Over the past 22 months, I talked about GTM with several hundred CEOs and financial directors of fortune 2000 for a book that I am finishing. The lessons of these conversations, as well as our collective experiences in 2023-2024 and the anticipated volatility of 2025-2026, led me to write this open letter to you.
At this stage, it is clear for many that GTM is not the deterministic machine with parts that many founders and venture capital companies thought that it would be almost two decades ago. Rather, it is a network ecosystem of suppliers, customers, partners and competitors, all operating from positions interested in the light of a range of market realities that generate much more impact than anyone in the B2B would not have wanted to consider it. GTM is a series of Paris, all intrinsically as probabilistic as any part of life.
As 2025 approaches, it will be important to collectively understand facts that may not please some, but that no one can contest.
Critical facts for your GTM 2025 strategy
1. Market studies and causal analysis are what is missing in the B2B
The fact that your GTM teams want to buy access to the two in no case calls into question your intelligence, your creativity or your insight. It is simply a question of recognizing that none of us knows everything and that what we do not see or hear is what often disturbs us.
2. Evaluating the real impact of your GTM investments is essential
Your priority 1 must be to assess the effectiveness of your GTM investments in context. Take into account factors such as temporal lag and external influences of the market independent of your will. The efficiency and the realities of the market determine the efficiency of GTM more than anything else. In marketing and sales, one acts as a non -linear multiplier of the other.
In a medium -sized business, effective marketing makes sales about eight times more efficient and five times more efficient. Reduce marketing to add more salespeople deprives your existing sales team with a precious lever.
Dig more deeply: GTM 2025 forecasts: key changes redefining the future of the marketing strategy
3. Efficiency begins with efficiency, not with the reduction of costs
Speaking of efficiency, I encourage you to say what you really want to say: cost reduction functions that are perceived as not adding much or multiplying nothing. The most reliable way to improve efficiency is to make things significantly more effective, not to reduce them to their smallest common denominator. Do it without any evidence – other than the inability of your GTM team to achieve objectives – endangers the shareholder value.
4. The AI promotes unprecedented transparency and responsibility in commercial operations
The AI provides an operational lever level which has received little attention but which will soon be: unprecedented transparency and responsibility. Opinions, affirmations, plans and executives will be analyzed quickly and carefully, and a verdict will be returned.
Although this extends beyond GTM, this will be particularly visible, revealing the causes and network effects that stimulate or hamper the dynamics of your business. It is the power of the Genai, the analytical AI and the causal AI that work together. It is already a reality today that will become even more widespread by early 2026.
5. Success in the AI era requires adopting iteration and network thinking
In the AI era, our ability to repeat our way of thinking, working and scoring points will be crucial. The AI is intrinsically Socratic, Polymatic and Network, just like the real life and the value that your business aims to offer. The teams that quickly learn to think in this way will be successful beyond their expectations. But that also means that resistance to this reality cannot be tolerated, neither with ourselves, nor among others that we use.
The AI does not replace human capacities, even if many companies seek to sell it in this way because they know that you are obsessed with cost reduction. The AI makes your best employees exponentially better and your “big middle” teams considerably better. Some of the best research This is what the famous expert in AI Bill Schmarzo does.
GTM success controlled by AI: think, operate and keep scores differently
Given the above, the following programs are not negotiable in your GTM approach if your teams want to adapt and prosper in the AI era.
Think differently
Your teams must learn the most effective and efficient means of using different AI tools to think, operate and keep the scores in a way suitable for your business. Not investing generates very short -term savings, followed by a very important performance penalty. The investment makes it possible to create highly aligned “bionic” teams which generate maximum efficiency at a minimum cost.
Operate differently
AI reveals both answers and gaps in our understanding. Genai is your success supply chain, but Causal AI is the refinement of information and benefits. The linear and highly historical accounting perspective will not give you the necessary basis to make judicious future choices. Zero base budgeting exercises in the GTM without a solid base focused on causes and networks will be completely insufficient in a context of rapid and very volatile change.
Dig more deeply: Why the Causal AI is the answer for smarter marketing
Keep the scoring differently
With AI, contextual knowledge – what the chro calls “Talent in the shape of T” – is essential. This highlights the lack of business sense within the B2B GTM, which must be filled, and calls to rethink the KPIs based on roles.
KPIs, like any data, are a reflection of the past. The past is not necessarily a prologue. If we do not understand them in a network and offbeat context, they become disconnected indicators which do not determine the commercial results. In the end, you need a contextual and low latency understanding of what works and what does not work.
The objective is to discuss discussions on the financing of programs on an actuarial basis adjusted according to the risk. Many peers have expressed the desire to “guarantee” the success of the GTM and to guard against its failure. With AI, this is now easily achievable.
Fill the gap between the C-Suite and GTM divisions
One of the key points to retain conversations of CEOs and financial directors on GTM is that the dysfunctions between the C-Suite and GTM teams are shared and come from misunderstandings and mutual ignorance. As CEO and one of the first marketing directors for large companies to take advantage of the marketing multiplier thanks to causal analysis, I recognize these tensions.
The good news is that AI is the most powerful tool that we have ever created to break these misunderstandings and silos. Your success – and that of your teams – will strongly depend on your commitment to this task. Start by focusing on AI use cases which can considerably increase your business efficiency for customers. This will lead to growth in action by action (BPA) driven by a profitable and profitable expansion.
Like the 2025 challenges, AI will reveal the difference between our intentions and our real results. All the factors are gathered to solve long -standing problems between the CFO, the CRO and the CMO. What matters now is the commitment to be followed up.
Dig more deeply: It’s time for B2B marketing to understand its GTM role
The authors contributors are invited to create content for Martech and are chosen for their expertise and their contribution to the Martech community. Our contributors work under the supervision of drafting And contributions are verified for their quality and relevance for our readers. The opinions they express are theirs.
