Instead of hiring a 'Chief AI Officer' or an agency, the most successful GTM AI deployments empower existing top performers. Pair your best SDR, marketer, or RevOps person with AI tools, and let them learn and innovate together. This internal expertise is more valuable than any external consultant.

To prepare for a future of human-AI collaboration, technology adoption is not enough. Leaders must actively build AI fluency within their teams by personally engaging with the tools. This hands-on approach models curiosity and confidence, creating a culture where it's safe to experiment, learn, and even fail with new technology.

Rushing to adopt AI tools without a clear strategy and established workflows leads to chaos, not efficiency. AI should be the fourth step in a system, used to strategically uplevel your team and enhance proven processes, rather than just creating more noise or automating a broken system.

Companies once hired siloed 'digital experts,' a role that became obsolete as digital skills became universal. To avoid repeating this with AI, integrate technologists into current teams and upskill existing members rather than creating an isolated AI function that will fail to scale.

To ensure AI adoption is a core competency, formally integrate it into your team's operating system. Webflow is redoing its career ladder to make AI fluency a requirement for advancement, expecting team members not just to use tools but to lead, own, and push the boundaries of AI in their work.

AI requires senior marketing leaders to personally develop technical competencies. Simply delegating AI initiatives is a career-limiting move, as a new generation of marketers will soon combine creative strategy with deep technical 'growth architecture' skills and out-architect their campaigns.

Leaders can no longer delegate technical understanding. They must grasp how AI fundamentally changes processes—not just automates old ones—to accurately forecast multiplier effects (e.g., 1.2x vs. 10x) and set credible team objectives that move beyond simple 'lift and shift' improvements.

Many companies struggle with AI not just because of data challenges, but because they lack the internal expertise, governance, and organizational 'muscle' to use it effectively. Building this human-centric readiness is a critical and often overlooked hurdle for successful AI implementation.

The most significant, yet overlooked, benefit of a strategic AI tool is its ability to upskill the entire team. By embedding the "brains" of top marketers and proven frameworks, the AI acts as a persistent mentor, improving the team's capabilities and output far beyond simple task execution.