AI is Not a GTM Strategy

This week I sat down with none other than Richard Harris, founder of The Harris Consulting Group and one of the most decorated sales trainers in GTM, with clients ranging from Zoom and Salesforce to Google, and he spoke about navigating GTM in the age of AI.

He came in with conviction and left no room for debate. But the line that stuck with me was; ‘in sales, your job is to get people to fall in trust with you, not fall in love with you’.

And no prompt does that yet.

AI is not a GTM strategy, and in my opinion, it never will be. 

Now, AI can be used to enhance and accelerate your GTM strategy. And as we all know it can help you figure out your strategy. But simply saying AI is going to drive your go-to-market strategy is simply a fallacy. 

The pressure of GTM is real whether you are a start-up or F500. AI is changing everything we do at such an accelerated pace that the traditional 30/60/90 day plan is more like a 15/ 30/ 45 day plan. 

Let me break it down a bit more. 

3 Things AI Can Actually Do to Help Your GTM Strategy

Speed to ICP Definition aster Than You Can Alone

Whether you're a founder or working for a large company launching a new product or service, people get stuck trying to nail down who they are trying to sell. This is where AI can directly affect and improve your speed to ICP. can analyze the data from customer data, even early customer data, market conditions, and the competitive landscape to help you sharpen your focus. The key here is “sharpen” your focus. Which means you can move more quickly from one hypothesis to the next . You can pressure test it faster. And the sooner you figure out your ICP, the sooner you can build pipeline and revenue.

Reducing Brain Rot By Handling the Transactional Workflow Routines

I cannot tell you how many times in my career I spent hours building the spreadsheet that by the time it was done I was so fried I couldn’t even figure out how to interpret and strategize. Essentially, “brain rot.”

And yes, we have been saying this already and it’s always worth repeating. Especially for those leaders who love to stand in the back of the room with their arms folded saying “tools for automating workflow are too expensive”. 

Whether you are in the Founder-Led-Sales motion or in the enterprise sales motion for a F500 company, there is no need for anything to be manual, period. Humans are not AI, and the advantage of AI is to free up the mental capacity to focus on strategy, not crunch numbers. 

Educate Your Sales Team With Strategic AI

With the advancement of the sales stack in the last 18 months, more data, better data, pattern recognition, and market improvements or disruptions means the humans, your sales team, can learn and adapt faster. Everything from what’s working and not working in the spoken and written communications. Where are gaps in your sales cycle? What are the common roadblocks? Which part of your sales process is being overlooked and what to coach the team and individuals on specifically. 

All of this means you get a cleaner pipeline, a better forecast, and more closed deals.

What AI Cannot Do Yet

Earn the Right to Ask Questions

Earning the right to ask questions, knowing which ones to ask and when to ask them is the fundamental element of humanity in sales.  This is rooted in active listening, empathy, timing, and reading the room.  AI cannot yet do this B2B sales. In B2C, sure. And that’s because B2C is often only one decision maker, it’s  smaller deal, and generally transactional in nature. 

Will B2B get there? Yes, in time with facial recognition patterns and voice inflection analysis, as well as the deep data analysis, it could get there. We aren’t close to that yet. 

Build trust at the human-to-human level

I’ve always said that in sales, it’s our job to get people to fall in trust with us, not fall in love with us.  AI can help build this trust as more buyers do deeper research using AI to create their shortlist of vendors. There is still a moment where humans need to communicate with each other. AI cannot do this yet.  These buyers are not going to tolerate an SDR experience.  And frankly, they don’t care about our process and they have the power and knowledge to ignore it. 

Replace Founders in Founder-Led-Sales

Founder-led-sales will never stop. The credibility a founder brings to the table is unique and hard to replace. Especially in early stage organizations at the GTM level. No AI is going to be able to carry the weight of your experience, your vision, and your willingness to be accountable for outcomes.

The one exception might be a tech solution selling to a tech minded engineer mindset.  These customers will probably avoid humans for as long as possible, as they have always done. Still, in the larger sales cycles there will be a human to human element that cannot yet be replaced. 

So, yes, AI can do a lot of things to help us in sales and in a Go-To-Market motion, but remember, AI is not a GTM strategy and best practice. Use AI to move faster and replace the mundane. And if you don’t, you will become the mundane that is replaced. 

P.S. Want to learn exactly how to build AI into your GTM motion without losing the human edge?

I’m hosting a free training for founders and GTM leaders ready to use AI the right way.

By Richard Harris, Founder at The Harris Consulting Group

Want to learn from more Revenue Creators like Richard? Join the RevGenius community and be part of the movement rewriting the GTM playbook.

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