The state of GTM 2025

AI won't fix your GTM

Happy new year, GTM friends.

I've been in ghost mode these past weeks, diving deep into conversations with business leaders across industries. My November revenue manifesto? I was wrong about several things.

Let me share what I've learned.

First, a reality check: LinkedIn has become saturated with what I call "GTM bros" - agencies and freelancers sharing AI-generated wisdom and cross-posting within their circles. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, it's creating fatigue for decision-makers in traditional companies who face tangible, real-world challenges.

After stepping back from the LinkedIn echo chamber and conducting extensive ground research, here's what's becoming clear about GTM and RevOps:

The State of GTM

• GTM and Revenue Operations are still misunderstood by most people.

• AI is democratizing GTM. AI-led GTM is the next big GTM wave. It's not about AI agents or tools, it's about systems: Agentic AI systems. Yet most businesses are throwing AI at broken processes, hoping it will magically solve their problems.

• 2025's defining metric will be revenue per FTE. This has started last year, but now businesses are reducing headcount budgets to invest in AI Agents or systems. Not in SaaS. SaaS is not dying but
  - SaaS gets funded out of the IT or tools budget. Those are frozen or getting consolidated.
  - As AI Agents systems complement or replace human labor, large companies are reducing people's spend to fund investments in AI Agents.

We are at the beginning of a large-scale reassignment of budget from people to AI Agents (AI-enablement system, can be in-house or outsourced).

Jensen Huang's recent statement at CES resonated deeply: "The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents... They will maintain, nurture, onboard, and improve digital agents and provision them to companies."

• Real-world businesses need real-world GTM solutions.The GTM frameworks we see today were designed for SaaS companies selling to other SaaS companies. But for most industries—retail, manufacturing, wholesale—those playbooks simply don’t work. These companies face entirely different challenges, and they need GTM strategies that fit their reality.

If you do not invest in GTM, you pay the price in missed revenue and higher CAC every month until you exit or run out of money.

The Silent Revenue Killer: Data Leakage

This is the most underestimated problem in GTM today.

Your company is already a data factory, but up to 80% of revenue-driving data is unstructured, uncaptured, and unusable for AI. While enterprises invest millions in AI systems optimized for clean digital data, the truth is most of your valuable data - context-rich, buyer-specific signals - is leaking out every single day.

Most companies are in “if it’s not broken, why fix it?” mode. But 2025 will be the year this oversight becomes too costly to ignore

Why GTM Feels Hard

GTM isn’t complex—but it’s hard. Why? Because everything is changing, fast.

• Your Product-Market Fit (PMF) is shifting. What worked yesterday might not work today.

• Most companies lack a direction. Instead, they try every approach, burn through budgets, and end up with nothing.

• GTM isn’t just about selling—it’s about learning. It’s about building systems that adapt to buyer behaviors and create opportunities systematically.

If you’re not clear on what GTM should be for your business, at least know what

Growth in the Age of Swipes and Scrolls

We’ve entered an era of continuous partial attention. Buyers no longer search; they swipe, scroll, and decide in moments. Your GTM needs to fit naturally into their lives—not force them into yours.

If you’re not an incumbent, your biggest opportunity lies with the 95% of passive buyers. These aren’t the ones actively searching—they’re the ones waiting to be engaged in the right way.

How do you win them over? By building trust systematically and monitoring the “vitals” of your GTM like you would your own health. Revenue signals—like a buyer’s heart rate—tell you everything you need to know, if you’re paying attention.

What’s In and What’s Out

OUT:

• Recycled SaaS playbooks that don’t work outside tech.

• Consultants who’ve never built anything real.

• AI tools that create more problems than they solve.

IN:

• GTM engineering: aligning data, systems, and processes for continuous improvement.

• Revenue architecture: designing a supply chain for revenue, not chaos.

• Buyer enablement: empowering your buyers, not forcing them into a journey that doesn’t fit.