How leading GTM teams scale their sales success

Today’s B2B buyers do more independent research before reaching out to sales reps, involve multiple decision-makers earlier on in the vendor evaluation process than they have historically, and expect would-be partners to custom-tailor solutions specific to their particular needs, business model, and industry.

Ensuring repeatable, sustainable, and scalable sales success is not easy under these circumstances. In fact, it can only happen if every GTM team swims in the same direction, sharing the same plan, narrative, priorities, and commitment to deliver a personalized, memorable customer experience in all sales cycle stages.

Put plainly, your sellers need a sales environment built for predictable execution.
Only in this situation—and with tried-and-true, AI-powered go-to-market solutions in place—can your BDRs and AEs fully understand and react to leads’ needs.

Only in this situation—and with tried-and-true, AI-powered go-to-market solutions in place—can your BDRs and AEs fully understand and react to leads’ needs.

In other words? The right revenue enablement software paired with other business-critical tools and a proven sales model is what will strengthen your reps’ knowledge of your products and services and GTM messaging—and what will empower them to execute on your sales strategy with precision and focus.

Why GTM alignment is a must to increasingly drive greater sales success

Sales success obviously isn’t a single metric everyone can track with ease. Similarly, it isn’t something that’s viewed the same for all business stakeholders:

• A sales rep may define success by their ability to hit quota, meet certain thresholds that are part of their compensation plan, and position on the overall sales leaderboard.
• A sales manager is more likely to care about leading indicators like win rate, deal quality, pipeline velocity, and consistent execution rather than lagging, big-picture indicators.
• And C-level executives often evaluate sales efficiency through the lens of revenue growth, customer satisfaction scores, customer longevity, and accurate forecasting.

Unfortunately, this gap in GTM perspective tied to performance is widening.

Recent Salesforce research found two-thirds of reps don’t meet quota, underscoring how this target number has become an unreliable measure of sales success.

Think about it: If most BDRs on your sales team miss quota in a given quarter, the issue isn’t entirely seller performance. Rather, it’s also that the revenue goal in question doesn’t accurately reflect how different territories, buyers, and sales motions impact the speed with which reps can close deals with prospects.

Because of that, it’s clear sales success is not as black-and-white as it once was. The ROI of your go-to-market teams’ collective work relies on their ability to:

• Engage all qualified leads consistently and effectively: Make every touchpoint count by equipping sellers with insight-rich prompts, smart content, and dynamic plays that adapt to each buyer’s journey so every follow-up feels intentional, timely, and high-value.
• Understand prospects’ distinct interests and pain points: Turn scattered signals into sharp focus with AI sales tools that surface what buyers care about most, empowering sellers to pivot from pitching to problem-solving before the competition even clocks in.
• Provide tailored solutions that offer differentiated value: Arm reps with role-specific guidance, real-time answers, and proven talk tracks (not static sales scripts) so they can navigate the politics of a buying group and lead every conversation like a seasoned insider.
• Guide each buying decision-maker with complete confidence: Help your salespeople follow through with precision by automating ‘smart’ go-to-market handoffs, surfacing the right collateral, and tailoring responses that tells buyers you grasp their particular problems.
• Deliver personalized follow-up and ongoing support: Help your BDRs follow through with precision by supplying them with up-to-date, solution- and value-oriented collateral so they can customize bespoke response for each buying committee member they engage.
• Keep track of customer insights, questions, and needs: Capture and connect the dots across meetings, content, and other deal-related interactions (even in-person get-togethers) so your reps remember more, respond faster, and never lose momentum with active opps.
• Build strong relationships with prospective customers: Give all your salespeople the power to stay relevant—whether it’s week one or days from deal-close—by anchoring every interaction in credibility, context, and a deep understanding of what the buyer values most.

TL;DR: The most successful GTM orgs align on what ‘good’ looks like and measure progress using indicators that reflect reality beyond sales quota.

What sales success looks like for B2B organizations like yours today

Even top-performing sales people with impeccable track records with high-ACV accounts run into avoidable roadblocks when all GTM teams aren’t aligned.

Marketing may promote a message the product team hasn’t fully validated, leaving reps to ‘correct’ expectations mid-conversation. Or, customer success might promise extra support the VP of Sales didn’t know their teams should position.

These disconnects force sellers to improvise, making it harder for buyers to trust your solution (or business at large) and leading to lost business opps.

That makes getting everyone on the same page is especially important now, given Forrester research discovered today’s buying groups often include up to 13 stakeholders, each with different organizational priorities and levels of influence.

Simply put, modern sales success for B2B companies like yours requires:

• A single, agreed-upon vision for your B2B sales strategy
• Reps to use only approved, current, high-impact content
• Managers to track appropriate sales performance metrics
• Go-to-market leaders to have visibility into what’s working
• Messaging that stays consistent across all GTM channels
• AI-powered sales training that aligns with real selling moments
• Enablement creating content based on insights, not opinions
• Programs to run more smoothly with fewer gaps and issues
• Potential customers to have a consistent B2B buying journey

Look inside any leading go-to-market organization and you’ll see the same patterns. Sales representatives, customer success, support, enablement, and every other customer-facing function operate inside a shared rhythm.

Notably, they receive ongoing training and development, participate in regular check-ins, and collaborate in a sales environment where skill development and coaching never stops. (Quite the opposite: It’s actually amplified.)

At the same time, remember that sales success looks different across GTM:

• One salesperson may excel at creating opportunities, while another is the authority on advancing complex deals, and yet another is an expert on expanding existing accounts.
• Your product marketing team may be adept at crafting differentiated positioning that separates your org from competitors, while enablement specialists may understand how to distill that positioning into world-class GTM messaging.
• And customer success at large may be exceptional in forging long-term relationships with high-CLV clients, while a specific CSM may be better served working specific accounts, like those in certain industries or verticals of importance.

All these contributions matter, even if conventional KPIs don’t capture them equally.

An example of sales success in action: How top-performing reps operate

As noted, continually improving sales performance is not a single outcome. It’s a coordinated effort throughout the entire buyer journey, with every go-to-market team member creating momentum. That said, at the end of the day, it’s your salespeople who interact with and aim to convert your qualified leads.

Here’s how reps in the President’s Club drive sales success today:

Follow their sales methodology inside their daily workflow

Methods like SPICED or MEDDIC provide reps with a structure for asking insightful questions, uncovering pain points, and guiding decision-making. This predictability helps teams when closing deals and building longer-term relationships.

Bring product knowledge into every interaction with buyers

Great sales reps stay away from pitching features and instead connect capabilities to outcomes and explain how solutions solve business problems.

Act quickly and intelligently to expressed customer interests

Strong sales professionals take decisive steps based on real signals.

For example, if a prospective client shares a use case during discovery and later clicks repeatedly on a specific technical guide, a smart rep doesn’t wait for the next scheduled meeting. They immediately send a short, personalized note that connects the guide to the customer’s pain point and offers a tailored solution.

They use sales tools to stay organized and rely on buyer engagement and sales performance data to prioritize the right deals.

Use active listening and conversation intelligence to respond

Imagine a new customer casually mentioning their team is understaffed and struggling to keep up with new demand. A great sales rep doesn’t treat that as filler. They note it, and in their next email, they address that specific challenge with a workflow suggestion that reduces manual effort and gives the team breathing room.

This approach personalizes every interaction and builds real trust. It shows the buyer (and others they eventually loop into procurement) the rep listened, understood the situation, and is answering questions with something tangible.

Build relationships with multiple stakeholders in buying groups

Your BDRs who build lasting relationships and create opportunities that lead to more deals and higher customer retention. They know that long-term success comes from service, follow-up, and providing ongoing support as a trusted advisor.

Element that influences your B2B sales success	Why it matters
Clear ideal customer profile and strong lead qualification criteria	Spending time with the right people means fewer dead-ends, tighter sales cycles, and a pipeline that’s full of promise, not padding. Less noise in, more wins out.
Unified sales plan that aligns to your business and GTM goals	When your sales plan mirrors your GTM strategy, your teams work active opportunities with a shared focus and clear direction. It’s alignment that actually performs.
Documented sales processes that inform all reps’ prospecting	Repeatable, teachable processes give every rep—new or seasoned—a clear path to success, without having to reinvent the wheel. Everyone rows in rhythm from day one.
A strong value proposition and consistent sales messaging	If your GTM story changes every call, your deals won’t stick. Strong messaging keeps buyers engaged and sellers confident from the first call to the final signature.
Sales methodology that is embedded into daily rep behavior	It’s one thing to train on a selling method. It’s another to see it in the wild. Daily habits make the difference between knowing an approach and executing it under pressure.
Tailored solutions mapped to each stage of the buyer journey	Meeting buyers where they are (and not where you wish they were) turns your sales organization from vendor to strategic advisor—deal by deal, step by step.
Centralized sales tools for GTM content, plays, and coaching	Jumping between tools kills momentum. One place to prepare, plan, and present keeps sellers efficient, consistent, and confident, especially in deals that move fast.
Buyer engagement insights that are connected to deal reviews	When you know who’s engaging with which asset and when, you can prep smarter reviews, tighten forecasts, and stop surprises before they start derailing your quarter.

5 go-to-market optimizations that can accelerate your B2B sales success

Leading organizations reinforce go-to-market best practices that ultimately drive overall sales success using robust, real-time GTM performance data.

As Highspot’s Take the Guesswork Out of Go-to-Market Performance Guide explains, “An informed picture of your GTM launch performance enables you to hold sellers accountable for closing any gaps preventing the success of your new products and adjusting your approach if it isn’t leading to the desired outcomes.”

Five best practices that can help you achieve sales success more frequently (and ease the coaching and training burden on your sales managers) include:

1. Using AI-powered insights to drive consistent execution

Artificial intelligence helps reps decide what to do next by interpreting real buyer behavior. If a prospect replays a demo or shares a document internally, AI flags it. If engagement drops, AI highlights the risk early. This helps reps respond faster and allows managers to coach with evidence rather than assumptions.

As Forbes Council Member Alyssa Merwin says, “No rep gets into sales to spend six hours a week updating records. AI-enabled CRM integrations can now handle that lift automatically, updating data, flagging gaps, and offering real-time insights that help sellers stay focused and deals stay on track.”

Highspot Nexus, our AI and analytics engine, is the real deal behind the scenes.

It connects GTM signals—spoken in meetings, shared through content, or shown in deal behavior—and turns them into real-time, role-specific actions. Instead of reviewing sales dashboards or getting static alerts, reps and managers get insight that shows what just happened, what it signals, and what to do next.

It’s AI that both observes and participates in your sales team’s efforts.

2. Building custom training paths to help BDRs grow fast

Not every BDR needs the same type or depth of rep training.

Go-to-market leaders that are tuned into individual behaviors personalize development based on job role, tenure, and strengths. For instance, a new seller may need help qualifying leads and asking insightful questions, while a seasoned AE might only need more product knowledge or help multi-threading deals.

Highspot’s Adaptive Learning paths aren’t static course checklists—they evolve with every click, quiz, and conversation. Sellers are guided based on skill, role, and performance—so ramp doesn’t feel generic, and development doesn’t feel random.

Whether someone’s brand new or barreling toward quota, the platform maps the most efficient path forward—and skips what’s already been mastered.

Smart reps grow faster. Managers sleep easier.

3. Factoring buyer signals into manager-led coaching

Sales coaching is far more effective when it’s based on actual recent behavior.

If a rep’s deals consistently stall after demos, buyer engagement signals help sales managers pinpoint whether messaging or follow-up needs to change. Conversely, if prospect engagement spikes on a particular piece of content or sales play, the manager can help the rep build on that momentum.

Meeting Intelligence in Highspot gives sales managers more than call recordings—it delivers patterns. Deal Intelligence ties those patterns to outcomes.

Together, this sales analytics shows which behaviors spark interest and which slow things down. Managers can coach with precision: “This line drops engagement—try it this way,” or “Everyone clicks that case study—double down.”

It’s coaching that’s timely, targeted, and tethered to what actually happened.

4. Centralizing all your sales content, training, and plays

When enablement content, rep guidance, and sales plays live in multiple places, it’s easy for your BDRs drift from the message and slow down altogether.

Unifying everything—demo videos, sell sheets, case studies, brochures, and the like—helps reps find what they need instantly, stay aligned with the value proposition, and avoid sending out dated or inconsistent content to prospects.

With Highspot, your teams aren’t toggling between tabs—they’re operating in one unified workspace. Digital Sales Rooms connect reps to all the collateral, messaging, and training tied to a deal, deal stage, and persona.

No back-and-forth. No uploading the wrong doc. Everything reps need is curated, compliant, and instantly shareable, right where the action is.

5. Onboarding AI agents to surface next-best actions

Cutting-edge AI agents for sales, marketing, and enablement teams—like those offered in Highspot—should act like real-time partners for these GTM functions.

Highspot Agents identify decision makers, suggest follow-up topics based on past engagement, and flag objections before they become roadblocks. They’re especially powerful when deals involve multiple stakeholders or lengthy sales cycles.

Our AI sales agents both assist these GTM units and act on their behalf. Specifically, these AI-powered teammates anticipate the next step and help reps take it.

Whether it’s recommending a case study for a skeptical stakeholder, summarizing a buyer conversation, or flagging a training gap before it becomes a problem, Agents work across sales, enablement, and marketing to keep go-to-market on pace.

Reps, in particular, learn fast, stay sharp, and never miss a follow-up.

Clear all the go-to-market team blockers that limit your sales success

Sales orgs struggle because systems around them create strife, especially in gray areas where every GTM team has good intentions, but alignment slips.

These blockers show up in ways that feel small individually, but compound quickly:

• An unclear value proposition that changes depending on who tells the story
• Siloed solutions that make it hard for reps to prep and show up consistently
• Sales follow-up emails that don’t accurately reflect what leads said or need
• Rep coaching that focuses on sales tactics instead of conversation quality
• Objections that repeat because messaging isn’t reinforced across all teams
• Handoffs that break because all GTM teams don’t share the same context
• Relationships that stall because reps focus on speed instead of relevance

Reengineering your GTM strategy addresses these blockers by building shared workflows, aligning on a single narrative, and equipping every function to support the buyer journey with clarity. Instead of relying on individual heroics, they create a foundation where predictable, consistent sales success becomes the norm.

“As marketing tools like language models get slicker and growth hacks continue to promise the world, it’s crucial to remember that slow-earned trust that convinces a skeptical buyer to say yes can never be replicated nor fabricated,” Entrepreneur contributor Danielle Sabrina recently wrote. And she’s right, of course.

Authenticity matters now more than ever, and complete go-to-market alignment—along with adoption of best-in-class, AI-powered technology that provides rich insight into the entire GTM lifecycle—protects it.