AI Tools Are Rewriting GTM. The Craft Still Wins.
AI is squeezing the waste out of go-to-market. You can do more with less, but you still need the craft. As one investor put it at TechCrunch Disrupt, the real challenge is "threading the needle" between automation and domain expertise.
Here's what top operators are seeing: teams that pair AI with tight marketing fundamentals are moving faster, getting sharper signals, and personalizing at scale-without blowing up headcount.
What Experts Are Actually Saying
"You can do more with less than ever before," said Max Altschuler of GTMfund. But he cautioned that proven playbooks still matter: you need a working grasp of why campaigns and channels convert, not just a prompt library.
Alison Wagonfeld, VP of Marketing at Google Cloud, doubled down on the craft. You need AI fluency, sure, but also customer insight, research, and taste. Teams using AI well "move more quickly," publish more messages, and think more holistically about metrics.
Marc Manara, who leads startups at OpenAI, noted the shift from blunt volume to focused precision. AI enables deeper personalization and better "signal following." Lead-gen is moving from database filters to prompts that surface prospects with specific traits-and inbound is getting scored with far more accuracy.
The New GTM Mix: Craft + Precision
AI is not a substitute for marketing and sales fundamentals. It's an amplifier. If your ICP is fuzzy and your message is flat, AI just helps you do the wrong thing faster. If your positioning is sharp, AI multiplies it.
- Positioning and messaging: craft by humans, stress-test with AI.
- Prospecting: prompts that define "fit," not just firmographics.
- Inbound: qualify and score on intent, objections, and urgency signals from text, calls, and forms.
- Creative: fast variant testing to find angle-market fit, then scale what resonates.
How To Rebuild Your GTM This Quarter
- Refine ICP with real data: Feed transcripts, win/loss notes, and top deal emails into an LLM to extract patterns. Turn those into a living, ranked ICP with why-now triggers.
- Personalization at scale: Generate first-touch emails that reference prospect-specific events (tech stack, recent hiring, product launches) and tie them to your value prop in one sentence.
- Intent scoring 2.0: Score inbound using content topic, recency, job seniority, and language sentiment-then route to the right sequence or rep automatically.
- Content velocity: Turn one core asset into channel-specific cuts (email, LinkedIn, short video, sales one-pager). Keep the angle consistent; test hooks, not the story.
- Meeting intelligence: Auto-summarize calls into pain, buying stage, competitors, and next steps. Push a one-paragraph brief to the CRM and Slack within minutes.
- Prompt SOPs: Build prompt templates for core tasks-lead research, discovery prep, objection handling, ad iteration, and experiment design. Store them where the team works.
Team Design Has Shifted
Hiring used to favor narrow specialists. Now, curiosity and systems thinking are at a premium. Wagonfeld called curiosity "almost the top thing to hire for."
- Profile: T-shaped marketers and sellers who can think in experiments, write clearly, and use AI as leverage.
- Advisors: Keep domain experts close. Proven playbooks still apply; AI just changes the speed and surface area.
- Enablement: Short, hands-on workshops beat long docs. Show the workflow, not the tool.
Metrics That Matter Now
- Message-market fit velocity: Time from idea to validated signal (reply rate, watch rate, demo acceptance).
- Precision over volume: Meetings from high-fit accounts per week, not total emails sent.
- Pipeline quality: Stage-to-stage conversion and average sales cycle by segment, not just top-line MQLs.
- Creative hit rate: Percent of variants that outperform control within 7 days.
Prompts To Put In Play
- ICP extractor: "From these win summaries, list the top 5 buying triggers, common pains in their words, and the job titles who pushed the deal forward."
- Prospect fit: "Find SaaS companies 50-250 employees using [tool], hiring 2+ roles in [function], with recent press about [topic]. Return decision-makers and a 1-sentence reason they're likely in-market."
- First-touch email: "Write 80-120 words: problem → proof → payoff → low-friction CTA, using this prospect context and our value prop."
- Call summary: "Summarize discovery in bullets: pain, impact, buying committee, timeline, risks, agreed next step. Flag red flags."
Guardrails So You Don't Create Noise
- Quality bar: Final edits by a human. AI drafts, humans approve.
- Data care: Don't feed sensitive customer data into tools without proper controls.
- Brand voice: Lock a short style guide the AI can reference. Consistency beats clever.
- Experiment size: Ship small tests; use leading indicators to decide what to scale.
Bottom Line
AI gives GTM teams speed and precision. The winners pair that with clear positioning, tight creative, and operators who ask better questions. Less spray-and-pray. More signal, faster.
Level Up Your Team
If you're building AI fluency for marketers and sellers, this program is a solid place to start: AI Certification for Marketing Specialists.
For context on the onstage insights referenced above, see coverage from TechCrunch Disrupt.
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