An open letter to CEOs and CFOs about GTM

Over the past 22 months, I have spoken to several hundred Fortune 2000 CEOs and CFOs about GTM for a book I am completing. Insights from these conversations, along with our shared experiences in 2023-24. and expected volatility in 2025-26, have led me to write this open letter to all of you.

At this point, it is clear to many that GTM is not the deterministic coin-operated machine that many founders and venture capitalists thought it would be nearly two decades ago. Instead, it’s a networked ecosystem of suppliers, customers, partners, and competitors, all operating from positions of self-interest in light of a range of market realities that create far more impact than anyone in B2B wanted to imagine. GTM is a series of bets, all as likely as any other part of life.

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

Critical facts for your 2025 GTM strategy

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

The fact that your GTM teams want to buy access to both in no way impugns your intelligence, creativity or insight. It’s just recognizing that none of us know everything and that it’s what we don’t see or hear that often misleads us.

2. An assessment of the actual performance of your GTM investments is mandatory

Your #1 priority must be to evaluate the effectiveness of your GTM investments in context. Consider factors such as time lag and external market influences beyond your control. Market efficiency and reality determine the effectiveness of GTM more than anything else. In marketing and sales, one acts as a non-linear multiplier of the other.

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

Dig deeper: GTM Forecast to 2025: Key Changes Redefining the Future of Go-to-Market Strategy

3. Efficiency starts with efficiency, not cost reduction

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 surest way to improve efficiency is to make things significantly more efficient, not by reducing them to the lowest common denominator. Doing so without any evidence—other than your GTM team’s failure to meet goals—puts shareholder value at risk.

4. AI introduces unprecedented transparency and accountability to business operations

Artificial intelligence brings a level of operational leverage that has received little attention, but will soon: unprecedented transparency and accountability. Opinions, claims, plans and frameworks will be quickly and thoroughly analyzed, with a judgment rendered.

While this extends beyond GTM, it will be particularly visible there, revealing the networked causes and effects that drive or hinder your business momentum. This is the power of genAI, analytical AI and causal AI working together. This is already a reality today, which will become even more widespread at the beginning of 2026.

5. Success in the era of artificial intelligence requires embracing iteration and networked thinking

In the era of artificial intelligence, our ability to repeat how we think, act and record results will be crucial. AI is inherently Socratic, polymathic, and networked — just like real life and the value your company wants to deliver. Teams that quickly learn to think this way will achieve success beyond expectations. But it also means that resistance to this reality cannot be indulged, either in ourselves or in others we employ.

AI is not a replacement for human capabilities and capacities, although many companies try to sell it that way because they know you’re obsessed with cutting costs. AI makes your best people exponentially better and your “big mid” teams significantly better. Some of the best research this is dealt with by the famous artificial intelligence expert Bill Schmarzo.

GTM Success Driven by Artificial Intelligence: Think, Manage and Drive the Score Differently

With the above in mind, the following programs are non-negotiable with your GTM approach if your teams want to adapt and thrive in the AI ​​era.

Think differently

Your teams need to learn the most effective and efficient ways to use different AI tools to think, work, and deliver results in ways that are relevant to your business. Investment failure yields very short-term savings followed by a very long-term performance penalty. The investment provides highly aligned “bionic” teams that create maximum efficiency at minimum cost.

Act differently

AI uncovers both the answers and the gaps in our understanding. GenAI is your supply chain of success, but causal AI is the refinery of insight and advantage. A linear and highly historical accounting perspective will not give you a basis for making good future choices. Zero-based budgeting exercises in GTM without a strong causal and network-centric foundation will be woefully inadequate in the midst of rapid and highly volatile change.

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

Keep score different

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

KPIs, like all data, are a reflection of the past. The past is not necessarily prologue. Without understanding in a time-lapse, networked context, they become disjointed metrics that don’t drive business results. Ultimately, you need a context-rich, low-latency understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

The goal is to approach program funding discussions on a risk-adjusted actuarial basis. Many colleagues expressed a desire to “cover” the success of GTM and protect themselves against its failure. With artificial intelligence, this is now easily achievable.

Bridging the gap between the C-suite and GTM

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

The good news is that artificial intelligence is the most powerful tool we’ve ever created to break down those misunderstandings and silos. Your success – and the success of your teams – will largely depend on your commitment to this task. Start by focusing on AI use cases that can significantly increase the efficiency of your business for customers. This will lead to earnings per share (EPS) growth driven by proven cost-effective, profitable expansion.

Like the 2025 challenge, AI will detect the difference between our intentions and our actual results. All the factors are there to solve the long-standing problems between CFO, CRO and CMO. What is important now is commitment to implementation.

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