The term covers two grains. At company level, people speak of a “product-led motion” (users find and adopt the product themselves), a “sales-led motion” (a sales team finds and closes buyers), a “partner-led motion” and so on. At a finer grain, which is the one that matters when you are still finding what sells, a motion is a single hypothesis: this offer, to this ideal customer profile, through these channels.
Two motions can share the offer and differ in audience, or share the audience and differ in how the deal is found and closed. What makes them separate motions is that their funnels behave differently and should be measured separately.
A motion is usually described by:
- the offer, as the buyer would name it;
- the audience: the company profile and the role that feels the problem;
- the channels used to reach them and the first meeting you aim for;
- the sales process: stages, who is involved, how long it takes;
- the success signal that tells you the motion works, and the one that tells you to stop.
See the guide Go-to-market motions: how to test several ways of selling at once for how to run more than one in parallel.