The future belongs to the builders

How to excel in GTM leadership in an AI native world

[Last week, I started building a tool called Chalk. An AI Native Sales Enablement platform that helps every rep crush quota in 5 minutes a day. Think Gamma meets Duoling for sales. Check it out. Use the promo code chalkdemo to use it for free. Let me know your thoughts]

I was talking with a mentor of mine this week about the future of the CRO role in an AI-native world.

The tools in sales leaders' hands today are incredibly powerful and have the potential to unlock an enormous amount of latent talent that has been dormant because, in the past, it was either too hard to do or not a priority.

But today everything is different.

If you are a sales leader in a high-growth company, it isn’t optional anymore to get familiar with these tools. But familiarity isn’t enough. You need to learn how to operationalize them to improve outcomes for your organization.

In my opinion, this cannot be a skill set you outsource to RevOps, or else you will be left behind.

In the future, I think the CRO will look a lot more like Varun and a lot less like John McMahon. Part brand/marketing, part GTM Engineering, part sales leadership. Not quite RevOps. Not quite Sales Leadership. Not quite Marketing. A combination of the three that can leverage AI, data, and relationships to accelerate growth.

Undoubtedly, the last two decades of SaaS enterprise sales fundamentals will be important. Still, the leader or founder today needs to be much more AI-native, much more systems, data, and analytics-driven. I’m not sure whether the actual profile in person changes, or whether the RevOps role becomes a C-suite role that sits adjacent to the CRO. I don’t think RevOps is the right name for this either.

There is no one currently sitting in a CRO seat with a decade of experience in this role. At the same time, there is no one sitting in the VP of RevOps or Marketing role who understands how to do enterprise sales.

And to be honest, this is where the massive gap and opportunity sit.

And the market? They are expecting these individuals to be out there already.

I talked with a recruiter a couple of weeks ago who said a founder was looking to exit their CRO after 8 months because he wasn’t “AI native enough.” This guy had an amazing background. Long runs at great companies. Only been in the seat for just over 2 quarters. The company was set to 3x. Yet the CEO was looking to replace them because he lacked this skill set.

I just had to laugh, though. No one has that experience in the market right now. But that is where the opportunity is.

There is a huge opportunity for mid-to-early-stage career professionals to dig in deeply, become highly adept with these new AI tools, and operationalize them across the sales organization. I think you can let people take multiple steps in their career if they possess this.

I could be wrong here, but there is low to zero risk in figuring this out.