Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted how GTM teams sell and engage buyers in the past year, resulting in marketing teams taking greater ownership of revenue strategy and the buyer relationship.
Data from Walnut’s AI and The New Guard of B2B Sales details this of shifting power from sales to marketing, with 49% of tech executives reporting that AI is enabling marketing teams to own more of the buyer relationship.
And executives broadly agree on where this trend is headed— 30% of respondents believe marketing will continue gaining influence and budget over sales and 21% say the relationship between sales and marketing is becoming increasingly competitive.
Walnut’s Oren Blank
Oren Blank, VP of Product at Walnut, stated that the report’s findings details how AI hasn’t just changed how buyers research, it’s rewritten the rules of who owns the relationship.
“Thanks to GenAI, marketing content now shapes perception before sales ever gets involved, and companies are scrambling to adapt,” said Blank in a statement with the reports release. “The data is clear: the winners won’t be the teams with the best AI prompts, they’ll be the ones who cut through the AI-generated noise with experiences a chatbot can’t replicate.”
AI Impact on Personnel
The reports explains how AI has become the buyer’s first stop for software discovery with 45% saying prospective buyers are now using AI to find the software they want. While there are some benefits to this, executives warn of pain points arising:
- 46% say buyers are getting misleading information from AI tools;
- 44% say AI is creating overconfident buyers who think they know more than they do;
- 36% agreed sales teams are spending more time assessing prospects’ current knowledge (or lack thereof) of their product; and
- 30% say there’s more pressure than ever to “correct” prospects during the sales cycle because they often have misleading information
The realities of this shift are already taking shape on personnel decisions as 94% executives made structural or headcount changes due to AI in the past year, including 28% who restructured leadership to give marketing greater revenue ownership.
Sales Adjustments
When it comes to how this impacts sales roles, 36% of executives agree AI is making sales teams less valuable and 38% say AI is prompting a decrease in entry-level sales hiring. While AI is taking over a large part of the discovery phase, sales professionals may be even more critical deeper in the sales funnel and during the demo phase, where human connection and expertise drive real decisions.
Blank noted that new opportunities are rising for marketing professionals— 46% say AI is creating new sales leadership opportunities for marketing executives, foreshadowing the rise of CMOs stepping into CRO roles.
“Interactive, personalized product demos that prove real value are key. The research phase belongs to AI,” stated Blank. “The decision phase is still fundamentally human— and humans need the right tools to succeed.”
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