Do you know how to restructure your go-to-market (GTM) org chart as AI drives smaller teams, greater automation, and higher expectations for technical expertise?
As documented in The Future of GTM in the Age of AI, the SaaS sector’s traditional GTM structure is rapidly becoming obsolete, ultimately reshaping the revenue model established by earlier generations of technology leaders.
This blog explores the forces driving this shift and what the next generation of tech sales team structures will look like.
How SaaS Built GTM Teams Before
In the early 2000s, enterprise technology was sold by small, highly compensated field teams. These teams were typically made up of relationship-driven professionals from large companies like IBM and Oracle who managed broad territories through long cycles and white-glove service.
Salesforce disrupted this model in the late 2000s by flattening sales hierarchies and replacing field reps with agile inside sales teams that used automation to move faster and cover more accounts.
The 2010s extended that model into the SaaS era: larger teams, segmented functions, heavy inbound pipelines, and a clear career ladder from SDR (Sales Development Representative) to AE (Account Executive) to Sales Manager and beyond. Responsibilities were clearly defined and everyone knew their lane, creating a system that rewarded volume, speed, and coverage.
Though the cracks had already started showing, the 2020s made it clear that the traditional way was not working as intended any more. Economic headwinds forced mass layoffs and froze new talent acquisition for many companies, disrupting the existing team structure template.
Many organizations stopped hiring SDRs, leaving Account Executives to take on lead generation while Sales Managers and VPs handled account management and deal closing. For many companies, this approach proved challenging, if not impossible, to scale. Meanwhile, AI was beginning to make waves, both compounding and alleviating many of these trends.
The fast-growing generative artificial intelligence sector is now creating unprecedented opportunities for automation, further diminishing the SDR pipeline. However, it is also transforming the tech industry’s vision of the unicorn seller persona, giving way to a new model of AI-powered sales centered on agent management.
Our research confirms what the market has been signaling for years: the standard SaaS seller persona is in decline and being replaced by technical unicorns. Even non-technical AEs are expected to have product knowledge at this point. This role will eventually give way to more experienced Enterprise Account Executives (EAEs) and Sales Engineers (SEs) who can communicate with decision-makers at a deeper technical and functional level.
Five Forces Behind this Structural Shift for Tech Sales
Several shifts are making the current sales team structure untenable for AI-era selling. These key trends stick out the most:
1. Trust is now the hardest thing to earn, and the most important.
Tech sales today face a growing trust gap. Across SaaS, buyers have become increasingly skeptical after years of crowded markets and overpromised solutions. The emerging AI sector is beginning to face similar dynamics following the post-pandemic surge in new vendors.
AI companies also suffer from how much process knowledge lives in people’s heads instead of in documented workflows. This makes it difficult to demonstrate how AI can automate business processes without significant upfront discovery and implementation work.
The sales professionals who win in this environment extract that unwritten institutional knowledge by building genuine trust with prospect decision-makers. This requires deep technical fluency to ask thoughtful questions, understand how systems interconnect, and identify where data gaps exist.
2. The buyer wants answers, not just dinner.
Modern software buyers bring more technical knowledge than ever before, with purchasing decisions increasingly made by IT professionals, data scientists, and engineers. They proactively investigate the product and bring specific implementation questions and architectural concerns to initial conversations.
As a result, traditional sales reps trained to cultivate relationships through entertainment and events are going to struggle to facilitate productive discussions. Building relationships in this environment centers on the seller’s ability to understand the buyer’s technical pain points and propose effective solutions.
3. AI is eliminating spray-and-pray outreach.
AI has upended the era of large-scale cold outreach. This technology enables GTM teams to automate repetitive prospecting tasks, including identifying product fit. In many cases, a single operator running automated outbound systems can replace what once required an entire SDR team.
Automation has not yet replaced sophisticated technical discovery, deep product knowledge, and the credibility required to earn a seat in real buying conversations.
4. Technical sales is becoming sales.
This is the most consequential shift. Even standard Account Executive job descriptions now demand greater technical understanding and deeper product knowledge than ever before.
In the AI sector specifically, SEs have replaced AEs as frontline sellers. Career paths that once led from Sales Engineer to product management or customer success are now pointing directly toward sales leadership. The people managing sales teams will increasingly arrive there from technical roles, not traditional sales.
5. Sales teams are getting smaller, and the remaining roles are paying more.
Teams may become 2-10x smaller than today’s organizations at comparable revenue levels. In this model, each rep splits their time between building relationships and managing two to eight AI agents responsible for research, outreach, follow-up, and data analysis. The reduction in headcount is less about cost-cutting and more a structural result of how these leaner, more automated teams operate.
Technical sales roles like Sales Engineers and Enterprise AEs command significantly higher compensation packages than their counterparts did five years ago. Senior SEs, for example, now reach compensation levels that approach or surpass those of senior AEs. The gap between specialized technical sellers and generalist sales candidates continues to widen as the talent pool shrinks relative to demand.
What the New GTM Org Chart Looks Like in Tech
Our research maps out the role-by-role transformation already underway across the technology industry.
Roles being replaced by AI agents:
- SDR / BDR
- SMB Account Executive
- Mid-Market Account Executive
Automated systems are increasingly handling the tasks that defined these roles, such as high-volume outreach, follow-up sequences, and early-stage qualification. GTM Engineers are building workflows that accomplish these tasks at greater speed and scale, and the hiring data reflects it. SDR and BDR posting volumes have declined. Meanwhile, demand for the roles managing and building those automated systems has grown sharply.
Roles that will survive but transform dramatically:
- Enterprise AE (EAE) – This role will still exist, but expect roughly 10x fewer positions. The EAEs who remain will be technical sellers who can meaningfully contribute to architecture discussions and lead complex, multi-stakeholder deals.
- Channel/Partner Sales – Expect roughly half as many positions. Remaining professionals will function as technical relationship builders rather than traditional partner managers.
- VP of Sales – Leaders will increasingly come from technical backgrounds. They will often serve as VPs of Sales Engineering and focus on proving the value of AI solutions to prospects.
Roles that will be created or elevated:
- Sales Ops vs GTM Engineers – While the sales operation function will remain, it will transition into GTM Engineering. The focus will be on maintaining and improving the AI agents involved in the sales motion.
- Sales Engineer / Solutions Architect vs Accounts Executives – These roles will lead sales conversations rather than supporting AEs.
The entry-level reality:
Traditional on-ramps into tech sales, such as SDR programs, BDR teams, and junior AE pipelines, will likely not survive this transition. We predict models similar to those used by firms like Bain or McKinsey will replace these programs.
These models rely on associate roles to support senior positions. They are also treated as long-term talent investments rather than immediate revenue generators. This could create more opportunities for recent graduates than what currently exists. However, adopting this system will require tech companies to rethink talent development in ways they have historically resisted.
The Window for Your Team to Act is Narrowing
The talent pool for the roles that will survive this transition was already undersized before most companies recognized they needed them. Every company that delays restructuring is competing for the same shrinking pool against companies that have already built the infrastructure to find that talent.
Betts Recruiting has spent more than 15 years helping technology companies build go-to-market teams through every major shift in how software is sold, and this is the fastest and most consequential transition yet.
Contact Betts here to discover how our specialized approach can help you build the sales team your organization needs to scale successfully.