There’s been plenty of talk about what’s broken in GTM. From new tools, shifting buyers, pressure to grow with less. But inside the teams that are still growing, the pattern is different.
While everyone’s reacting to the same volatility the best teams turn to few things they are willing to bet on and instead of chasing every shiny object or sticking to wait-and-see mode, turn to testing new practices into new playbooks and repeatable action.
Here’s what I've seen working:
Leadership signals are outperforming brand efforts
The teams gaining ground have leaders who step forward with clear thinking. Not through messaging frameworks or campaigns, but through direct communication. Buyers respond faster when they see conviction from the people driving the business.
Marketing attribution may not work well here at all, but when integrated channels work together the north star goal of driving new revenue overshadows metric that are getting challenged and frankly outdated.
AI works when systems are already in order
The returns are coming from teams that built structured workflows first lead scoring, pipeline reviews, call capture and then layered AI into those motions.
When the data’s clean and the steps are defined, automation works. When it’s not, it adds complexity and runs bad processes even faster into the walls.
Curated field events are outperforming big-budget conferences
The strongest results aren’t coming from sponsored booths and panels. They’re coming from smaller, curated gatherings built around active pipeline and shared urgency.
Time and again we see smaller event bring more productive conversations to attendees and with closer curated lists, people get to know not only close peers in their space but also can closer relate to how sponsors and event hosts play role in their organizations.
Large conferences will always play a role in the marketing strategy. But running 2010-ish playbooks of demandgen will no longer work today.
Simply put Tailored Experiences > Mass Meet Ups = Best ICPs and time investment no only for your organization but also for people attending
Enablement is moving inside RevOps
Instead of treating enablement like a content function, the best teams are embedding it into system design.
Real-time guidance, in-platform support, and clear deal workflows are replacing slide decks and trainings. The real power in using systems is in its adoption, and sales teams don’t need more material to do their work. When we see combination of real-time knowledge being injected across teams along with your existing enablement practices, the friction to learn and utilize new tools to help them in the field is removed.
Sales motion is being rebuilt around buyer behavior
The one difference today that (finally) starts to appear is the very idea on what prior sales tech systems were meant to do are emerging.
Top teams aren’t pushing sequences for sake of mass follow up email.
They are engaging their customers in a sequence-like sales process using automation and AI to remove mundane tasks and focus on personalization.
Above sounds like a promise we've been sold back when SEP solutions emerged as super tools for SDRs and Inside Sales teams to compete with our marketing teams on who can SPAM which customer base faster.
But today this is the reality. Mass outbound is now going into void and the only teams that are winning the race are the once that are following good sales process not attempting to touch base with 10,000 strangers at once.
With progressive AI capabilities one cane now spend more time in studying deal progression who shows up, who drops out, what gets stuck down to being able to forecast deal success to % point and adjusting motion to match. Orgs with strong RevOps strategy and integrated systems for sales teams dropped chasing touch count and work together on learning new buyer behavior and how they can support their pre/post sales teams to adapt their internal sales processes to those of their more demanding and more educated buyers
The teams making real progress aren’t waiting for stability because they know it’s not coming back. From market shifts, buyer behavior evolution, to tech changes especially fueled by AI, is changing faster than most teams can process.
They’re building systems that stay functional inside the pace of change whether it is buy leaning more into their brand, redefining executive alignment by amplifying the voice of their leaders, and showing up where their customers are in person or in virtual places while their competitions is still fighting which GPT prompt is best to remove the em dashes.
The playbooks of 2025 are being written today
The choice of whether you will be authoring them or just following someone else's directive is still out for many to capitalize on.