Today, B2B tech sales cycles are like driving supercars built without bolts. As reps fly down the highway, bits and pieces fall off, the engine clangs and sputters, and the car eventually decelerates to a stop. The only thing keeping these reps chugging along is the pit crew: your one $150k/yr GTM engineer who duct-tapes and super-glues the engine to the chassis, the exhaust pipe to the muffler, and keeps the car running. One stretch of highway without your crew, and the car is barely drivable.
It's not that the individual components are flawed; the issue is that there is no way to connect all of its parts. This supercar is your GTM stack, a faulty wired system of some of the most powerful sales tools on the market. Your average sales rep is using 8 different tools while 20k+ vendors are emailing and calling them, trying to sell them a 9th.
We're giving our best drivers a half-built car and expecting them to go 100 mph.
Today, I break down what a GTM stack is to begin with, why, for most businesses, it's hurting, not helping — and how to know if yours is working against you.
01 What is a GTM stack, anyway?
A GTM (go-to-market) tech stack is the set of software tools a company uses to find, reach, convert, and retain customers — spanning CRM, sales engagement, marketing automation, data/intent, enrichment, and analytics. GTM stacks are often confused with martech (marketing technology) stacks, but GTM is a broader category of tools used for any revenue-generating motion; martech is a subset of GTM that includes tools specifically used for marketing.
Most modern GTM stacks contain 6 layers. Click through them below — and then hit Unified to see the difference between a stack and a system.
6 tools · 5 seams · 1 engineer holding it together
These 6 tools are hand-assembled by a dedicated GTM engineer, so any prospect can be found, contacted, and recorded in the system. Sounds like a dream, right? Wrong. The mass volume of tools, integrated one by one, has left companies with more problems than solutions.
02 The explosion, then the flatline
The martech landscape alone grew from ~150 tools in 2011 to 15,384 in 2025 — 100× in 15 years. In 2025, decision makers had to choose between over 15k tools, all with the same functionality, all VC-backed, all spending millions in marketing to get you to buy their product. In 2026, growth flatlined: between the spring of 2025 and now, there's only been a +0.79% increase in martech tools available — effectively zero. The real insight is in the heavy churn underneath: ~1,488 tools added to the market, ~1,367 killed.
martech tools on the market in 2025 — up from ~150 in 2011
category growth in 15 years — every channel spawned 50+ vendors
growth since spring 2025. The explosion just flatlined
Over the past decade, every new sales channel created a new product category, and every new category spawned 50+ vendors all competing for the same market share. Buyers assembled their stacks one by one as new technologies emerged, and no one built and sold the underlying architecture for it all. That's why there's been such a sharp drop in tool creation: buyers are too overwhelmed by choice and disillusioned by less-than-ideal results to seek new products. People are tired of finding new tools — they want the results they were promised. The plateau is exposing the infrastructure problems that were always there.
03 Half the stack goes unused
The data backs this thesis. A Gartner analysis shows that GTM tech utilization has been steadily dropping: 58% (2020) → 42% (2022) → 33% (2023). In 2025, utilization rates are back up to 49% — but this still means businesses are only using half of what they pay for, costing them millions in enterprise accounts that go underutilized.
of paid GTM tech actually utilized (2025)
of sales reps feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they use
overwhelmed sellers are 45% less likely to hit their quotas
of a rep's time is spent actually selling — the rest feeds the tools
Not only are people not using what they pay for, but the sheer volume of tools makes sellers worse. A 2024 survey showed that 72% of sales reps feel "overwhelmed" by the amount of tools they use, and calculated that overwhelmed sellers are 45% less likely to hit their quotas. A Salesforce survey of 7,700+ sales professionals showed that reps spend only about 28% of their time actually selling; the rest is performing mundane data entry so that every tool stays up to date.
The worst part of it all is that most organizations are aware of this but simply don't know how to fix it. Salesforce reported that 84% of teams have no unified plan to consolidate their stack — yet 9 out of 10 sales orgs have leadership that wants stack consolidation. What companies really need isn't more tools, it's less — complete with architecture to contain and connect it all.
04 What a unified stack actually looks like
So what does a unified GTM stack actually look like in practice? One source of state: every signal — CRM, engagement, intent, product usage, conversations — resolves to one account record. Context flows to the point of contact: an AI writing an email should see everything, not one slice coming from one tool. Consolidation shouldn't be confused with fewer features; it's fewer seams — functionality stays, and efficiency and productivity increase.
This is the kind of architecture we're building at gtm/os: one operating system that connects your fragmented stack so your sellers can keep selling, you can actually use the tools you pay for, and your outreach actually works. gtm/os replaces your pit crew by redesigning the factory to begin with — building supercars that stay connected and drive fast. Throw out the duct tape and super glue. Keep your car together, keep driving, and keep selling.
Six tools. Zero seams. One operating system.
See what your GTM stack looks like when every signal resolves to one account record — and your reps get back to selling.
Get your market read →The personalization arms race is over. The data-unification war just started.→