to trust or recommend a tool. Without DevRel, developers don’t get the support they need to reach quick wins. Marketing brings developers and buyers into the funnel, and sales carries that momentum through to closure.

Because of this, modern GTM has to operate as a cross-functional program rather than a set of isolated activities. It needs a clear program owner, shared goals, and visibility into the same data across teams, so everyone is aligned around the same north star.

Closing thoughts

For GTM leaders, understanding how these motions are evolving is critical. By breaking modern GTM down through the lens of developer-led sales, this framework aims to make it easier to navigate the complexity and execute with confidence.

If you’re thinking about how to actually identify these moments in practice, we’ve put together a short developer intent signals guide that indicate when an account is moving from exploration to evaluation.