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GTM News Desk

Building Customer-Centric Strategies with Rebecca Shaddix

Everyone’s building with AI, but few are truly differentiating. In this episode, GTM leaders dig into research, post-sale gaps, and why clarity beats hype every time.

 

Stop Saying “AI-Powered Everything”: What Real Differentiation Looks Like

Saying “AI-powered” doesn’t make you stand out—it’s just noise. True differentiation starts with articulating the specific customer pain you solve, why you solve it better, and how fast users see value. If your messaging reads like “an all-in-one intelligent platform,” you’ve already lost the plot.

AI Is Not a Value Prop: Saying “AI-powered” doesn’t make you stand out—it’s just noise. True differentiation starts with articulating the specific customer pain you solve, why you solve it better, and how fast users see value. If your messaging reads like “an all-in-one intelligent platform,” you’ve already lost the plot.

Customer Research Is Undervalued: The biggest reason GTM strategies fall flat? Most teams skip real research. Rebecca makes it clear: without grounded market insights and a willingness to risk failure, you’re just playing to the mean. Great strategies require bold, evidence-backed bets—not safe mimicry.

Lifecycle Marketing Needs a Spine: Lifecycle marketing isn’t just a nurture flow—it’s a structured strategy rooted in clearly defined stages, meaningful scoring, and tailored content. Without documented definitions and enablement across teams, it’s just busywork disguised as strategy.

Post-Sale Engagement Is Often a Lie: Saying “relationships matter” while pushing CSMs to hit hard metrics is dissonance at its worst. The lack of intentional handoffs between sales and success teams creates churn cycles. If you value trust, your actions, tools, and incentives need to show it.

It’s not enough to talk people-first or AI-smart. If your internal alignment, messaging, and post-sale experience aren’t intentional and insight-driven, your GTM will always underperform.

“Everyone’s putting AI into their product—but how do you articulate the value that makes it matter?” — Rebecca Shaddix

 




EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

 

 

 

Mark Kilens

Mark Kilens

Mark Kilens is VP of Marketing at EasyLlama and Founder of TACK. TACK modernizes how businesses go-to-market using its proprietary People-first GTM Model. He previously was CMO of Airmeet, VP of Content and Community at Drift, and VP of Marketing and founder of HubSpot Academy. When he’s not working, Mark enjoys plenty of steak and lobster, a round of golf or two, and loves being on snow or in the ocean.

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