The New Divide: Why the Future of GTM Belongs to Companies Who Master Data + AI

At OpsStars 2025, HG Insights’ Francis Brero and Avalara’s Mike Marek showcased a new reality for go-to-market leaders:

AI isn’t evening the playing field — it’s widening the gap between those who operationalize it and those still experimenting on the sidelines.

The companies mastering data-driven automation today aren’t just becoming more efficient. They’re redefining execution speed, personalization, and precision at a level that laggards may never fully catch.

When Strategy Meets Experimentation

HG Insights’ Co-founder and CRO Francis Brero opened the OpsStars 2025 session with a clear challenge: stop talking about AI in theory — start operationalizing it.

That message came to life through Mike Marek, Director of AI Go-to-Market and Value Engineering at Avalara, whose experimentation turned one of the world’s largest tax automation companies into an AI-powered GTM machine.

Mike didn’t wait for perfect governance frameworks or fully mapped data models. He started where he could — giving every Avalara employee access to ChatGPT and n8n, a no-code automation builder. From there, he built what many RevOps leaders are still dreaming about: an AI-driven GTM motion that runs itself.

“Some of the GPTs exploded, some took off — and some were amazing,” Mike said. “DiscoGPT was one of the good ones.”

Building a GTM Engine That Thinks

DiscoGPT, Avalara’s custom sales assistant, became the foundation for agentic automation across teams. It researches accounts, summarizes insights, and drafts personalized outreach for reps — all powered by data flowing from HG Insights (formerly MadKudu), 6sense, and ZoomInfo, unified in Snowflake.

But Mike’s boldest move was automating outbound motion itself.

His workflow, aptly named “Match for Outbound,” uses intent, technographic, and scoring data to rank accounts nightly and deliver reps a ready-to-send email with pre-personalized insights.

“The AI gets us about 80 percent there,” Mike explained. “The rest is personalization by the rep.”

That 80/20 rule became Avalara’s productivity breakthrough — the point where automation and authenticity meet.

The Data Foundation That Separates Leaders from Laggards

Francis emphasized a truth that many teams overlook: AI without connected data is just noise.

Agentic AI is only as powerful as the signals it draws from. The more unified and enriched your data foundation, the smarter and more scalable your automation becomes.

That’s where HG Insights gives organizations a decisive edge.

Our Revenue Growth Intelligence Fabric provides the deep, AI-driven datasets that make automation reliable and predictive — not just reactive.

95 % match rate across firmographic, technographic, spend, and intent data
20 billion+ data points powering the most comprehensive buyer intelligence available
Seamless delivery into CRMs, MDMs, and data lakes for immediate GTM activation

The result? Reps spend less time chasing incomplete data and more time acting on the highest-propensity accounts — with confidence and precision.

“Connected intelligence is the new competitive advantage,” Francis said. “AI agents are only as smart as the data that fuels them.”

The Compounding Advantage of Early Adoption

What Avalara built isn’t just an automation success story — it’s a warning shot to the market.

The early adopters who unify data + AI today will compound advantages across every GTM motion:

Faster response cycles as AI triggers follow-ups in real time
Higher conversion rates through hyper-relevant personalization
Stronger governance and security via on-prem agentic frameworks
Shorter procurement cycles that keep stacks agile in a fast-moving market

Meanwhile, companies still debating “if” or “when” to operationalize AI are quietly ceding ground. Every workflow automated, every rep trained, every dataset connected — these are advantages that multiply over time.

Fearless Creativity, Grounded in Data

Mike’s story resonates because it blends fearless experimentation with grounded intelligence.

Francis provided the vision. Mike brought it to life. Together, they proved that scaling AI isn’t about chasing hype — it’s about embedding automation where it drives real value, powered by data you can trust.

And that trust is where HG Insights comes in.

The Takeaway

AI isn’t democratizing GTM success — it’s polarizing it.

Those who master the marriage of data + AI will pull ahead faster than anyone can catch. Those who don’t will find themselves competing on guesswork while their peers automate their way to precision and growth.

The secret sauce behind every winning GTM automation agent isn’t just the workflow — it’s the data source.