An open letter to CEOs and CFOs about GTM

Over the past 22 months, I’ve spoken with several hundred Fortune 2000 CEOs and CFOs about GTM for a book I’m finishing. The insights from these conversations, along with our collective experiences in 2023-24 and the anticipated volatility of 2025-26, led me to write this open letter to all of you.

At this point, it’s clear to many that GTM is not the deterministic, coin-operated machine that many founders and VCs thought it would be almost two decades ago. Instead, it is a networked ecosystem of vendors, customers, partners and competitors, all operating from positions of self-interest in light of an array of marketplace realities that generate far more impact than anyone in B2B has wanted to contemplate. GTM is a series of bets, all inherently as probabilistic as any part of life.

As we move into 2025, it will be important to wrap our collective heads around facts that some may not like but that no one can dispute.

Critical facts for your 2025 GTM strategy

1. Market research and causal analytics are what’s missing in B2B

The fact that your GTM teams want to buy access to both is in no way impugning your intelligence, creativity or insight. It is merely recognizing that none of us knows it all and that what we don’t see or hear is the thing that often does us in.

2. Evaluating the true impact of your GTM investments is a must

Your No. 1 priority must be assessing the effectiveness of your GTM investments in context. Consider factors like time lag and external marketplace influences beyond your control. Effectiveness and marketplace realities determine GTM efficiency more than anything else. In marketing and sales, one acts as a nonlinear multiplier of the other. 

In a typical mid-market company, effective marketing makes sales approximately eight times more effective and five times more efficient. Cutting marketing to add more sales reps strips your existing sales team of valuable leverage.

Dig deeper: 2025 GTM forecast: Key shifts redefining the future of go-to-market strategy

3. Efficiency starts with effectiveness, not cost cutting

Speaking of efficiency, I encourage you to say what you really mean: cost cutting functions that are perceived as not adding much or multiplying anything. The most reliable way to improve efficiency is by making things substantially more effective, not by reducing them to their lowest common denominator. Doing so without any evidence — other than your GTM team’s failure to meet targets — puts shareholder value at risk.

4. AI drives unprecedented transparency and accountability into business operations

AI is bringing a level of operational leverage that has received little attention but soon will: unprecedented transparency and accountability. Opinions, assertions, plans and frameworks will be analyzed quickly and thoroughly, with a verdict delivered. 

While this extends beyond GTM, it will be particularly visible there, revealing the networked causes and effects driving or hindering your business momentum. This is the power of genAI, analytical AI and causal AI working together. It’s already a reality today that will become even more pervasive by early 2026.

5. Success in the AI era requires embracing iteration and networked thinking

In the AI era, our ability to iterate how we think, operate and keep score will be crucial. AI is inherently Socratic, polymathic and networked — just like real life and the value your company aims to deliver. Teams that quickly learn to think in this way will achieve success beyond expectations. But this also means that resistance to this reality cannot be indulged, whether in ourselves or in others that we employ.

AI is not a replacement for human capability and capacity, though many companies seek to sell it that way because they know you are obsessed with cost-cutting. AI makes your very best people exponentially better and your “big middle” teams significantly better. Some of the best research into this is being done by the well-known AI expert Bill Schmarzo.

AI-driven GTM success: Think, operate and keep score differently

Given the above, the following programs are non-negotiable to your GTM approach if your teams are to adapt and thrive in the AI era.

Think differently

Your teams need to learn the most effective and efficient ways to leverage different AI tools to think, operate and keep score in ways that are relevant to your business. Failure to invest delivers very short-term savings followed by a very extended performance penalty. Investment delivers highly aligned “bionic” teams that generate maximum effectiveness at minimum cost.

Operate differently

AI reveals both answers and gaps in our understanding. GenAI is your supply chain of success, but causal AI is the refinery of insights and advantage. The linear and highly historical accounting perspective will not give you the basis for making sound future choices. Zero-based budgeting exercises in GTM without a strong causal- and network-focused basis will be utterly insufficient amidst rapid and highly volatile change.

Dig deeper: Why causal AI is the answer for smarter marketing

Keep score differently

With AI, contextual knowledge — what CHROs call “T-shaped talent” — is essential. This highlights the gap in business acumen within B2B GTM, which must be addressed, and calls for a rethinking of role-based KPIs.

KPIs, like any data, are reflections of the past. The past is not necessarily a prologue. Without understanding them in a time-lagged, networked context, they become disconnected indicators that don’t drive business outcomes. Ultimately, you need a context-rich, low-latency understanding of what’s working and what’s not.

The goal is to approach program funding discussions on a risk-adjusted, actuarial basis. Many peers have expressed a desire to “underwrite” GTM success and hedge against its failure. With AI, this is now easily achievable.

Bridging the C-suite and GTM division gap

One key takeaway from CEO and CFO conversations about GTM is that the dysfunctions between the C-suite and GTM teams are co-owned, stemming from misunderstandings and mutual ignorance. As a CEO and one of the first bigco CMOs to leverage the marketing multiplier with causal analytics, I recognize these tensions well.

The good news is that AI is the most powerful tool we’ve ever created to break through these misunderstandings and silos. Your success — and that of your teams — will depend heavily on your commitment to this task. Start by focusing on AI use cases that can significantly increase your business’s effectiveness for customers. Doing so will lead to earnings per share (EPS) growth driven by provably cost-effective, profitable expansion.

Like the challenges of 2025, AI will reveal the difference between our intentions and our actual results. All the factors are in place to resolve the longstanding issues between the CFO, CRO and CMO. What matters now is the commitment to follow through.

Dig deeper: It’s time for B2B marketing to understand its GTM role