How GTM Teams Align, Adapt and Accelerate in the Age of AI

GTM Alignment in the Age of AI: Experts Weigh In On Challenges of Keeping GTM Teams on Track

Inside high-velocity startups, go-to-market (GTM) teams must balance two competing forces: operating in their own functional lanes while simultaneously moving in lockstep toward shared revenue goals with the other sub-teams within the organization. Marketing plans ahead, sales pushes for the close, and customer success works on long-term retention and expansion. Yet when AI tools enter the mix, the pace accelerates — and so does the need for more alignment and precise coordination across all GTM disciplines. 

The most recent super{summit} conference in San Francisco brought together a panel of GTM experts to discuss this exact dynamic, and the many moving pieces that must be brought into alignment to successfully launch and sustain an AI-native startup. Moderated by Rebecca Kaykas-Wolff, a sales enablement and marketing leader with stints at Microsoft, Oracle, and Adobe, the session brought together GTM experts from AI-first startups including Rembrand and Ketch for a lively hour of insights into how companies get built today. 

Here are highlights from these GTM leaders who share how they stay aligned, even as teams scale, tools change or multiply, and AI changes the way we work. They’ll explore real-world practices for avoiding silos, tightening feedback loops with product, and delivering consistent execution across the funnel. Whether you’re leading pipeline generation, closing deals, or driving adoption, what we’re sharing here will provide you with tactical ideas and AI-enabled strategies to help your GTM engine fire on all cylinders.

Insights shared from:

(CT) Cory Treffiletti, CMO, Rembrand

(NR) Nicole Reis, Head of Enablement, Ketch

Q: What’s the hardest part of staying on the same page across GTM functions?

CT: The disconnect between discussions about marketplace pain points and internal conversations informing GTM positioning. To keep the wider team from getting out of sync or going off on tangents, I’m a big advocate of once-a-quarter off-site meetings between leadership and GTM teams. It’s the best way to bring what everyone is hearing in the market back into the organization.

Q: Can you share some signals of misalignment and how teams are solving for it?

NR: It’s a combination of people and process. People bring ideas and priorities, but if processes aren’t clear, there’s going to be a problem. It’s critical to ensure we have clear processes, along with communication. When those pieces are in place, things align naturally. If not, you’ll see signals of misalignment arise quickly.

Q: When you’re scaling your team across different locations, working hours, or cultural norms, what are the signals of misalignment, and how do you correct them?

NR: I’ve worked remotely for years and initially it was challenging — you have FOMO, thinking you should be working closely in the same room with product and marketing folks. We now have the Enablement Hopper, a weekly meeting where we share ideas about hot topics. What’s top of mind for marketing, product, and what the GTM team needs to know. Today, it’s possible to work through distance. It just takes discipline and commitment.

CT: In any startup, there’s a tendency for over-communication via Slack, email, and texts. It gets overwhelming. The empathy element requires setting guardrails. Within my team, we have contractors and internal folks, and there’s constant communication between sales, marketing, and product; the sweet trifecta. But you have to set guardrails and be empathetic. Slack and text aren’t immediate gratification vehicles. Establishing norms for when it’s appropriate to reach out is necessary to maintain alignment.

Q: What about meeting overload and alignment gaps?

NR: We have a bi-weekly call with our sales team to help with positioning. We also have a monthly enablement call where we share topics with the entire GTM team — new features or specific products we want to educate them on. Content is key too, ensuring everybody is aware of new content being rolled out and available for use, whether it’s product one-pagers, new blogs or relevant external news.

Q: How do GTM teams stay close to the product as it evolves? What does a tight feedback loop look like in practice?

CT: Keep it as simple as possible. The message, the process for getting customers through their journey into an environment where they can work with the product successfully. Because we tend to overcomplicate things, it’s critical to continually monitor for misalignment. How do we know if we’re off track from the GTM perspective? The easy answer is missing revenue numbers. But from a product alignment perspective, I talk to the sales team and listen to their pitch — you can tell if they’re not aligned. If your sales team can’t tell the product story in three sentences and have the listener nod their head, something’s off.

NR: For me, the key thing is to talk a lot about customer stories. That means identifying their pain points and clearly tying them back to positive outcomes. It is really important for establishing credibility with prospects, to the point where we can confidently say, “We understand your problem, and we’re working with Customer A who has similar issues to yours.” It helps them resonate and feel reassured, showing we can solve their problem and that we have a solution for them. I hope that’s landing with our sales folks. I think it is critical to show that understanding and empathy. Someone mentioned it earlier too: listening, being curious, doing less talking and more listening. I think that’s so important.

Q: As your company grows, what gets harder — process, tooling, or communication?

CT: People and process are important, but you also need commitment to definitions–almost a persistence to that commitment. A marketing organization may have an ingrained difference in what an MQL is defined as and what should happen with it from a process perspective that’s not aligned with the sales definition. But you have to say, “Even though we may not agree on the definition, we’re sticking to this process for four to six months and following through to see if it generates the outcome.” If not, you commit to revisiting that process. But you can’t ignore it. You have to persistently execute the process the same way to figure out what worked and what didn’t.

Q: How does AI assist with GTM alignment across disciplines?

CT: Collaborative tools help a lot, and having AI built into them — having everyone operate off the same materials and information, having that central place where they can give feedback and alert others — that’s a step forward. We all remember sales enablement before cloud-based collaborative tools like Google Suite, Office 365, Monday, ServiceNow. It was a disaster!

NR: For me specifically, sitting within the enablement org, AI has been a game changer. It’s helped me take massive amounts of information and bring it together — whether it’s a lesson, one pager, or talk track for sales. It’s really helped me get my job done faster. But as Cory points out, there’s the human element. You need a human to interpret what’s coming out of the LLM and take those insights or information and act on it.

Moving Forward

GTM alignment in AI-first companies ultimately comes down to three pillars: clear processes, persistent commitment to shared definitions, and disciplined communication. Whether it’s quarterly offsites, regular enablement meetings, or maintaining tight feedback loops with product teams, the experts agree that staying aligned requires intentional structure. AI tools can accelerate information synthesis and collaboration, but human interpretation and empathy remain essential. The message is clear: in high-velocity environments, alignment isn’t accidental — it’s the result of deliberate practices that keep cross-functional teams moving together toward shared revenue goals, even as the pace of change accelerates.