Takeaways from Pavilion’s GTM2023 Conference

We are capping off a week in Nashville of go-to-market executive learnings, live music, and hot chicken. 

Some of the team have been at Pavilion’s GTM2023 conference, a B2B SaaS conference for go-to-market executives. 

Tons of great information, which we’re distilling for you – let’s get into it.


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GTM is evolving

When asked who is rethinking their go-to-market strategy, around 60% of the room had a hand raised in the air. 

There’s a necessity behind re-strategizing go-to-market: 54% of GTM leaders report missing monthly revenue targets and 41% reported missing demand generation targets [source: Pavilion Pulse, Average in Q2 2023]. 

Go-to-market motions are shifting. 

One example of a go-to-market motion that is growing in adoption is ecosystem-led growth. This motion is focused on partner ecosystems as the primary way to attract, convert, and grow customer relationships. 

Why? Efficiency

According to a State of the Industry Report by Crossbeam: 

  • ELG deals are 53% more likely to close. 

  • Deals close 46% faster using ELG playbooks. 

  • ELG-sourced customers are 58% less likely to churn. 

Alex Poulos, CMO of Crossbeam, shared that the marketing play for this motion is to create Ecosystem-Qualified Leads (EQLs) – pull EQLs/EQAs based on your unique second-party ecosystem data that combine intent, relationship, and behavioral signals. How to do it:

  • Map your prospects to your partners. 

  • Create rich, highly contextualized lead and account lists for your ABM efforts. 

  • Personalize your ABM campaigns with specifically relatable messaging and very targeted and warm call-to-actions. 

The way that go-to-market motions are being executed is also evolving. 

For example, organizations are looking at AI for transformation.

With the rapidly evolving AI space, Ryan Longfield, Chief Innovation Officer at Gong, noted that organizational agility is what will enable companies to flourish. Organizational agility is the ability for you to move your organization around something big that has changed in magnitude. 

AI is being integrated across the go-to-market spectrum. 

According to a McKinsey report, one third of organizations are using AI in one or more functions already. 

When thinking about implementing AI, Ryan Longfield made an important differentiation between automation and augmentation and their impact: 

  • Automation – replacing the human decision making process – is challenging and less effective right now. 

  • Augmentation – helping humans do something with less time – is the wildly interesting space.

He has seen tremendous advances for augmentation with AI as effective across reducing sales reps’ time spent manually putting information into the CRM and reducing the amount of time spent preparing for meetings.

Latane Conant, CRO at 6sense, shared how she is integrating generative AI to focus on getting more results with the same, enabling her team to scale 50% without hiring. 

She has implemented the use of AI from creating personalized ads based on the tech stack of the prospective customer to rewriting 100 blogs in 100 hours using Writer

Regardless of motions and way of executing those motions, one reigning principle is highly emphasized: There needs to be more alignment than ever before across go-to-market teams, leadership and the board. 

Kiva Kolstein, President and CRO of AlphaSense advises: “Overshare all the time with the executive leadership team and the board – they are your team members.” 


👀 More for your eyeballs

Mutiny assembled a killer group of marketing leaders and practitioners who will share real AI workflows to help you 10x your ability.

Kickoff starts on October 24th, followed by daily episodes all November. With speakers from OpenAI, Writer, Autodesk, Snowflake, Hubspot, and more.

Register before October 13th to increase your chance to win the $10K grand prize.

This is the AI event you can’t afford to miss👇


👂 More for your eardrums:

Special Community Mashup episode this week with all of tech’s most impressive community leaders. Pavilion‘s SVP of Marketing, Kathleen Booth, The founder of Salesforce‘s Trailblazer’s Community, Erica Kuhl, and The Former Director of Community for Salesforce’s Trailblazer Community/Former Head of Global Community at AtlassianHolly Firestone. Not one to miss!🔥


🚀 Start-ups to watch: 

Revefi recently raised their Seed funding & launched their AI-powered enterprise data platform👀 They continue to innovate and accelerate💥


🔥Hottest GTM job of the week:

Field Marketing and Events Manager at Catalyst, more details here.

UX Designer at Document Crunch, more details here.

See more top GTM jobs here


For those who were at GTM2023, share your biggest learnings / takeaways with us – would love to hear them.

For now, we are headed over to NYC.

Have a great weekend all!

Barker ✌️

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Before helping found GTMfund, Scott spent 4 years at Outreach as Director of Strategic Engagement. He was in charge of aligning key relationships with VCs, BoDs, ecosystem partners and community members to drive revenue and strategic initiatives across Outreach. Scott initially ran revenue/partnerships for Sales Hacker (which was acquired by Outreach in 2018). Prior to Sales Hacker, he led and built outbound Business Development teams at Payfirma and MediaValet. Scott also advises for a number of high growth start-ups and is the host/author of The GTM Podcast and The GTM Newsletter. At GTMfund, Scott leads all fundraising efforts and runs the media arm of the firm. He’s also responsible for assessing investments, team management, LP/community relationships and GTM support for founders.

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