AI will replace 70% of the GTM by 2025.

And you can't bet on being in the 30% who survives.

Have you read the phrase “AI won’t replace your job, but people who use AI will”? 

Well, I think this is wrong. AI will absolutely come for your job. 

And I think it’s a false story to make people adopt AI by telling them “everything is gonna be alright”. 

For the broader economy, there is plenty of research from McKinsey et al showing how many jobs are at risk of being fundamentally altered by GenAI adoption: especially white-collar jobs. doctors, lawyers, management consultants, support people, salespeople. 

I think with a new “platform” like robots from Boston Dynamics and Tesla, you will see a whole other part of the economy change: construction site workers, carpenters, hairdressers, painters… 

I don’t want to be alarmist, but I am not fully certain what my kids will do when they grow up. I think that's ok though - my mum didn’t know this about me either (she still doesn't, really).

But, yes, we all need to conclude that plenty of us won't be needed anymore - at least not in the shape of our current jobs. 

All of us are Demand-Constrained

How do I come to that conclusion though? During the industrial revolution, a lot of people went from working in the fields to working in factories. We still needed all those workers. Why is this different now? 

While I don’t want to answer this for the whole economy - I’m just not that guy - I can start answering this for the GTM specifically. 

What are 90% of businesses constrained by? They struggle to build more pipeline.

It’s always the same problem. But in reality, what this means is that most businesses are constrained by the demand for their products or services. 

There just aren’t more people out there that need whatever you’re offering. 

And this is fundamentally the problem. We don’t live in a society anymore that is supply-constrained like we were in the industrial revolution. Today we are living in a world where we are demand-constrained. 

This goes against what some of us are clinging on to, we think: cool, we’re going to be so much more efficient. This means we can invest more resources into growing faster. 

Well, there won’t be much more growth to justify the size of the team if your company is constrained by demand. 

Jacco & Winning by Design recently talked about GTM teams needing 70% fewer people by 2025. 

So what happens, when the GTM suddenly needs 70% fewer resources to satisfy the same demand?

Companies will let go of 70% of their GTM. 

Will your job be affected?

Yes, 100%. 

Let’s go through it 1 by 1. 

1. Marketing is already seeing the collapse. Ask your copywriter friends and see how their job searches are going. More and more automations & tools are pushed into the market every day. 

2. Sales has changed. Yes the AI SDR is still not the absolutely right solution, but this is really just the start. Whether it's 11x or others, someone will nail this and they won’t stop at SDRs, AEs have the same disruption potential. 

3. CS and Support has been part of this movement already before GenAI. But at this point, it’s unclear to me why you would even hire a large team of support folks. Instead of just having a few overseeing the AI. 

4. Enablement - if you have fewer people in general, you’ll need fewer enablement folks, but even until then, we’re seeing AI do LIVE coaching DURING calls. Not after, not trying to make you better for your next call. No, right when you are talking to a prospect. 

And I can see some VP of Sales going, well they still need a sales leader, right? Yes. However, think about how many fewer people will be around. This means “leadership” and “management” as a skill will also be less necessary.

I still believe companies need a sales leader, yes, but instead of 50 reps the company will only have 10, which means you won’t need a bunch of directors and managers. You just need 1. 

This shift is happening faster than you think

What many people are currently thinking is “Well it can’t even count the number of r’s in Strawberry. Do you really think it's gonna come for my job?”. 

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take the development of AI into account. 

You’ve probably heard about Moore’s law: computing power will double every 2 years. 

When they said this back then people also laughed. But the development has been pretty consistent over the decades, and it’s the reason your iPhone has 10x the compute of an IBM filling a full room back then.

So how is AI doing on this scale you ask? AI performance is currently doubling every 6 months - not every 2 years.

This exponential development is something we humans struggle to understand. And I am not talking about AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). I frankly have no clue about that. I am talking about what we’re already seeing today. 

With this development, instead of talking about today’s performance, we all need to talk about where the puck is going to be. 

Our TAM will collapse 

And all of this doesn't even address the next big thing. Right now we use software to make the lives of humans easier. 

If you have 50 reps you definitely need a CRM otherwise you’ll just drown in chaos. 

But what happens if all of those teams get reduced by 60-70%? 

Sure, pricing will need to change. No question. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I believe whole software categories will suffer immensely. 

Here is a graph of how many businesses there are for 1, 5, 25, 50, and so-on employees:

If you are currently selling to companies that are 250 employees and up because they have your minimum requirement of having 50+ sellers. What do you think a 70% reduction in the GTM will do to this requirement?

With a bit of funky math, you are instead looking at companies that in today’s standard are closer to an 800-employee organization.

Selling to 800 instead of 250 is going to reduce your TAM by 80-90%. Simply because there aren’t so many 800+ teams around.  

So lower demand for our software, and we need fewer resources to market, sell, and service to meet that demand. 

Again, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but frankly, this isn’t great news for most of us. 

Who do I think will benefit?

So, let’s pretend for a minute that the above is directionally true and will happen in the next 2-5 years. What can you do now to benefit from this? 

1. Join companies that are driving the above change. 

It’s super weird, but SFDC is currently hiring 1000 reps to sell their Sales AI solutions. Driving this change will take time and effort and you can help with that. In the end you want to be part of the winning team instead of the opposite. Is the sales role at SFDC going to be a feasible solution in the next 10 years? I don’t know but it’s definitely better than being an AE for a competing CRM not jumping on the AI train. 

2. Drive the AI change in your company 

Many RevOps folks are reading this here, and I think you are in the perfect position to help your company make this shift. If you emerge as the AI GTM architect, you will definitely be part of the 30% that stays. It’s not like companies won’t have any people anymore, it’s just going to be a lot fewer. This skill will get you on the list to stay. 

3. Dig deeper and become an expert

Being part of the 30% means that you need to be an expert in your field. And This might very well be sales, marketing, or CS. One simple reason is that not all tasks will or should be replaced by AI. Regardless of how “good” it becomes. The other reason is that there’ll be significant resources needed to train & teach the AI. If you are the expert in that field, you will be the one doing that.

4. Become a capitalist - faster 

So this is such unactionable advice, but still: if labor disappears, you will still need capital. 

Start building up a bank, and invest this money in the market. Be part of the shareholders that are reaping those benefits. And don’t put this into one specific company, put it into the S&P 500 or NASDAQ - or similar. All of those boats will rise with this tide and companies that fail because of it will drop out of those indices and be replaced by the winners. You don’t need to take crazy risks. 

Conclusion

Friends, this thing is happening. Wrap your head around it. Right now you are still part of the 1% getting to those conclusions. And I think it will still take 5-10 years for this transition to really complete. But there is a scenario where it’s more like 1-2 years. 

If you act now, you can be part of the 30%.