How the sales tech landscape changed in 2023

The top 7 biggest changes, in sales tech, that happened this year

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In 2011, Aaron Ross published a little book called “Predictable Revenue.” (It was—and in many regards, still is—“The Bible” of sales). And since it was published, there has been an entire crop of sales technologies that have helped “scale” that playbook.

But, in 2023, things have changed. Dramatically. A new playbook is emerging. And this new playbook requires some new tooling (infrastructure).

Below are the seven biggest changes in sales tech that I’ve observed in 2023.

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1/ Consolidation szn

Everyone knows it, now it's a matter of placing your bets on where to expand or where to plant your wedge.

"The Big 7" are the players I’m tracking closest:

• HubSpot
• Zoominfo
• Gong
• Clari
• SalesLoft
• Outreach
• Apollo

I wrote a longer post on this subject here, Consolidation szn (The race is on...), so I won’t belabor the point. You probably already know what I’m talking about anyway.

2/ Everyone is an AI company

No company says "We're a cloud company" anymore.

Very quickly, this is the trend with AI. It's a tool, not a differentiator anymore. Every software company should be building with it — it's now table stakes.

3/ Copilots are the future

Every rep and manager will have smart Copilots that:

• Help them manage their day-to-day tasks
• Can answer any question for them (see: GPTs) and
• Delivers insights to them proactively (not enough people are talking about this one).

This is the inevitable future. It’s not an “if,” but a “when.”

4/ The old GTM Playbook is dying (RIP "Predictable Revenue" era)

What's the *new* playbook? It's not entirely clear, yet. But it's slowly emerging.

Here's where I see the most upside:

• PLG/PLS
• Warm intros through your network(s)
• Community flywheel
• “Founder brand” (eg: LinkedIn content)
• Growth teams doing outbound at scale (eg: Rippling, Ramp, etc.)
• Partner-selling (aka “nearbound”), and
• Signal-based selling (“warm outbound”).

Start learning the new playbook to find the alpha.

5/ It's unclear if the data warehouse will overtake the CRM as the single source of truth for GTM Teams

Many sales tech companies are trying to build the CDP (customer data platform) for GTM Teams. Owning a database with all of this data would unlock the biggest opportunity that I see for sales tech companies, what I call the "Intelligence Layer” - a product that autonomously chooses the Right Company + Right Contact + Right Message + Right Timing.

No one has emerged the clear winner, because it's a really hard and technically hairy data problem to solve.

Salesforce's data model is the double-edged sword that continues to prevail. But Rome will eventually fall.

6/ OpenAI is eating the world

OpenAI wrappers are the obvious companies to “short” in sales tech.

But I actually think these companies can use OpenAI to get a wedge into a market, then expand and build a moat from there.

The pace at which a few companies are building with this new toolset is astounding. I'm excited to watch it unfold, but frankly, I have zero idea how/where to place my bets (glad I’m not a VC).

7/ It's extremely hard to find budget for net-new tools in the current down market

Companies that are having the hardest time right now are the ones building a shiny new thing — something that is a new budget line item, and not replacing an existing tool.

This won't be forever, but until we're back in a bull market, it's hard to imagine any net-new budget items ripping unless they're truly 10x better than the status quo.

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There will be a few big winners who emerge as the infrastructure for the future B2B SaaS GTM Playbook. And I'm determined to find them. :)

See you next time,
B.