Aligning GTM teams and the C-suite in the AI era

Throughout my career, one lesson has been crystal clear: growth doesn’t happen by accident. The “magic” happens when an organization builds a sound growth strategy, and then aligns every single GTM function around it.

Why alignment matters more than ever

We’re operating in an environment where technology (especially AI) is evolving daily. B2B methodologies are shifting just as quickly. Buyer journeys are changing. The barrier to building products is falling dramatically. 

When ChatGPT-5 was announced, one of the central themes was how AI can help build products in minutes. That’s powerful, but it also means the real challenge is no longer building the product. It’s getting it to market and standing out in an increasingly crowded landscape.

The data here is sobering: long-standing research from firms like SiriusDecisions shows that only 25% of product launches meet their revenue targets. Layer on the acceleration that AI brings to product development, and without better alignment, that percentage is likely to shrink even further.

Other research from McKinsey and Harvard Business Review reinforces this point: strong organizational alignment directly improves product success rates and company profitability. Yet too often, the C-suite focuses heavily on tactical AI adoption for product development without giving equal weight to what it means for go-to-market execution.

The hidden cost of misalignment

Go-to-market teams aren’t just marketing and sales. They include customer success, partner teams, and often product marketing functions. When these teams are misaligned, nearly every key performance indicator suffers.

Your pipeline becomes harder to build because no one agrees on who you’re targeting. Your cost of customer acquisition rises because your sales process isn’t repeatable. Messaging misses the mark, driving down click-through and conversion rates. Win rates decline. Churn rises.

The result? A hit to both your top line and bottom line. Misalignment is expensive, it erodes efficiency and profitability simultaneously.

Where alignment breaks down in the C-suite

From my own experience and conversations with CMOs, CROs, CFOs, and other executives, I’ve found that misalignment often starts with a simple, but critical, disconnect: the leadership team isn’t aligned on the target market.

If the CMO, CRO, and CFO can’t agree on which segment to prioritize, resource allocation becomes a guessing game. The CFO struggles to budget effectively. Sales pushes for features to close specific deals. Product teams prioritize entirely different areas. Commitments slip. Timelines break.

Another frequent culprit is the absence of a single source of truth for capturing and analyzing market signals. Many companies still rely on collaboration tools like Slack and Google Slides. Great for communication, but insufficient for gathering, analyzing, and systematically acting on market intelligence.

What great alignment looks like

When alignment is strong, you see it everywhere:

• Product-market fit becomes evident in your channel and message fit.
• Customers respond to your messaging, leading to higher conversion rates.
• Revenue growth accelerates and retention follows.
• Net Promoter Scores rise because customers love both the product and the experience.
• Employee engagement improves because everyone understands the shared objectives and how their work contributes to the bigger picture.

I’ve seen employee engagement surveys for years, and the common thread in low-scoring organizations is a lack of clarity: people don’t understand what’s happening in the business or how they fit into the plan. A shared narrative changes that.

Staying agile as the market moves

The market moves fast, and with AI, it’s moving even faster. New competitors emerge overnight. Pricing pressure can shift your economics in weeks. Regulatory changes can alter your go-to-market playbook in months.

To keep up, GTM teams need two things:

1. A single source of truth so everyone is working from the same signals, strategy, and value propositions.
2. An agile methodology, not just in software development, but in go-to-market execution.

Imagine a single connected view that ties strategy, messaging, and execution into one adaptive framework. That’s what agile GTM practices can deliver. At SureRev.ai, we’ve published a white paper on agile go-to-market methodologies because we believe it’s the way forward. It’s not complicated, but it requires a mindset shift.

Using AI to drive alignment, not just activity

AI is everywhere. In B2B, it’s impossible to scroll through LinkedIn without seeing new AI announcements. The question is: how do we make AI work for alignment, rather than simply adding noise?

The opportunity lies in AI’s ability to connect the dots between siloed outputs, across marketing, sales, product, and customer success. By combining AI technology with context engineering and agentic frameworks, organizations can not only increase efficiency but also create true alignment.

This means linking projects, strategies, and dashboards to drive toward shared outcomes rather than disconnected deliverables.

Rethinking “market signals”

One of the most underutilized opportunities for CMOs and their C-suite peers is leveraging AI to identify and act on custom market signals.

Too often, teams define signals too narrowly – focusing on generic triggers like funding rounds or job changes. While these can be useful, the most valuable signals are unique to each business.

For one company, strategic partnerships might be the most relevant indicator. For another, it could be acquisitions, event activity, or shifts in channel strategy. The key is defining what signals are relevant to your business, using AI to detect them, and then adapting both strategy messaging, and execution in almost real time.

A call to CMOs

At the CMO Summit in Boston, I’ll be hosting a roundtable titled: “From Signals to Strategy: Harnessing Real-Time Market Intel and GenAI to Crack the C-Suite Alignment Code.”

My goal is to create a space where marketing leaders can share stories, frameworks, and tools for driving alignment – not just within marketing, but across the entire organization.

CMOs are under immense pressure to prove the value of their function. Yet they also have a unique vantage point: they are the keepers of market knowledge. This gives them the potential to be the connective tissue linking product, sales, and customer success, the leaders who can turn signals into strategy and strategy into growth.

If you’re attending, I look forward to the conversation. If you’re not, my message remains the same: in the AI era, alignment isn’t optional. It’s the difference between a product that thrives and one that disappears into the noise.