Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter by GTMnow – read by 50,000+ to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow shares insight around the go-to-market strategies responsible for explosive company growth. GTMnow highlights the strategies, along with the stories from the top 1% of GTM executives, VCs, and founders behind these strategies and companies.
AI is transforming how go-to-market teams operate. SDRs are prospecting faster. Marketers are shipping more content. CSMs have summaries of every customer call. It all feels like progress.
Is there a hidden cost? Every time we automate a task – prospecting, drafting, follow-up, analysis – we also outsource the skill-building that task enables. And over time, those muscles start to atrophy.
These “skill byproducts” are essential to long-term success. Leaders need to rethink how to balance technology adoption with the need to cultivate the human skills that drive high performance in sales. Let’s get into it.
“Back in the day, most jobs made us physically strong. Now, we have to hit the gym. The same is true for cognitive skills—we need to deliberately build them.”
— Peter Kazanjy, Co-founder of Atrium
AI isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity. Understanding which skills will still need reinforcing is simply the consideration.
The skill byproduct framework
Every task we perform builds an adjacent skill – a byproduct of doing it manually and repeatedly.
When these are automated too early, the reps never get the reps.
What leaders are doing about this
We asked leaders how they feel about this, and what (if anything) they’re doing to address it. Overall, the sentiment was optimistic, with a dash of concern.
This is change. Overall, the benefits astronomically outweigh the skill byproducts. That said, it’s important to address them.
Here are several ways we heard from leaders that they’re actively doing to reinforce certain skill development:
Manual before automation.
Operators reinforced that “if you’re blocked on automating something, do it manually.” Many SaaS teams now require new GTM hires to complete onboarding steps by hand (prospecting, call notes, follow-ups) to develop the muscle before layering in automation.
AI as a coach, not a crutch.
Leaders like Kevin “KD” Dorsey use AI to surface rep weaknesses, diagnose call issues, and build targeted training. For example, reps getting to practice pitch delivery and objection handling at scale (not to eliminate reps, but to sharpen them).
Codify “what good looks like.”
You can’t coach what isn’t defined. Companies like Gong and HubSpot use rubrics to define great discovery, follow-up, or segmentation. Then, AI scores or simulates those tasks against the benchmark, reinforcing human judgment.
Balance automation with creativity.
Kyle Coleman warns against full automation. In his words, it’s like “burning down an orchard for one harvest.” Reps use AI to surface insights, but own messaging, storytelling, and relationship-building.
Personalized AI systems.
Salesforce and HubSpot encourage reps to use AI-curated suggestions, but only as a first draft. Human sellers refine with context, empathy, and narrative.
Tighten quality standards.
Adam Schoenfeld calls this the anti-FOMO GTM stack: use AI to create value for a smaller group, not volume for everyone. Less spray-and-pray. More quality and resonance.
A playbook for rebuilding GTM muscle
1. “Skill gyms” by function
- Sales: Live call blitzes, objection sprints, AI call debriefs.
- Marketing: Positioning teardown workshops, edit GPT drafts.
- CS: Manual QBR write-ups, customer call recaps.
- Growth/RevOps: Manual ICP research, scoring logic simulations.
2. Onboarding with friction
- No AI for 30 days.
- Draft follow-ups, segment leads, and prep calls manually.
- Review human vs. AI side-by-side to train judgment.
3. Reverse enablement
- Senior reps rotate into manual work: cold calls, follow-ups, demos.
- Pair junior + senior for mutual coaching.
4. Use AI for feedback loops
- AI flags missed discovery questions or weak call moments.
- Rep role plays or rewrites with coaching overlay.
- Track progress across reps in scorecard dashboards.
One quote that stood out:
“It’s not eliminating human skill, it’s reallocating it. There are considerations and work to be done around any notable shift.”
Tag GTMnow so we can see your takeaways and help amplify them.
✅ Recommendations
This guide on AI SDR Agents by Qualified is a practical intro to how to generate pipeline with AI agents. It walks through how AI SDRs work, where they fit into your team, and what kind of results companies are seeing right now. You’ll learn things like how AI agents qualify leads in real time, how they hand off to human reps, and where they perform best (and where they don’t).
If you’re looking for ways to scale outreach or just want to understand how AI fits into modern sales, it’s a must-read.
You can read the guide here: https://www.qualified.com/ai-sdr-agents
👂 More for your eardrums
GTM 149: How Meta Scaled the EMEA Mid-Market Sales Team with Rick Kelley
Rick Kelley is the former Managing Director of Meta Ireland, where he spent over 15 years building and scaling sales and business operations. He launched Meta’s mid-market EMEA business from scratch, eventually growing it into a $900M+ operation. Rick later took that playbook global, helping scale Meta’s gaming and monetization business to over $11B.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”
🚀 Startup to watch
LuminX – announced their $5.5M Seed round. Pioneering the future of industrial operations by bringing advanced Vision Language Models (VLMs) to the edge — on affordable, mobile devices that can be deployed anywhere in an industrial environment. Their mission is to empower operations to see, understand, and optimize their workflows in real time, eliminating manual tasks and reducing costly errors.
Obvio – announced their $25M Series A round. Taking on one of the most urgent challenges in our communities: traffic safety. Reckless driving kills 40,000 people every year in the U.S. alone — and it seems like almost everyone has a “near-miss” story. Obvio is building a full-stack solution to fix this: smart hardware, computer vision, and a turnkey ticketing system that cities can deploy today. Early pilots show a 50% drop in unsafe driving events. That’s real impact.
👀 More for your eyeballs
Discover how GTMfund is flipping the script on startup growth through this interview. We’re doing so by using AI, operator networks, and go-to-market strategies to power the next wave of tech winners. GP Max Altschuler talks through sales, funding, and the future of VC.
Owner’s playbook for scaling $2M ARR to $40M. Kyle Norton, CRO, breaks down how they’ve successfully scaled selling to SMBs and all things sales leadership.
🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week
- Vice President, Sales & Partnerships at Vividly (Remote – US)
- Revenue Operations Manager at Vanta (Remote – US)
- Head of Customer Success at Stotle (London, UK)
- Principal Product Marketing Manager at CaptivateIQ (Remote – North America)
- Head of Content at Mutiny (New York)
See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
If you’re looking to scale your sales and marketing teams with top talent, we couldn’t recommend our partner Pursuit more. We work closely together to be able to provide the top go-to-market talent for companies on a non-retainer basis.
🗓️ GTM industry events
Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:
- GTMfund Dinner: June 11, 2025 (London, UK)
- GTM 25 Roadshow London (by ZoomInfo): June 19, 2025 (London, UK)
- Pavilion GTM Summit: September 23-25, 2025 (Washington, DC)
