Tomas Tunguz is a General Partner at Theory Ventures, where he focuses on investing in companies that leverage technology discontinuities to gain go-to-market advantages.
With his deep experience in the startup world and a keen eye for spotting disruptive trends, Tunguz is well-positioned to share insights on how AI can revolutionize the way companies approach sales and marketing.
Unleashing the Era of 10X Salespeople with GTM AI
As companies grapple with the realities of "GTM Bloat" - the accumulation of inefficiencies that have plagued go-to-market teams over the past decade - Tunguz envisions a future where AI enables a new breed of ultra-productive salespeople.
By leveraging AI's capabilities for parallelization, superior account prioritization, and evolving into "selling agents" that act on behalf of users, salespeople can achieve unprecedented levels of productivity and effectiveness.
Parallelization: Running Multiple Workstreams Simultaneously
According to Tunguz, one of the key advantages of AI in sales is its ability to enable parallelization.
He explains, "So the whole idea is you can processes are either single threaded or multi threaded... And the idea with the next generation seller is they'll be able to run many work streams."
Through automating repetitive tasks and leveraging AI to handle multiple conversations and processes simultaneously, salespeople can break free from the constraints of traditional, linear workflows.
"And what's exciting to me," Thomasz continues, "and this is something that I think the best, you know, the 10X salespeople that exist pre AI always had an intuition or a better means of understanding was which accounts should I be prioritizing at what time?"
Superior Account Prioritization
Tunguz also highlights the potential for AI to revolutionize account prioritization, a critical aspect of successful sales strategies.
By analyzing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns that humans might miss, AI can help salespeople focus their efforts on the most promising accounts, maximizing their chances of success. This doesn't mean full automation is the solution, but ignoring the technology doesn't help, either.
The goal is to use the tools you have to tell you which accounts you should or shouldn't be pursuing so you can make the best use of your time.
Evolving into "Selling Agents"
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Tunguz's vision is the concept of salespeople evolving into "selling agents" – AI-powered entities that can act on behalf of users.
He explains, "Well, so there's two different kinds of AI today. One is effectively really smart auto completion. And we call those co-pilots. And then the second are agents, which are little robotic workers."
You can offload tasks to these intelligent agents, and, in that way, salespeople can focus on higher-level strategic thinking and relationship building.
Reimagining Go-to-Market Workflows
Beyond empowering individual salespeople, Tunguz also emphasizes the potential for AI to reshape entire go-to-market workflows and processes:
"It's amazing because you can grow faster for the same amount of capital invested. And so that's what we're looking for. We're looking for founders who come up with some brilliant technology and all of a sudden as a result of that technology, they can sell it or market it or distribute it in a different way."
It might not be easy, but it is that simple.
Optimizing Funnel Efficiency with GTM AI
One area where Tunguz sees significant potential for AI to drive "GTM Velocity" is in optimizing funnel efficiency.
He notes, "I think funnel efficiency is something that is, is super key to much. Cause what I see happening, and I'm sure you see this as well is people look across the landscape, leaders look across other businesses and they say, well, it's working for Salesforce. So it'll work for us."
Learn how to leverage AI to analyze data and identify bottlenecks or areas for improvement, companies can fine-tune their sales funnels and achieve greater efficiency.
"It really is all about funnel analysis and Lambert who was the CRO at Looker, he had this beautiful report which talked about looking at the five different stages and the fraction of the pipeline over time and the conversion ratios over time."
Rethinking Compensation Models for Top Performers
As AI enables a new generation of ultra-productive salespeople, Tunguz believes it's time to rethink compensation models to better align with the disproportionate value these individuals can create. He suggests that top-performing salespeople could be offered meaningful equity stakes, akin to engineers or executives who create outsized value for their companies.
"So nobody I haven't seen anybody think about it this way. I mean, I think there is GE is famous for having this nine box framework where they map their employee base on to a basically a three by three matrix..."
"But I think as some of these incredible these 10x sellers start to start to pop up the reality is like the amount of market cap the amount of enterprise value that these sellers will be able to create on their own."
Tunguz also sees potential for similar compensation models to be applied to other high-impact roles, such as demand generation marketers who can leverage AI to generate significantly more pipeline than their peers.
"So I think there's a lot of work to be done on the next generation compensation schemes for for salespeople, but you could also imagine the same thing for pipeline generation marketer. Like a demand generation marketer all of a sudden starting to produce 10x more pipe than anybody else."
Embracing the Future of GTM AI
As companies seek to overcome the challenges of "GTM Bloat" and achieve "GTM Velocity," embracing AI-powered solutions will be crucial.
By leveraging AI to automate repetitive tasks, optimize account prioritization, and evolve into "selling agents," salespeople can unlock new levels of productivity and effectiveness.
Plus, rethinking compensation models to better align with the outsized value created by top performers can help companies attract and retain the best talent in this new era of AI-powered sales.
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