Why Marketing Must Reclaim GTM Design in the Age of AI
N.Rich CEO Markus Ståhlberg unpacks the AI-powered GTM shift — and why marketing must lead system design to ensure long-term impact.
As AI-powered workflows become central to sales and RevOps, go-to-market (GTM) execution is increasingly dominated by high-volume, sales-led outreach. This change prioritizes short-term demand capture over long-term brand building and demand creation.
While AI enables scale and efficiency, it often sidelines marketing’s strategic role and compromises customer experience, especially in enterprise settings where automated outreach can do lasting damage.
Marketing’s core mandate — owning the customer journey, shaping positioning and building trust — is at risk. Without that oversight, companies will trade near-term wins for long-term growth, weakening brand equity and enterprise relationships that sales alone can’t sustain.
To unpack this change, I spoke with Markus Ståhlberg, CEO of N.Rich — a pragmatic and refreshingly clear voice in account-based GTM.
Why generic outreach fails in enterprise GTM
According to the 2024 LinkedIn-Edelman B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report:
71% of decision-makers say that poorly targeted sales outreach can damage their perception of a brand.
42% say they are less likely to consider a vendor after receiving irrelevant or overly aggressive outreach.
In enterprise sales, where target markets are narrower and buyers are more senior, generic automated outreach that assumes intent can backfire. It signals a lack of understanding, frustrates prospects and creates lasting friction. Even if a buyer enters the market later, the damage may already be done — removing the vendor from consideration entirely.
To read more of this article check it out on Martech.org