At F3 Growth, we work inside revenue teams, not alongside them. Being embedded in startups, scaleups, and mature orgs gives us a unique vantage point across many sectors. As we close out 2025, a few themes are becoming more and more common.
Here are three go-to-market (GTM) trends worth paying attention to, especially if you’re running lean, trying to scale responsibly, or wondering how the hell to make sense of AI.
There’s a frightening increase in disconnected, reactive GTM activities. We call these GTM activities “random acts of sales and marketing.” You’ve seen them:
It’s activity for activity’s sake. And it results in wasted time, missed revenue, and org-wide fatigue. Per LinkedIn, 90% of sales and marketing professionals report disconnects in strategy, content and goals.
Here are a few of the many things driving the chaos:
Fixing this isn’t complicated, but it does require discipline. The foundation is still what it’s always been:
Strategy → Structure → People → Process → Tech
In that order. Every time. No shortcuts.
But the problem is many GTM teams no longer have the internal horsepower to build this foundation, let alone scale it. That’s why we’re seeing renewed demand for embedded operators who can step in, establish the systems, and then hand them off when the team’s ready. Or stay embedded over the long haul of the economics are more favorable than insourcing.
Three years after ChatGPT launched, AI is everywhere and mostly misunderstood.
We’ve seen this before. When the internet became a thing in the ’90s, it took a decade-plus for companies to figure out what to actually do with it. AI won’t move that slowly, but let’s be clear, we’re still early. And GTM teams are sorting themselves into three camps:
The gap between camp #3 and the rest is widening fast. Two dynamics are driving the divergence:
The highest-performing teams aren’t just “using AI”, they’re building with it. They’re identifying specific inefficiencies (e.g., lead qualification, campaign deployment, reporting), then designing AI-powered workflows to solve them.
It’s about systems, not tools. The issue is most teams don’t have the experience to build those systems well. They need operators who understand both the business context and the capabilities of the tech.
In our work, we’ve seen the impact of getting this right. Teams with well-built AI systems are shipping faster, spending less, and outperforming peers.
The explosion of AI-generated content is making everything sound the same—over half the internet is now AI-generated. Blogs, outbound emails, even internal enablement, it’s all starting to blur. Why? Because AI without human expertise produces bland, generic output.
The solution isn’t to stop using AI. It’s to put experts in the loop. When marketers, sellers, and RevOps pros use AI with domain expertise, the output becomes sharper, more accurate, and—most importantly—more authentic and effective.
The myth that AI will replace operators is fading. What’s emerging instead is a clearer mandate to train humans to apply AI with expertise, nuance, and precision.
The economic mood is tense. Inflation, interest rates, tariffs, AI, pick your reason. This is resulting in tighter budgets, a slowdown in hiring, and an increase in job cuts. According to data through November, layoffs in 2025 are up 54% year-over-year, the highest since 2020.
Still, the expectation to hit targets hasn’t budged. GTM teams are being asked to do more with less. The default response? Cut senior headcount, promote junior talent, and hope AI fills the gap.
It’s not working.
What we’re seeing across the board is a mismatch. Junior teams are tasked with running revenue engines they’ve never built, supported by vendors who barely understand the business. It’s not that these people aren’t trying—they’re just under-equipped. The result is a mess of disjointed execution, inconsistent pipeline, and burned-out teams trying to fake their way through strategy decks.
This is where we’re seeing the shift: from full-time senior GTM leadership and large internal marketing teams to fractional leadership with embedded contractors. Particularly in the crucial times when ownership has changed, leadership is in flux and/or scale is imperative. And yes, we acknowledge that this is a service we provide, and yes, we are happy about this trend. Fractional leaders provide experienced hands on the wheel. They’ve seen multiple GTM cycles, know how to navigate board pressure, and can build a plan that actually aligns to outcomes, not just activity. But strategy alone isn’t enough. Execution still needs operators who can own it.
That’s where embedded execution teams come in. Unlike external agencies that work at arm’s length, embedded operators learn the business from the inside. They move faster than hiring full-time and carry the functional expertise to achieve results quickly. In an environment where every headcount request gets scrutinized, this model is winning because companies get:
The year ahead won’t be simple. Budgets will stay tight. Teams will stay lean. Expectations will stay high.
But the GTM orgs that win in 2026 will look different. They’ll:
F3 Growth is already working with teams making these moves. We bring the operators, systems, and strategic clarity GTM teams need when headcount is limited but targets aren’t. If that sounds like what you need heading into 2026, we should talk.
Let’s build something that works.
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