The Future of GTM Orgs

Read Time = 6 minutes

Over the course of the last 2 years all we have heard about is AI.

Recently this holds more true than ever. OpenAI & Anthropic are now releasing better versions of theirselves quicker & quicker. ChatGPT basically built the next version of itself… with very little human intervention.

Technology is exponential, we know this. AI has taken it to a whole new level of how quickly the line has shot up & right. You would be either naive or ignorant to think that artificial intelligence & LLMs aren’t going to impact you work, what you do, and how well you do it.

AI has already made a pretty large shift on the world we live & how we do business… but we are just at the beginning.

So how does this impact sales organizations & true outbound? What does the role of an SDR look like moving forward? There are so many questions to be asked… and only time will be able to tell. But from what I’ve seen so far, here is how I see GTM functions shifting completely before the end of the year.

There will be the death of an activity based SDR. Requiring an SDR to write 250 emails a week doesn’t make any sense when a GTM Engineer can create an outbound system that sends 2,500+ emails in a week (more on this later).

I am a massive proponent of having SDRs own more of the sales cycle. How do you make this shift? Instead of having them create 50 stage 1 meetings (AE joins the call) in a quarter, have their quota be 20 stage 2 meetings in a quarter. This incentives them to book high intent meetings, with decision makers, or meetings that have a real purpose.

This then means there is a higher quality of standards to pass off an opp or meeting to an AE. The SDR has to run more discovery, maybe they do that on the initial cold call, over email, or they run the first discovery call themselves. AEs benefit from this by having only high quality opps come their way. Disqualification skills will also become equally important for SDRs too.

As AI continues to improve, it can write emails, personalize at scale, & help reps research their accounts much quicker. The human aspect of outreach then becomes: thinking strategically, spot nuances, identifying buying signals, & controlling the narrative + hyper specific outreach.

Territories are going to expand & shrink at the exact same time. What I mean by that is there will be fewer reps, because they are going to be more efficient (outlined above)… which less reps = bigger territory. However, territories are to shrink or compress in the sense that a lot of accounts are going to be eliminated out by our GTM Engineering setups. AI will be targeting & eliminating accounts before a rep even touches them personally.

Reps moving forward with their territories will: automate research, monitor buying signals, & trigger outreach based off of intent data. By this setup, one rep can handle 2-3x the amount of accounts as before, cover wider territories, and have more vertical coverage.

Reps will prioritize inbound intent signals, engagement data, website activity, & AI-prioritized lists. Think signal interpreter. I’m also fully aware that today that is mostly the job, but imagine this enhanced & only increased. This also goes back to the importance of the SDR role & why they will be have to own more of the cycle.

With AI making everyone more efficient, the average rep then improves. Which means that differentiation gets harder, messaging must be sharper, conversation must be better. You can no longer be a mediocre rep.

The top 20% will thrive even more.
The middle 50% will have to adapt asap.
The bottom 30% will be automated / forced out.

Just as SDRs are currently paired to AEs for outreach, I think that AEs will have their own GTMEs too. At my org currently this is partly the job of RevOps. Build outbound systems to find intent signals and then AEs will filter it to their book.

This is a role that I think is going to have a growing headcount. GTMEs are going to be building custom outbound workflows per territory. They will be the ones that can create automation layers that connect account research all in one place & do it automatically. They will build data enrichment pipelines & integrate CRMs & tools to create smarter dashboards.

You might of been thinking earlier about well AI can’t hyper-personalize massive outreach. And you are mostly correct (for now). Sales & RevOps just sending out massive amounts of AI slop emails will be no longer. We’ve all already seen the negative impact of AI outreach: inboxes are more flooded, which means less prospects are replying. GTMEs will be able to build systems from past opportunities, meetings, current news, & other buying signals specifically to your book. This is where the personalization now comes into play. Instead of 1 RevOps employee per 20 AEs it will look more like 1 GTME per 3 AEs.

The future of GTM orgs won’t be defined by more activity, it will be defined by more ownership. Fewer reps, higher standards, deeper discovery, and tighter qualification. AI will handle the scale, the automation, & busy work.

The human reps from SDRs to AEs will need to handle the output of the systems. From nuance & narrative control. The teams that win won’t be the ones who do the most outreach - they’ll be the ones who design the smartest systems.

Until next week.

– Rook ♜

ps. I respond to all messages