Kickstand and Pavilion Launch New Joint Research, Reveals The Depth of AI Adoption Determines Whether Sales and Marketing Teams Succeed

AUSTIN, TX (October 8, 2026) – Kickstand, a global marketing agency, and Pavilion, a private membership community for senior go-to-market executives in B2B tech and SaaS, today released the findings of the new joint research, Same Team, Different Game: How AI is Reshaping the Sales Marketing Relationship. More than 600 sales and marketing leaders across the United States and United Kingdom were surveyed, with findings indicating that AI is improving the sales–marketing relationship for most organizations. But the teams still struggling share two traits: they use AI lightly, and no one is formally in charge of it.

There is a long-standing perception that sales and marketing are at odds. And yet, 87% of go-to-market (GTM) leaders say their sales and marketing teams are aligned, and 7 in 10 say alignment has improved since adopting AI tools. Trust is growing too: 67% say trust between the two functions has improved over the past two years, while only 8% say it declined.

The findings also show that nearly every organization surveyed owns AI tools, but results vary sharply by how deeply those tools are used. Heavy AI users, those who use AI tools daily and have them embedded across daily workflows, were 78% more likely than average to describe their teams as “very well” aligned. Meanwhile, light users, those who are still in pilot mode for AI tools, were 192% more likely to describe their teams as misaligned, and 55% more likely to say alignment got more complicated or worse after adopting AI.

“Every GTM leader has sat through the same meeting about lead quality, year after year. This research shows the teams breaking out of that loop went deep on AI and put someone in charge of making it work. Ownership and governance are decisions any leadership team can make this quarter, and the data shows they pay off.”

Nycole Walsh, Director of Digital Services, Kickstand

According to Walsh, the teams that struggle tend to buy AI tools before deciding who owns them, how decisions get made, and what success looks like. Without those answers, sales and marketing end up second-guessing each other’s tools instead of building on them.

Additional key findings

• 72% of organizations experienced a notable AI-related pipeline failure in the past 12 months, yet only 49% have a clearly designated owner of AI performance across sales and marketing, and 16% have no owner at all.
• Just 35% have a shared governance structure for AI decisions, and 33% have a shared definition of AI-assisted success.
• Companies with 10,000 or more employees were 154% more likely than average to say no one is accountable when AI work fails.
• Without clear ownership, trust in the technology lags: 3 in 5 respondents have manually overridden or disregarded the other function’s AI recommendations.

Read the full report →

Methodology

The Same Team, Different Game survey was conducted from May 20 to June 15, 2026, among 603 full-time employees in the U.S. and U.K. at B2B companies with 500 or more employees. Respondents held director-level or above roles in sales or marketing and were directly involved in GTM strategy, pipeline decisions, or revenue reporting. The survey has a margin of error of ±4% at a 95% confidence level.

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