GTM 2030: What Happens When Setup Disappears

Sometimes I really wonder what GTM will look like in 2030.

Five years ago, outbound felt simple. We were sending emails with HubSpot and a basic infrastructure. Templates were repetitive. Personalization meant dropping in “Hi {FirstName}, as {Position} of…” and moving on.

Three years back, Smartlead and Instantly were everywhere. They became the standard for cold email infrastructure.

Last year, Clay came onto the scene and changed the personalization and signal game. Suddenly data felt more alive. But even then, we were still manually setting up DMARC records, warming inboxes, and piecing together flows.

Today, that part is gone. Nobody sets up DMARC manually anymore. Tools like Zapmail handle it. Now GTM teams are building with custom signals, AI agents, and workflow tools like N8N and Make com. Entire GTM flows are stitched into automation. It is fast. It is clean.

That is where we are now. But the question is not about today. The question is about tomorrow. What happens when setup is no longer a differentiator?

Look closely and you can see the trend. Every year, the barriers of setup get thinner.

The painful parts of GTM used to be technical. Buying and warming inboxes. Setting up DNS records. Stitching tools together with duct tape. Now all of that is automated in the background. Soon, it will not even be a thought.

A year from now, I imagine saying to an agent: “Find 10 domains, warm up 30 inboxes, build the campaign, analyze the client’s use cases.” And the system will do it. No manual setup. No wasted time.

If that is true, then the question is obvious. If setup disappears, what remains?

The real edge will not be in who sets things up faster. That race is ending.

The edge will come from the way you understand buyers. The way you interpret signals. The way you tell a story that feels personal, even when the infrastructure is fully automated.

Signals will matter more than lists. Lists are static snapshots. Signals show when someone is moving, when a need is alive. If you can read those moments better than your competitors, you will win.

Trust will matter even more. Buyers are savvier. They know how to protect their inboxes. They use tools to filter noise. Automation alone will not break through. The conversations that feel real, the ones that show you understand the pain and timing, those are the ones that convert.

Positioning will become the sharpest weapon. Everyone will have the same tools.

The difference will be how clearly you can explain who you are for, why you matter, and why now.

It is easy to believe in the dream of fully autonomous AI SDRs. I do not buy it, at least not soon. Current systems still break when the task is complex. They hallucinate, they forget, they get lost in context.

It is also easy to believe that “AI agents” will reinvent everything overnight. But if you strip away the marketing, most of it is workflow automation with some probabilistic steps added in. Automation has existed for decades. The difference is that now it is faster, smarter, and easier to connect.

That is progress. But it is not magic. It only shifts the game. The advantage will not be the system. It will be the person who knows how to use the system to deliver trust and relevance.

In 2025, this is what GTM looks like…

One year from now, maybe this setup would just be a prompt.

You will ask, the system will act, and the campaign will launch. The line between pros and amateurs will not be who can configure the tools. It will be who can design the sharper strategy.

Five years from now, the process itself might disappear. Outbound as we know it may not exist. Channels could blur together. 

Email, social, communities, product surfaces could merge into orchestrated conversations. Buyers might not experience outreach as separate messages at all. They might experience it as a journey that adapts around them.

If that future is real, then the constant is clear. Tools fade. Judgment compounds. The companies that build around signals, trust, and positioning will separate themselves even more from the rest.

The past five years were defined by infrastructure. The next five years will be defined by understanding.

Setup is disappearing. What remains is strategy. What remains is customer insight. What remains is the ability to create a moment of relevance that does not feel automated.

So I will leave you with the same question that has been on my mind.

Where do you think GTM is going, one year from now? Five years? What changes do you see coming?

See you next Wednesday!
—David