GTM Research Report September 2026
Same Team,Different Game
How AI is reshaping the
sales–marketing relationship.
00 Introduction
Every GTM leader has sat through this meeting.
Sales says the leads aren’t ready. Marketing says sales isn’t working the ones they already have. Someone proposes a shared KPI framework, everyone nods — and a year later the same meeting happens again.
AI was supposed to end that loop. For many teams it’s paying off: they’re more aligned, more trusting, and more confident than they were two years ago. But for a meaningful group, AI never touched the old tension. It just gave both sides new material to argue about.
What separates those two groups comes down to how deep the adoption goes — and whether anyone was ever put in charge of making it work.
At a glance
The headline numbers
Six findings that reset the sales–marketing conversation for the AI era.
01 The alignment everyone doubted
The alignment everyone doubted
Every GTM leader has a war story about sales and marketing not getting along — two teams, one number, and a standing assumption that the other side is the reason it isn’t higher. The aggregate data tells a different story: 87% call their teams aligned, and just 12% report real misalignment.
Heavy AI users
+78%
Daily tools embedded across workflows — 78% more likely to call their teams “very well” aligned.
Light AI users
+192%
Still in “pilot” mode — 192% more likely to call themselves somewhat or very misaligned.
Same tool. Same company size. Same market. A completely different experience depending on the maturity of a company’s AI integration.
02 Shared tools, different impact
Same dashboard, divided verdicts
The intuitive read is that shared tooling produces shared understanding. Instead, AI removed the argument over whose spreadsheet was right — and replaced it with an argument over whose interpretation of the model should carry more weight.
When sales & marketing share the same AI platform
When they run separate or minimally integrated systems
Marketing feels more exposed either way — 36% more likely than sales to say accountability is hard to pin down when shared tools go wrong.
03 Trust is beating the odds
Trust is beating the odds
The disagreements so far aren’t proof that AI destroyed trust. They’re proof that AI exposes how much trust did — or didn’t — already exist between functions.
Trust between functions
Heavy AI users were 105% more likely than average to report “very” high trust in their counterpart.
Light AI users were 133% more likely to report low trust overall — the adoption-depth split turning up again, this time in a relational layer instead of an operational one.
Companies with 10,000+ employees were 85% more likely than average to report trust that skews low — the coordination overhead that comes with scale.
04 Tackling AI missteps
When AI stumbles, teams don’t turn on each other
When AI missteps, who owns it?
AI is doing its job
79% say AI meaningfully improved pipeline quality; 82% say the same for speed-to-close — so teams don’t have much to fight about.
The accountability void
Companies with 10,000+ employees were 154% more likely to say no one is accountable when AI work fails. The bigger the org, the easier accountability slips.
05 The relevance race
AI is changing how teams see themselves
Fading or flourishing?
39% are concerned AI is reducing their function’s perceived value. Yet 27% believe the opposite — and heavy AI users were 72% more likely to say so. Deep adoption buys confidence; shallow adoption buys doubt.
Zoom out and GTM leaders put the real problem on people, not process: 63% say relationship dynamics — not technology — are the primary barrier, and 56% say unspoken competitive dynamics undermine it.
06 Adoption depth & governance
It comes back to depth and ownership
Nearly every split this report traced — alignment, trust, accountability, attribution, identity — comes back to two variables: how deep adoption goes, and whether anyone was formally put in charge. Most organizations still haven’t built that infrastructure.
Share of organizations that have built each structure
Who has the final call? Still up for grabs.
When the two disagree on an AI recommendation, 47% say sales has final authority and 42% say marketing does. The near-even split matters less than the takeaway: teams with defined governance consistently report stronger alignment and greater confidence.
Conclusion
AI wasn’t a complete fix for the sales–marketing problem. But it didn’t break it, either.
It did what any powerful tool does inside an unstructured relationship: it amplified whatever was already there. Teams that went deep on adoption and built real ownership around it are more aligned and more trusting than they were two years ago. Teams that adopted lightly, recently, or without governance are the ones carrying the friction the industry conversation has really been describing all along.
The path forward isn’t more technology.
It’s the slower, less glamorous work of building ownership, governance, and a shared definition of success — so two functions can use the same tools together instead of against each other.
Get the full report
Every chapter, every chart. No form fill required.
The full findings, straight from 603 GTM leaders on both sides of the pipeline.
About the research
Frequently asked
What is the Same Team, Different Game report?
A joint study by Kickstand and Pavilion on how AI adoption is reshaping alignment, trust, and accountability between sales and marketing teams — and what separates the teams thriving with AI from the teams straining under it.
Who was surveyed, and when?
603 full-time employees in the U.S. and U.K., all director-level or above in sales or marketing at B2B companies with 500 or more employees, and directly involved in GTM strategy, pipeline decisions, or revenue reporting. Fieldwork ran May 20 to June 15, 2026.
What separates the most-aligned teams from the least?
Adoption depth and ownership. Heavy, longer-tenured AI users report the highest alignment, trust, and confidence; light users still in pilot mode report the most friction. The technology is nearly identical across both groups — the depth of use, and whether someone owns AI performance, is what differs.
Is the report free to download?
Yes. The full report is available as a free PDF with no form fill required.
Methodology
Pavilion’s 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. who work at a B2B company with 500 or more employees. Respondents held a director-level or above role in sales or marketing and were directly involved in GTM strategy, pipeline decisions, or revenue reporting. The survey was conducted at a 95% confidence level with a ±4% margin of error.
Same Team, Different Game · A Kickstand × Pavilion Research Report · September 2026