GTM is Stuck in the Noughties and it’s wasting everyone’s time

Pipelines look full, CRM lead funnel are packed. Yet somehow sales revenue’s still flat lining, again. But what about the the weekly sales report? Just a pretty CRM dashboard with not a lot of action behind the data. The reality is many teams are still running a GTM playbook built for 2017, which buyers are avoiding and can see coming a mile off. Yester year's SDR GTM playbook's full of Cold outreach and endless hand-offs whilst sales and marketing arguing over attribution. It’s tired and month on month, flat sales prove, it’s not working.

Old-school GTM models are built around mass volume, outdated thinking, and internal processes, not the buyer.

Here’s how it usually plays out

• Marketing floods the funnel with MQLs to hit reporting goals

• SDRs hammer outreach across every digital channel, email, LinkedIn, SMS and WhatsApp, chasing activity, not intent

• AEs inherit whatever sticks and are expected to convert noise into revenue

It’s a system that rewards activity, not progress. It looks busy. It burns budget. It drains teams and worst of all? It exhausts your buyers. Digital fatigue is real. Buyers are being hit from all angles with templated messaging. By the time someone responds, they’ve seen seven versions of the same email and you’ve already lost credibility.

The real problem

It's a broken system that rewards volume, not outcomes. The real kicker is its not reducing revenue growth, its also slowing everyone down. Meanwhile, buyers are 70% through their journey before they even speak to someone at your company. If you're not adding value at that point, you're already too late.

What modern GTM looks like

Smart teams have stopped chasing leads and started building activity around intent, context, and ownership. Enter the 360 Business Development / Account Executive (BD/AE) a full-cycle seller who owns the entire deal journey from first touch to closed-won.

Why it works

• No hand offs meaning less drop-off

• Real value driven conversations, not just cadences

• Strategy over scripts

Buyers want value and relevance, not repetition. They want to feel understood, not hounded. Don't get us wrong we embrace polite persistence but there's a fine line and buyers are more switched on than ever.

Another example: We re-built the GTM for a sustainability tech client targeting EU buyers. Instead of pushing thousands of cold touches, we worked with them to build out ideal customer profiles and the buying committee insights, running a focused campaign in to just 300 accounts. They booked 16 highly qualified meetings in four weeks. No mass market outreach, just a highly personalised and targeted campaign run by an experienced full funnel consultant, nailing the GTM positioning and fit shows you don't need thousands you just need the right target accounts and buyers.

AI's role and where it fails

There's no denying, AI is everywhere, including generative AI, 'AI SDR's' and now Agentic AI tools that promise to run parts of your sales funnel processes for you.

Used well, they can help but here’s the catch, AI is only as good as the data you feed it. Given, over half of buyer data in most CRMs is missing or out of date, you’re not getting precision, you’re just automating chaos.

Generative AI can speed up tasks. AI SDR's can trigger outreach. Agentic AI can even take autonomous actions but if your strategy is still underpinned by cold lists and generic messaging, you’re not transforming your funnel, you’re just filling it with empty leads and colourful dashboards.

What works

• AI that reduces repetitive admin, not replaces human intelligence

• Tech that supports reps, freeing them up to spend more time actually selling

• Data hygiene and insight, not just automation for automation’s sake

Truth time

Reps today are spending just 21% of their time on actual selling (Ebsta, 2025). So what’s behind that seismic drop? A perfect storm of bloated tech stacks, disconnected tools and outdated outreach strategies. Reps are buried in admin, chasing poorly qualified leads, most of which were never a real fit in the first place. This isn't just about time lost, it’s about energy wasted on deals that were never going to close.

AI should be helping us get back to what matters, real conversations with buyers who actually care. But it won’t close the gap if your GTM is still focused on quantity-first tactics and your CRM is full of poorly profiled prospects and leads aka bloat.

AI can’t be held accountable for what it outputs if the inputs - your data, strategy and targeting are a mess. Garbage in, garbage out, still rings true and is more critical than ever.

AI is a great support tool, when used where it fits. Let it it speed your processes and teams up. But don’t lose sight of this, the most important part of your funnel is still human. What goes into it, especially at the start of the marketing and sales process, shapes your ability to hit revenue targets.

Too many companies are still operating with outdated GTM models, built for a world of mass outreach, not real buyer journeys. Lead gen teams are stuck in quantity mode. SDR's are chasing vanity metrics. Sales consultants are brought in to fix problems they didn’t create. Everyone’s fighting the same issue, the funnel is full but nothing’s converting.

What the market needs now? More teams thinking and executing like Growth Gorillas.

That means

• Building GTM strategies around your ideal customer profile (ICP), buying committees, not contact lists

• Giving SDRs the tools and data to focus on fit, not just follow-up

• Equipping lead gen teams to run smarter, not louder

• Helping sales consultants align strategy with execution, not just patch over what’s broken

• Focusing on quality over quantity. Fewer, better qualified meetings / opportunities that actually go somewhere

• Connecting strategy and execution with clean data, clear roles and full-funnel visibility

If these challenges sound familiar then you don’t need more automation. You don’t need more outreach. You need more GTM clarity, better targeting and current buyer journey GTM thinking.

Why GTM needs more gorillas

The shift we're coming back to

GTM tactics and story most teams know

A SaaS SME came to us with a classic case. On paper, the engine was running, outsourced marketing, lead gen partner with plenty of activity.

But beneath the surface

• 1,250 so-called 'leads' mostly scraped from LinkedIn passed off as pipeline

• 13 meetings booked, none qualified. 50% were not with the buying committee and 4 were a no shows.

• Most responses came from people nowhere near the buying process

The playbook? Cold lists, templated messaging, volume over value. SDRs trying to make up ground by hitting every channel they could.

The sales team weren’t the problem, they were doing what they could with what they had. But the GTM system and tactics wasn't built for how people actually buy.

We helped them rebuild

• Narrowed focus to 300 Target ICP accounts

• Mapped out buying committees properly

• Delivered 16 qualified demo's and meetings in four weeks

GTM reworked around how today’s buyers actually engage, built on ICP clarity, persona insights, intent data and good old-fashioned conversations along with account research. Every message customised, every touchpoint intentional. Less spray and pray. More relevance, right from the start.

The companies making real progress are

• Replacing volume targets with qualification depth

• Bringing strategy and execution into the same room

• Using AI to reduce admin, not replace intelligence

• Building GTM around how their buyers think, not how internal teams are structured

It’s not about reviving the old playbook. It’s about evolving it. Modern GTM isn’t a tech stack. It’s knowing your who, what, why, where, when and how. Miss any of that and you’re not selling, you’re advertising in the dark. Right now, that’s the real competitive edge.

This isn’t the future of sales, for many seasoned pros, it’s a return to what has always worked. Trusted principles that got lost in martech overload, activity tracking and mass-market outreach.

The difference now? We’ve got better tools, sophisticated insights and a clearer view of the buyer journey. The fundamentals haven’t changed, relevance, timing and human connection are still leading the charge.

#GTMStrategy #B2BSales #ModernSelling

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