Notes from the Field: 5 Shifts We've Seen Deploying Enterprise AI and What GTM Must Change
Over the last year, we deployed nearly 100 enterprise AI workflow solutions across multiple industries. These are the key five shifts we've seen firsthand and the GTM changes we are prioritizing this year because of them.
1: AI Products Are Not Shipped
In traditional software, go-live is the milestone. In enterprise AI, go-live is when reality starts. The system hits edge cases, messy inputs, exceptions, and business policy. AI products are not delivered once. They are proven in production and adapted daily as they encounter real-world conditions.
GTM priorities
- Pivot to co-development: Embed sales, technical, and customer teams to jointly build and prove the first workflow inside the customer environment using real data and real constraints.
- Replace the classic demo with live problem solving: Bring one real workflow, one real decision, and a slice of real data. Show how value is produced inside that specific workflow in weeks, not months.
2: Learning Is the Product
Learning is the core product value. Enterprise AI systems are learning loops. How the system learns from outcomes, ingests human corrections, and ships updates safely determines long-term value. Value compounds as the system adapts to the business over time. Customers expect to capture and own that evolution.
GTM priorities
- Productize the loop: Replace traditional road mapping with live feedback streams. Use corrections and outcome signals to identify the next value opportunity and ship improvements continuously.
- Pivot customer success to value engineering: Arm customer success teams with learning data to prove economic impact and co-develop the next workflow. Drive net revenue retention by showing where new value can be created.
3: Enterprise AI Is Bought as an Architecture
The AI product ecosystem sits below the UI. Data access, workflow orchestration, and integration reliability determine whether the system can operate in production. Buyers want to bring AI to their data. They want confidence that it can execute inside their environment.
GTM priorities
- Move beyond discovery: Start by working the solution against data reality, integration points, and decision boundaries. Capture the steps, exceptions, and hidden rules that shape real operations.
- Bring engineering to the field: AI deals move faster when the production architecture is designed and proven as part of the sales motion. Field-deployed engineers are becoming standard practice.
4: Every Action Is a Trust Test
When agents take actions or recommend decisions, trust becomes a product requirement. Every autonomous action carries operational risk. Trust is earned by showing how the system behaves under uncertainty, not through claims or promises.
GTM priorities
- Prove behavior under uncertainty: In every deal, show live evaluation traces from one real workflow and what the agent observed. Which tool path selected. Where uncertainty appeared. Which approval or guardrail was triggered.
- Evidence replaces success stories: Make it a marketing imperative to manage real-world evidence and turn it into living assets such as interactive demos, sandbox trials, and short proof of concepts. Trust should be established before and after the sale.
5: Own the Outcome
Enterprise software used to support workers. With AI agents, software does the job for defined work. Buyers are now purchasing work completed and costs removed. This opens new cost pools and changes how deals are evaluated, priced, and expanded. The economic case must be explicit.
GTM priorities
- Sell to the CFO: Lead with revenue protected, downtime avoided, cost removed, and working capital improved. These outcomes show up directly in P&L and cash flow. Efficiency metrics capture only a small portion of that impact.
- Unlock economic AI: Anchor each deal to a specific workflow with clear inputs and outputs. When the workflow runs end-to-end, results can be directly attributed to revenue, cost removed, and margin impact.
AI changes what a software product is, which changes what GTM must do. This year, the teams that win will be those that can sell time to first outcome, learning driven expansion, architecture-first delivery, trust proven in production, and economic impact to the bottom line.