A market launch strategy is all about turning ideas into real, measurable impact. Leaders who excel focus on deeply understanding the market, identifying opportunities early, and empowering their teams to act with confidence. By combining clear messaging, smart timing, and adaptable strategies, they turn plans into tangible results that resonate with customers. When speaking of go-to-market strategy, we cannot miss out on the name Markus Marsch, Global Head of Go-To-Market Execution @SAP. When teams move together with purpose, businesses don’t just enter markets; they make a meaningful impact, driving growth, building loyalty, and creating value that lasts. He is the epitome of a seasoned professional in the go-to-market strategy arena — a leader whose thinking increasingly extends beyond the boardroom and into a more personal, public narrative he openly shares.
Dual Roles
His career has spanned global roles across SAP, from strategic operations and value experience to product learning and now global go-to-market execution, shaped by a series of pivotal experiences. It began long before SAP, in an environment few would associate with future global technology leadership. At Aliaxis, he mastered the fundamentals of operations, S&OP cycles, planning, and manufacturing complexity, gaining the grit that comes from real supply-chain work and an operational DNA that continues to guide his leadership decisions.
A key turning point came while implementing ERP systems in China, where he learned cultural humility, adaptability, and the importance of earning people’s belief in technology through empathy, communication, and persistence. Joining SAP marked another inflection, offering him the chance to build, scale, and modernize global organizations across learning, strategy, and go-to-market execution, while observing firsthand the approach of senior leadership. Here, he was empowered to challenge norms, accelerate shifts to cloud and AI, and redefine how employees and customers are equipped for the future.
Today, his most defining moment is unfolding: stepping away from the security of a global executive role to build his own SAP consulting business while preparing for his first professional MMA fight. Rather than keeping this transformation private, Markus is intentionally documenting the journey in real time — sharing the physical, mental, and professional realities of reinvention on Instagram under @marsch.mma. Though seemingly different, both pursuits are driven by the same philosophy: discipline, ownership, and the courage to bet on oneself — a testament to a career that continuously blends bold ambition with grounded experience.
Execution Mastery
As the Global Head of Go-To-Market Execution, he defines a modern, effective GTM framework for a global technology organization during an era of cloud transformation and AI-driven expectations as customer-backwards, data-first, and execution-obsessed. Cloud transformation eliminated the luxury of long sales cycles, heavy implementations, and post-go-live silence. Today, value must be realised continuously, measurably, and predictably.
AI further raised the bar with near-instant expectation cycles. His approach centers on three principles: radical simplicity to eliminate friction and unify teams; closed-loop value cycles that feed data back for improvement; and human-plus-AI orchestration, where AI scales precision and humans drive trust, creativity, and courage — the same balance of structure and adaptability that defines both his leadership philosophy and his training for the cage.
Skill Growth
Having previously led Product & Solution Learning worldwide, he approached the challenge of continuous learning, upskilling, and capability development for SAP’s vast global workforce with a clear focus: it wasn’t about teaching more, it was about teaching what mattered most, at the right moment, and ensuring learning stayed at the top of decision makers’ agendas.
He centered the approach on three pillars:
- Personalization at scale – Leveraging AI to create learning paths tailored to role, skill level, performance data, and project history, with learning embedded directly into the tools, platforms, and decision points employees use every day.
- Modular, bite-sized learning – Recognizing that in cloud environments, knowledge has a half-life measured in months, not years.
- Learning alongside peers – Emphasizing that learning in a dedicated environment with peers, guided by experts, remains the most valuable way to make learning stick and foster lasting communities.
Execution with Rigor
His early foundation at Aliaxis, working on SIOP cycles, ERP implementations, and supply-chain projects, profoundly shaped his leadership style in a technology-driven environment. It instilled two core principles that continue to guide him today:
- Respect for complexity – Operations teaches humility. He learned early that even the most elegant strategies can collapse without disciplined, meticulous execution.
• Bias for action – Handling physical products meant delays had real financial consequences. That urgency became embedded in his leadership DNA.
Even now, in cloud and AI-driven environments, he carries the same operational rigour: clear processes, measurable outcomes, and a firm belief that execution remains the ultimate measure of success — a standard he now applies publicly as well, holding himself accountable to progress he openly shares with a growing audience.
Strategic Versatility
From operations and supply chain to product learning, strategy, and GTM, his career has bridged multiple disciplines, and the leadership qualities that enabled his success across such diverse domains have remained consistent throughout. Four qualities, in particular, have carried him through every shift:
- Beginner’s Mindset – He never assumes he knows enough to stop learning.
• Pattern Recognition – He connects insights across worlds, from supply-chain planning to cloud GTM to AI-driven learning.
• Courage to Reinvent – Reinvention, for him, is no longer episodic but continuous. It’s the same force that drives him into the octagon and fuels his “From Boardroom to Octagon” philosophy — a transition he transparently chronicles on Instagram (@marsch.mma), exposing the discipline, doubt, and resilience behind the scenes.
• The Power of Getting Started – He believes one of the biggest risks in large-scale transformations is getting lost in slides, setups, and alignment calls. Starting early dramatically increases the likelihood of hitting the target.
Defining Milestone
Yet the milestone likely to define his legacy most is the one he is pursuing now: stepping away from the security of a global executive role to build his own business while preparing for a professional MMA fight. This phase reflects what he believes leadership truly demands: courage to enter uncertainty, discipline to rebuild from the ground up, ownership of the next chapter, and a refusal to become static.
It may appear unconventional, but reinvention rarely follows convention. In business, many speak about strength and delivery, yet reality often tells another story. In MMA, nothing can be concealed; performance must be precise, without excuses. By choosing to share this journey openly on @marsch.mma, Markus removes the last layer of abstraction — making reinvention visible, measurable, and real.
Reinventing Global Leadership
Above all, he intends to live in alignment with purpose. His aim is to build things that matter and become someone his future self would respect. For Markus, leadership has never been defined by job titles; it is defined by movement, growth, and courage. The next chapter is not an extension of his career. It is a reinvention he is willing to live — and show — in public.
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