Building AI Agents Into Your Go-to-Market Teams

The New Reality for GTM Teams

The way we structure and operate our go-to-market teams is changing - fast. By 2028, Gartner predicts AI agents will be making 15% of all decisions autonomously. IDC estimates that global spending on agentic AI will grow from $400 million in 2024 to $4 billion by 2028, a staggering 68% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

This isn’t just a technological trend - it’s a paradigm shift. Buyers don’t want static playbooks, generic templates, or rigid sales frameworks anymore. They want seamless, intuitive, and personalised support, and AI agents are poised to deliver it.

This isn’t about replacing your sales reps. It’s about evolving them. We’re entering the age of the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) sales model, where salespeople - Omniscient Symbiotic Sellers (OSS) - orchestrate fleets of AI agents, stepping in only when human expertise and empathy are needed most.

This new framework changes everything. Let’s explore how to make it a reality for your teams.

Generative AI vs. Agentic AI: What’s the Difference?

Before we go further, let’s clear up a common misconception: not all AI is created equal.

• Generative AI is designed to respond to one-off prompts. It can write emails, summarise content, or create visuals, but it’s reactive, requiring constant input to function. Think of it as a skilled assistant who waits for instructions. Yes, you can set tasks that automate an action, but it still requires a prompt to achieve this.
• Agentic AI (AI Agents) takes things further. These systems are autonomous and proactive. They don’t just respond; they interpret, learn, and act on behalf of your team. For example, an AI agent can monitor buyer behaviour, predict needs, and send personalised follow-ups without human intervention.

The key difference? Reasoning. While generative AI creates outputs based on prompts, agentic AI reasons through scenarios, adapts to new information, and makes decisions. In a sales context, this means AI agents can interact directly with buyers, handle routine tasks, and escalate complex issues to a human when necessary.

Why Your Sales Process Isn’t Built for Buyers

If we’re being honest, most sales processes were designed to fit the seller’s needs, not the buyer’s. That’s a huge problem. Not every prospect is ready to buy. Most are looking for answers, clarity, or guidance to better understand their options.

Buyers Follow a Predictable Path (Even if It’s Messy)

Yes, buyers might jump back and forth - revisiting awareness or consideration phases - but their journey is still directionally predictable. They need insights to form an opinion on their current state, weigh their options, and decide whether change is worth pursuing.

The problem? Most sales processes are rigid, trying to force buyers into qualification calls or pre-defined frameworks that don’t align with where they actually are.

Stop Forcing Qualification Calls

Not every interaction requires a “qualification call.” (Seriously, what even is that?) Buyers aren’t thinking, “Let me hop on a call to explain myself so you can decide if I’m worth your time.” Instead, they’re wondering: “Can you help me understand my problem? Do you have insights that make sense of this?” We should be pre-qualifying companies before we ask them for their time and after 45 minutes we’ve ticked our boxes of having a meeting, but they’re still without answers.

This is where AI agents come in. They can provide buyers with answers, tools, and resources without requiring human intervention. Meanwhile, OSS reps can save their energy for high-impact conversations when buyers are ready to engage more deeply.

The Role of the OSS & Why Humans Aren’t Going Anywhere

Machines aren’t taking over. What’s happening is a redistribution of effort - AI handles repetitive tasks, and the OSS focuses on strategy, empathy, and building trust.

The Orchestrator of the Ecosystem

Your job isn’t to do everything - it’s to direct everything. As the OSS, you’ll:

• Deploy AI agents strategically across the buyer journey.
• Use insights gathered by agents to inform your approach.
• Step in when complexity or nuance demands a human touch.

Think of yourself as the orchestrator of a symphony, ensuring every tool and agent is aligned to create a seamless experience.

Stepping In for the Complex Stuff

When things get messy - like navigating multi-stakeholder negotiations - you’ll step in. The OSS isn’t just a seller; they’re the human advocate. They build trust, address nuanced concerns, and pivot when the situation calls for it.

So no, you’re not being replaced - you’re being elevated.

Building AI Agents Into Your GTM Teams

Integrating AI agents into your GTM teams requires more than just plugging in new technology. Here’s how to approach it strategically:

Start with Use Cases

Focus on areas where AI agents can deliver immediate value, such as:

• Lead qualification.
• Automating follow-ups based on buyer signals.
• Monitoring post-sale adoption and surfacing expansion opportunities.

Enable Your Reps for AI Collaboration

Reps need to know how to work with AI agents. Enablement materials should include:

• Agent capabilities: What agents can and can’t do.
• Orchestration frameworks: When to intervene and when to let the agent lead.
• Feedback systems: How to refine agent performance based on buyer interactions.

A New Era of Collaboration

The buyer journey can no longer be an adversarial, translucent hand-to-hand combat between buyers and sellers. It’s a collaborative ecosystem of interactions between buyers, AI agents, and OSS reps.?

AI as the Buyer’s Guide

Buyers will engage with AI agents as much (if not more) than they interact with humans. Agents will:

• Provide real-time recommendations.
• Track progress and next steps.
• Suggest ways to maximise post-purchase value.

The OSS as the Buyer’s Advocate

While AI agents do the legwork, OSS reps guide buyers through high-stakes decisions, ensuring they feel supported and confident. This shift isn’t about selling - it’s about partnering.

Challenges You’ll Face

Building AI agents into your team isn’t without challenges. Here are the key hurdles:

1. Organisational buy-in: Convincing stakeholders to invest in AI requires a clear business case. Make your life easy by surfacing key use cases from simple to more complex.
2. Balancing buyer preferences: Not all buyers will embrace AI agents immediately. You’ll need to balance human touch-points with agent-led interactions. You will also need to proactively educate your buyers on what the future of commerce looks like so they come on the journey with you. Today, companies innovating in this way (buyers) will be rewarded and recognised. This is also a status play!
3. Building vs. buying: Decide whether to develop AI agents internally or purchase off-the-shelf solutions. I’d advise engaging with your CRM and office suite providers to also check their new capabilities.?

Action Plan for GTM Leaders

1. Get your business on board: Identify use cases and start small to demonstrate impact.
2. Learn from your buyers: Understand their preferences while educating them on the benefits of agent-led interactions.
3. Develop internal capabilities: Build the skills and expertise needed to manage and refine AI agents. This is not optional. This is a real case of first-mover advantage
4. Drive adoption: Train your team to work with AI and create feedback loops for continuous improvement. Create an AI culture. Check out what Holiday Extras have been doing with OpenAI

The Future is Collaborative

Integrating AI agents into GTM teams isn’t just a tech upgrade, it’s pretty transformational. Done right, it will lead to smarter workflows, better buyer experiences, and stronger relationships.

The question isn’t if you’ll adopt AI - it’s how you’ll build it into your strategy.

Recommended reading

Winning by Design: In 2025, AI won’t just assist salespeople – it will replace them.

UI Path: 2025 UiPath AI and Automation Trends

The Omnicient Symbiotic Seller: The next iteration of sales