Shipping new products used to be the bottleneck for growth. Now the harder part is distributing and monetizing them.

The GTM channels we used to rely on got saturated or started to decline (RIP corporate blogs). Newer channels emerged, including AI search and signal-based plays, although it’s never clear whether we’re early or late to the party.

To understand what’s going on I asked readers: what’s working in go-to-market (GTM) right now?

Maja Voje from GTM Strategist and I surveyed 300 software GTM leaders for our second annual State of B2B GTM report. Compared to last year we have a much richer dataset, including a large sample of AI-natives (25% of respondents) and companies with >$50M in ARR (16%). We also have better insight into year-on-year trends: what’s hot, what’s not, and where is GTM heading next.

Today I’ll share my 5 favorite takeaways. The 40-page PDF report is free thanks to support from our amazing GTM partners. (For premium subscribers, keep reading to get your own custom version of the report.)

It’s important to know exactly where this data comes from before using it to plan your GTM. The survey was run in September 2026. A typical respondent was $1-10M ARR, had an average contract value of $5-50k, based in the US, and selling a product that’s a hybrid of SaaS and AI.

The participants-at-a-glance:

Most B2B companies have a primary GTM motion: a structured, repeatable, and coordinated way to acquire customers that they can rely on consistently.

Last year we asked about 6 GTM motions: inbound, outbound, partners, account-based GTM, product-led growth (PLG) and paid digital. This time around we added founder-led sales, thinking it might be popular among early-stage startups (<$500k ARR).

It turns out that founder-led sales persists for far longer than we expected. It’s the leading GTM motion in the survey. It’s the runaway motion up to $1M ARR (44% of respondents) and holds the #2 spot between $1-10M ARR (26% of respondents). It even persists between $10-50M ARR before finally subsiding.

Excluding founder-led sales, deal size makes a big difference for which GTM motions get adopted. Those with smaller deal (<$5k) opt for PLG (35%) or inbound (17%). Large deals (>$50k) go for outbound (31%), inbound (24%), and account-based GTM (19%). The in-betweens settle on inbound (31%) or outbound (25%).

The takeaway: Founder-led sales works great in the early days, but growth is likely to slow without a more repeatable GTM. Plant seeds early starting with either inbound or outbound.

We called 2025 the year of endless channel exploration. Software companies said they had 5 core GTM channels and another 5.5 GTM channel experiments.

Well, the number of core GTM channels crept up again this year to 5.5.

The most common GTM channels were network and introductions (62% say it’s core), SEO (51% say it’s core), and LinkedIn posting by founders and employees (50% say it’s core). The most common experiments were signal-based outbound (50% are experimenting with it) and AI search (41% are experimenting).

Popular doesn’t mean effective, and sometimes GTM channels lose ROI once everyone adopts them. We created the 2026 GTM scorecard to help prioritize where to place your bets.

The shorthand for interpreting this two-by-two:

The single best channels were decidedly anti-AI: network and introductions (#1) and intimate events (#2).

AI search surged into the tried-and-true quadrant for the first time this year after being a figuring it out channel in 2025. SEO made the cut, too, and retained a similar position to last year. The rise of AI search doesn’t mean the immediate death of SEO.

The data looks somewhat different by deal size and ARR scale. That’s available in the full report.

The takeaway: Cold outreach is officially oversaturated, and AI SDRs aren’t living up to the early hype. Lean into your network, intimate events, and LinkedIn instead.

Last year B2B companies were still experimenting with AI search (AEO). It was hard to measure and seemed like SEO 2.0.

Well, that’s clearly changed. AI search is now considered a core GTM channel by 39% of respondents, which is up 11 points from last year. AEO saw the biggest increase in adoption (by far) of any channel we tested.

Companies with smaller deal sizes (<$5k) and companies with larger scale (>$50M ARR) are seeing the best results. But the adoption and effectiveness are high across all company types.

If that wasn’t enough, AI search retains the top spot for the channel where respondents plan to increase GTM investments the most.

The first wave of AI search (AEO) was about visibility. The next wave needs to be about influence: are AI tools like ChatGPT saying the right things about your product (and pricing, for that matter) and to the right people? I’m seeing AI search KPIs getting distributed across just about every marketing function. It’s a brand KPI, content KPI, growth KPI, product marketing KPI, and exec-level KPI.

Other observations:

The takeaway: You already know AI is talking about your product and probably tracking AI visibility. The next frontier is measuring the full impact of AI search so you can improve performance.

Signals might be the buzziest buzzword in GTM right now. Combining first-party and third-party data sources helps tell us who’s ready to buy, when to reach them, and how to persuade them. These signals can be used across outbound campaigns, LinkedIn ads, AE outreach, you name it.

Yet there are a near-infinite number of signals. Nobody seems to agree about which matter and which are a waste of effort. Companies remain stuck in experimentation mode just like last year.

This year we asked which signals get acted on by GTM teams. It’s mostly content engagement (52% of respondents), website visits (42%), and product usage (40%). Content engagement and website visits are popular across all deal sizes whereas product usage is more widely acted on among those with <$5k ACV.

These signals aren’t exactly novel, although there is better tech for de-anonymizing website visitors or enriching personal emails.

There’s far less maturity around third-party signals like social activity (30% of respondents), champion movements (28%), hiring activity (25%), leadership changes (24%), or company events (17%). Tech changes barely register (14%), yet might be the clearest evidence that a company is refreshing their stack.

Interestingly, larger companies aren’t much more mature compared to companies with $1-10M ARR with one exception: they’re far more eager adopters of 3rd party intent data.

I suspect companies are overwhelmed by all the noise, although signals are a great use case for AI agents. Agents could scan your target list continuously, notice multiple signals stack for the same account, and then proactively surface which plays to run.

The takeaway: If you’re new to signals, there are four places I’d start:

Last year we wrote that while there’s been a proliferation of next-gen GTM tools, only one (ChatGPT) was having a breakout impact. ChatGPT was rated the #1 most impactful GTM tool and the #5 must-try GTM tool.

Fast forward a year: Claude reigns supreme and the battle isn’t even close. Claude jumped from #4 to #1 most impactful GTM tool. It was mentioned by 110 survey participants, which is more than three times as many as the next closest vendor. (Claude Code was the most popular Claude product, indicating that GTM practitioners are getting way more technical.)

Clay (#2) and HubSpot (#3) were the other most-impactful GTM tools. They swapped places compared to last year. Salesforce jumped into the #5 spot after being out of the top 10 in 2025.

What stood out to me the most was the ‘must try’ GTM tools. 7 of the top 10 ‘must try’ tools weren’t on the list last year! That’s pretty wild. Notable examples are Grok Bot, Profound (which hit a $1.8B valuation in September), Monaco, Common Room (acquired by Zoom), Ploy, and Cursor.

Zooming out, I’d summarize the tech trends as AI-first GTM meets context layers meets signals.

The takeaway: Claude Code is now a required skill for GTM teams (here’s a great case study from Fin), and GitHub is replacing the resume as a way to show off AI builds. Welcome to GTM in 2026.

There are two ways to win right now: being exceptional at relationships and being exceptional at AI. Both ends of the barbell are working. But beware of the space in between.

In a perfect world, AI helps GTM teams get better at what AI can’t replace:

Looking ahead, we believe the next battleground will be positioning and messaging. These softer elements of GTM have been ignored or underappreciated. The result is that every company sounds the same, and customers are tuning out. Being great at AI won’t matter if the pitch falls on deaf ears.

Bryant Chou, co-founder of Ploy, summed this up well in his reaction to the report:

Here’s to another great year in GTM!

Create your own custom State of B2B GTM report to see how you compare to your exact peers by ARR scale or deal size.