Will AI take my B2B GTM job? Maybe

Besides generating Studio Ghibli inspired memes AI is already transforming B2B GTM (Go-To-Market) in several ways.

Below are a few considerations:

The Buyer’s Journey Has Changed

For years we built marketing enabled sales motions. Top of funnel content for awareness, middle of the funnel for consideration, and bottom of funnel to help close business. We meticulously built lead scoring models to engineer to perfect path from first touch to closed/won. We employed various tactics (content, events, digital marketing, social/influencer) to maximize effectiveness throughout the journey.

The model has changed.

Buyers have more power than ever before and are employing AI to conduct their vendor analysis on their own terms.

Impact On GTM Operations

Many firms have already begun using AI chatbots for traditional SDR/BDR responsibilities. Will SDRs/BDRs go away entirely? Not in my view. However, most of the contact validation and initial qualifications can now be done better with AI. Reps will need to continue to focus on the critical relationship building elements.

Could we soon see AI bots negotiating deals on both the buyer and seller side? Seems likely in the near future.

The traditional Demand generation model has changed as well. AI can bypass gated content and traditional nurture flows. Marketers will have to be more than content creators and waterfall masters. Buyers have the ability to show up in your workflow more educated and without direct interaction with the vendor. Maximizing demand generation for these new workflows will be crucial. 

SEO: Dead or Evolving?

Lots of folks are saying AI will kill SEO as we know it, but I don’t think Google will allow that to happen. However. commenters have mentioned how our content enabled SEO strategy for the last decade plus may have helped train LLMs to become more effective. 

We flooded the internet with business content. AI learned from it. Now, we have to rethink how we maintain visibility and drive inbound demand in an AI-assisted search landscape.

Customer Success

Many are pontificating that AI can replace this function entirely, particularly around onboarding, training, tier 1, and tier 2 support. AI assisted self-service modules are already popular for self-service learning. Additionally, predictive troubleshooting and troubleshooting will certainly become more prominent.

The importance of customer success to foster a community of happy users, advocates, and references will be more important than ever. Again, this relies on the importance of human-to-human connection. 

The Bottom Line:

The traditional GTM model is rapidly changing, as evident in the current labor market, I fear there will be many losers (along with prominent winners) as evident by trends in technical innovation over history.

Fundamentally, as long as we are selling to humans there will be a need for B2B marketing and sales professionals. For now.

And if Skynet starts hiring by 2030, I, for one, welcome our AI overlords.