Shift from Growth Hacking to Sustainable Strategies | GTM Crossroads Ep #5

GTM Crossroads Podcast Ep #05: The Shift from Growth Hacking to Sustainable Strategies

In the fifth episode of GTM Crossroads, RevPartners Creative Lead Rob Jones sits down with OutboundSync Founder Harris Kenny, and Octave Co-founder and CEO Zach Vidibor to discuss the evolving landscape of growth strategies, the importance of transparency and vulnerability in leadership, and the distinction between personalization and humanization in marketing.

They also get into the Amazon effect on B2B sales expectations and the necessity of thoughtful friction in sales interactions.

Check it out! 👇

5 Minute Rundown:

The Death of Nuance in GTM

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Harris: “To me, the only thing that's dead is nuance. I feel like nuance is dead and now it's like everyone's just trying to hack LinkedIn.”

The GTM landscape is changing fast, but the biggest casualty might not be cold calls or ebooks, it’s nuance. Sales, marketing, and growth conversations have become polarized into two extremes: “everything is dead” or “we’re crushing it.”

The reality is that success lies in the messy middle. Companies need honest conversations, experimentation, and a willingness to admit when something isn’t working without being afraid of how it looks.

Personalization vs. Humanization

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Zach: “I think for a long time, personalization became equated with, yeah, to your point, I got a variable token. Let me go find a bit of data and plug it in.”

Dropping a token into an email isn’t personalization, it’s automation. Buyers have wised up to AI-generated “custom” messaging that just scrapes LinkedIn posts and regurgitates talking points.

The real key is humanization, which is understanding the buyer’s world, having a strong hypothesis about their pain points, and speaking to them in a way that actually resonates.

Salespeople Aren’t Dead, Bad Sales Processes Are

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Zach: “Everybody knows there's like risk and software's tough, sh*t's gonna break, you know, like it's not all gonna work. But like, tell me, tell me where it's gonna kinda fail and like, I will trust you a thousand times more.”

Buyers today don’t want rigid, linear sales cycles; they want trust, transparency, and real conversations. While some think AI will replace sales, the reality is that great salespeople are more valuable than ever.

The best ones don’t just “sell”, they help buyers understand their own needs, ask the right questions, and guide them through complexity with honesty.

GTM Is Shrinking

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Harris: “I think that over the next, let's just say a couple of years, but moving forward, I think there will be fewer people in go-to-market orgs with more spend per person.”

The future of GTM orgs is fewer people with bigger responsibilities. Instead of bloated sales teams, companies will lean into automation, self-serve models, and highly specialized sales roles (think “GTM Engineers”).

This shift means that the humans left standing will focus on high-impact activities, like actual selling, strategic expansion, and customer success.

The Return of Brand: Why Trust Matters More Than Ever

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Zach: “I think like brand is coming back, you know, I think there's been an over-reliance on like tech and process and like everything is a science experiment.”

For years, marketing was all about data, automation, and hyper-targeting. But in a world driven by AI, brand is making a comeback. Buyers are looking for trust signals, real human connections, and communities they can believe in.

Companies that invest in brand, not just demand gen, will have a massive advantage in the next wave of GTM.

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