What Works in Go-to-Market: The New Revenue Playbook

Go-to-market (GTM) and pricing now run as one system. The team shipping a feature and the team pricing it share one clock, and the gap between them is where revenue leaks. At Step SF 2026, Chargebee Chief Marketing & Growth Officer, Guy Marion joined Webflow Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Adrian Rosenkranz, and Scale Venture Partners’ Jeremy Kaufmann on a panel called “From Zero to Revenue: GTM Playbooks That Actually Work.” Brian Sparks, CEO of Silicon Valley Venture Corp, moderated. Here’s what they shared on stage at The Midway in San Francisco.

Watch the full Step SF 2026 panel for the complete conversation.

How Is AI Changing Go-to-Market Strategy?

Guy framed speed, rather than budget or headcount, as the variable that carries across categories.

“Everything is moving so fast. Speed is the only sustainable advantage now, since most categories and playbooks  are shifting and being redefined every few months. Agility and being able to read the data and get insight into what’s working, what’s not working is really critical.”

Jeremy described revenue curves that break the old math. “We’re looking at a market right now where last quarter a company added $2 million in new revenue. In this quarter, they added $9 million in new revenue. In the old SaaS world, you would have said that’s impossible.”

Much of it arrives before any sales call. Jeremy cited Menlo Ventures research: “If you think about the amount of AI revenue in the ecosystem today, a good chunk of it, about 40%, was individual, product-led growth revenue.”

Discovery moved too. “Going into 2026, our SEO and SEM source traffic dropped dramatically,” Guy said. “Yet LLM search traffic has increased and it converts at three times the rate. Basically 100% of well-researched B2B deals are being researched ahead of time now by buyers on ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini.”

Adrian saw the same shift at Webflow. “When I joined Webflow about 18 months ago, about 1% of traffic was AI traffic. Fast forward to today, it went from 1% to 18%.”

Why Pricing Has to Move at the Same Speed as the Product

Pricing that lags the product leaks expansion revenue. Guy called that lag this cycle’s blind spot.

“One of the blind spots that’s different now is that when companies launch products, it used to be you could kind of figure out pricing as you’re going. But now the companies that have been successful are the ones integrating tightly the usage and understanding of how to capture value. So, understanding the value metrics: are my customers  paying for enrichment, for consumption, for the workflow you’re driving?”

Under the Pricing as a Product framework, price points, metrics, and packaging ship on the same cadence as features. Usage-based pricing in Chargebee Billing meters what customers use, and usage-based pricing plus billing automation tripled T2D2’s revenue in 24 months.

Charging for Outcomes, Not Seats

Guy shared, “In a few cases companies are starting to be able to value based on the outcomes. You look at Fin (formerly Intercom), recently acquired by Salesforce, or Gorgias, a great customer of ours: they’re charging more for a ticket, a customer service ticket that’s been self-closed with AI, and they’re effectively able to charge based on outcomes because it’s attributable and autonomously being delivered.”

What GTM Mistakes Are Companies Making in an AI-Driven Market?

The most expensive blind spot is expecting technology to carry the work. “One of the hardest things is to just think that the technology is just going to help you do the job,” Adrian said. “You’re going to have to keep trying and attempting, and go back to the customer.”

Guy made the same point about tooling, starting from the question teams ask first: “What tool do I use? But what I want to say from my experience is: if you don’t have a system in place to then anchor a particular tool, no stack is going to work.”

Fix the system first: the motion, the weekly data read, and the decision it feeds.

How Do You Keep Customers When Switching Costs Keep Dropping?

Retention economics reward early attention. Guy said the best customers are the ones who signed up earliest and stayed the longest: “It costs five times less to retain a dollar than to acquire one.”

He drew on results from Brightback, now part of Chargebee Growth. “We were doing something new for the first time, which is presenting cancel offers at the moment of cancellation, and we deflect 23% of cancellations without frustrating users, through better offers and alternatives to cancellation.”

Adrian added, “You’re being judged not just on your end customers, but also on agents sent on their behalf who are judging you and providing feedback about you and your products.”

What This Means for Your Go-to-Market Playbook

Three GTM moves came out of the session:

1. Move at the speed your market redefines itself, reading weekly what converts.
2. Price against the value customers receive, using metrics your billing system can meter.
3. Protect revenue you already earned, since retaining a dollar costs a fraction of acquiring one.

Judgment is the scarce input. “For the first time ever, content production is no longer the limiting factor,” Guy said. “It’s judgment and taste and the ability to put forward unique points of view, and the trust that comes with that.”

Pricing that moves at product speed turns a shipped feature into billed revenue the same quarter.

Watch the full Step SF 2026 panel for the complete conversation.

See how Chargebee Growth helps you retain and expand the revenue you win.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Is AI Changing Go-to-Market Strategy Right Now?

Speed replaced budget and headcount as the main variable, according to the Step SF 2026 panel. Product-led adoption now drives a large share of new AI revenue, and buyers research vendors through assistants like ChatGPT before a sales conversation starts. Jeremy Kaufmann cited one company moving from $2 million to $9 million in new revenue across consecutive quarters.

Why Does Usage-Based Pricing Matter for Go-to-Market Motions Now?

Usage-based pricing ties what you charge to what customers consume or achieve, so revenue grows with adoption. Guy Marion pointed to Gorgias charging more for a support ticket closed autonomously by AI, an outcome that is measurable and attributable. A hybrid usage and seat pricing model lifted Kommunicate’s average revenue per customer and profitability by 40%.

What Are the Biggest Go-to-Market Blind Spots in an AI-Driven Market?

Buying tools before building the system that anchors them. Guy Marion said a stack works only when a system anchors each tool in it. Webflow CRO Adrian Rosenkranz added that technology takes a team part of the way, and the rest comes from repeated testing and returning to the customer.

How Do You Measure Customer Retention?

Track retained revenue against acquisition cost: retaining a dollar costs about one-fifth of acquiring one. Measure save rates at the cancel moment as well as logo counts. Marion’s own retention product, Brightback, deflected 23% of cancellations by presenting offers and alternatives at the point of cancellation.