Analytical report · Soloviov Consulting · May 2026

How to build a GTM strategy in 2026: what works, what died, and how AI changed everything

Kostiantyn Soloviov — GTM strategist, founder of Soloviov Consulting. 15+ years building market entry strategies for B2B products and services across 9 countries.

Executive summary

91% of B2B companies have adopted AI in marketing. 53% see no result from it.

That is not my number. It comes from ICONIQ Capital — 205 GTM leaders surveyed in April 2025. I combined it with what I have seen myself on live projects, in accelerators and on stage over the past two years. The picture matched exactly.

GTM has changed more in the last 24 months than in the decade before it. AI did not simply add new tools to the stack — it rewrote how buyers find vendors, how trust is built and how decisions get made. The playbook that worked in 2022 is structurally dead. Most teams have not accepted that yet.

I keep seeing the same pattern. The teams that stall are not losing for lack of budget or talent. They lose because they are running a 2022 strategy in a 2026 market: cold outbound at scale, generic content, a single acquisition channel, a broad ICP with no focus.

The difference between teams that get results and teams that burn budget is not the tools. It is the system.

What died in 2026

Old-style cold outbound

Mass LinkedIn outreach is dead. Mass email outbound is dead. The AI SDR that sends 500 unpersonalised emails a day is dead.

One of my clients tested an AI SDR for six months straight. Result: zero closed deals. I went through the same thing myself in 2025 — I can confirm it personally. The problem is not the tool. The problem is the logic.

AI accelerates what already works. If there is no clear ICP, no correct roles in the database and no message that resonates, AI scales the problem rather than solving it.

ICONIQ data shows the average time from first contact to signature grew by 3–4 weeks over the year. Buyers have become more cautious: they take longer to decide, involve more people in the decision, and vet vendors more carefully. In that environment, a cold email from an unknown company with template copy has no chance at all.

Generic content

"We help businesses grow." "We do marketing that works." "Comprehensive solutions for your success." This is copy written for everyone at once, which ends up saying nothing specific to anyone.

People do not read that content. AI does not index it. It builds no trust. It simply exists — quietly draining the marketing budget.

Specificity wins. Numbers. Cases with real outcomes. Clear claims you could actually disagree with. That is precisely the content AI picks up and recommends.

SEO-only strategy

Google is no longer the only search channel. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are new entry points for B2B buyers. Companies that spent years investing only in Google SEO have found that they simply do not appear in AI answers.

Optimising for Google alone in 2026 is not a strategy any more. It is falling behind.

Broad ICP

"Our customer is any business that wants to grow." That is not an ICP. That is the absence of a strategy.

A generic ICP kills conversion at every stage of the funnel. I have seen it on dozens of projects. A team spends months on outreach and gets nothing. Then we narrow the ICP, and within 4–6 weeks the first real conversations appear.

The narrower the ICP, the higher the conversion. The fear of "giving up part of the market" is the most expensive fear in GTM.

Single-channel acquisition

One channel no longer works. 94% of B2B decisions run through an omnichannel model, with at least three touchpoints before the first sale. A typical path: LinkedIn → industry media → email → conference → inbound enquiry.

But there is a catch: channels have to reinforce each other rather than run in parallel. Outreach prepares the ground for a conference — the person has already heard of you before you meet. A webinar generates leads for the funnel that follows. A partner closes the deal because they already know the customer. That is a system, not a set of separate tools.

AI is rewriting distribution

AI search is the new SEO

Leads from AI search convert 40% better than leads from traditional search. Not because AI is magic, but because someone who arrives through an AI recommendation already trusts you.

Perplexity already handles billions of queries a month. ChatGPT searches the web in real time — people use it to research markets, compare vendors and find experts before buying. Gemini is built into Google Search. This is not the future; it is happening right now.

How people find you through ChatGPT

A personal example: I received two inbound leads through ChatGPT. The model recommended me as a GTM expert to clients asking about market entry strategy. I had never positioned myself that explicitly. The machine decided on its own — based on what I had been publishing for years on Liga.net and AIN.ua.

If you are not in that content, you are not in the answer. It really is that simple.

Another example: a participant in one of my workshops got 10% of her customers through AI recommendations. No ads, no cold emails. Within 2–3 years this way of being found will be as ordinary a channel as Google or LinkedIn search is today.

AI-assisted buying behaviour

The buyer has changed radically. They arrive at the first call already prepared: they have read your articles through AI aggregation, compared you with competitors, formed their questions. The sale begins before first contact.

The practical conclusion: if your site and your content do not answer the questions a buyer puts to AI before that first call, you lose before the conversation starts.

The trust shift

Trust is no longer built through cold search. The new sequence: someone reads your content for months → sees you speak → gets a recommendation from AI → and only then writes to you.

According to ICONIQ, when a client comes through a personal connection or a referral, the deal closes 35–40% of the time. Through advertising or mass marketing, it is only 18–22%. Almost a twofold difference.

New acquisition models

Founder-led growth

The most effective B2B channel in 2026 is neither advertising nor cold outreach. It is the founder's personal brand. The company does not sell. The person sells.

99% of my clients came through personal connections, referrals, or content I had been publishing for years. If you are the founder of a B2B company and you are absent from the public space, you are leaving money on the table every day.

Find your community

Every business has a community where its customers live: accelerators, industry associations, professional clubs, training programmes. When you show up there as an expert rather than a seller, trust builds far faster.

In my case that means mentoring at the 1991 Accelerator, Diia.Business and SET University. People I have mentored become clients or refer me onward.

PLG and PLS — where the line sits

Product-Led Growth is basic hygiene now, not a competitive advantage. But there is one number worth knowing before you copy a PLG model.

There is a clear line I see in practice: if the product costs up to $5,000 a year, people are willing to try it themselves without talking to anyone. Above that, the buyer wants to speak to a human before paying.

McKinsey confirms it: the winners combine product and sales. Companies that pair free access with live selling convert to paid at 56% — against 32% for those relying on self-serve onboarding alone.

AI-assisted outbound

Cold outbound did not die. It transformed.

The old way: buy a list → send an identical email → wait. Response rate 1–2%.

The new way: tools collect public data about a company — new job postings, new products, funding rounds — and AI generates a personalised message built around that company's situation right now. The difference is not automation. The difference is relevance.

Founder mistakes

Wrong messaging

The most common mistake is that a founder describes the product rather than the problem it solves. "We are an AI-powered marketing automation platform" is a description, not a message.

A message sounds like this: "Your sales rep spends 3 hours a day filling in the CRM by hand — we automate that." A working message has three components: who the customer is, what their problem is, and what concrete outcome they get.

No positioning

Most B2B companies try to be for everyone. The result is that they are visible to no one. Positioning is a deliberate decision to give up part of the market in order to dominate another.

If your ideal customer asked AI tomorrow "who understands my problem best", would you appear in the answer? If not, the positioning needs rebuilding.

A weak narrative

Facts do not sell. Narrative sells. "We have delivered 200 projects in 15 years" is a fact. "I helped 20 teams enter new markets without burning the budget on the wrong channel" is a narrative.

Accidental AI

91% adopted AI. 53% saw no result. Most use AI as a set of separate tools with no system behind them: ChatGPT for content, Clay for the database, something else for analytics. Separately. With nothing connecting them.

AI does not replace strategy. AI executes strategy faster. If there is no strategy, AI simply burns the budget faster.

The winners are not the teams experimenting most with AI. They are the ones focusing on the 2–3 channels where conversion is proven — and scaling exactly those.

Forecasts

These are not guarantees but trends I see in the data and in client work. Some are already reality; some are a question of the next 2–3 years.

• LinkedIn outbound response rates will keep falling. AI made mass outreach cheaper — and in doing so devalued it. Only those who can personalise on real triggers will remain.
• AI discoverability will become the new SEO. Within 3–5 years companies will budget for "AI presence". AEO specialists will appear — Answer Engine Optimization. Whoever builds structured content now gains an advantage that is hard to catch up with.
• Most agencies will not adapt structurally. They will add "AI" to the service name while the operating model stays as it was in 2020.
• Expansion revenue will become the main GTM focus. CAC rises every year and deal cycles lengthen. NRR becomes the metric that matters most — winners will run 130%+ through deep work with the existing base rather than chasing new logos.
• Hybrid GTM motion will become standard. 63% of companies already combine self-serve onboarding with live sales reps for larger contracts. Within 2–3 years this will be a baseline market requirement.
• Pricing models will keep transforming. 85% of companies have already changed or are considering changing their model. The market is moving from flat subscriptions toward paying for actual usage.
• Founder brand will become a required asset. Not an option. Within 3–5 years, companies without one will be in a structurally weaker position.

The GTM stack for 2026

There are more tools than ever. Budgets have not grown. The question is not "which tools exist" but "what is actually worth using, and in what order".

• Strategy before tools. A team buying tools before it has a strategy is the most expensive mistake there is. The right order: a clear ICP and message first, then channels, then tools.
• Understanding the customer — Jobs to Be Done and customer development. At least 10–15 in-depth interviews before launching a new market or product. This is not optional; it is the foundation.
• ICP and segmentation. Instead of blasting everyone, gather data on companies that are in the situation right now where your product matters most. A new job posting, a new product, a funding round — those are triggers.
• Outreach — personalisation instead of volume. One high-quality personalised email does more than a hundred templated ones.
• Content and AI SEO — structured long-form. Long articles with a clear H1/H2 structure, numbers and cases. 1,500–2,000 words minimum. Publish on your own domain and distribute adapted versions through media.
• Conferences and speaking — the highest ROI in B2B. Not sponsorship, speaking. Sponsorship gets you a table and a banner. Speaking gets you trust and conversations.
• The partner channel. According to ICONIQ, companies earn on average 20% of revenue through partners. 80% of those that reached serious scale already have at least 10% of revenue from partners — because a partner arrives at the customer with trust already in place.
• Metrics — measure conversion, not activity. Four things, weekly: the number of new qualified conversations, conversion from conversation to proposal, from proposal to deal, and average contract value and sales cycle per channel. Everything else is context.