AI and martech dominate most conversations right now, but many companies skip a basic step: asking what they’re trying to achieve.
Teams move fast to adopt new platforms. They automate tasks, add more data, roll out new features and workflows. On paper it looks like progress. In practice, it often creates noise. You end up with a stack that’s bigger than your strategy and more activity than intent.
I see this pattern in many organizations. The pace of AI makes people feel they need to act immediately. Leaders push for quick wins. Teams feel pressure to show movement. With that mindset, it’s easy to forget the one question that makes everything clearer: What problem are we solving and for whom?
When you pause and anchor the work around outcomes, the conversation changes. You shift from “Which tool should we buy?” to “How will this help our customers and our business?” You stop chasing features and start building capability that matters. You also get better alignment across marketing, sales, and product, because everyone sees the same goal.
So, what questions should you ask:
- Instead of implementing a tool and hoping it increases leads, define the goal first. Ask: Which customers or accounts should we focus on, and what does success look like?
- Before creating multiple automation workflows, identify the intended outcome. Ask: What action do we want our customers to take, and how will sales use this data?
- When adopting AI features, consider the decision it’s supporting. Ask: Which choices or processes will this make faster or more accurate?
Actionable checklist for your team:
- Define the outcome first: What problem are we solving and for whom?
- Anchor tools to impact: Will this platform or feature directly support that outcome?
- Simplify workflows: Less activity, more focus on meaningful touchpoints.
- Align across functions: Marketing, sales, and product should see the same goal.
- Test, measure, iterate: Start small, learn quickly, and adjust based on real results.
AI and martech only work when you treat them as long-term capabilities, not quick upgrades. You need clarity on what you want them to become inside your organization. Ask yourself if this will be part of your daily work in one year. Ask if you have the people, time, and budget to make it valuable. If the answer is no, the problem isn’t the tech. It’s the lack of commitment behind it.
Many teams underestimate the ongoing investment needed to make AI and martech pay off. Buying the tool is easy. Using it well takes structure, ownership, and process. Before you roll out anything new, pause and ask if you are ready to support it. If the intention is short-term, the outcome will be short-term. Long-term value comes only when you decide that this capability matters enough to build into your ways of working.
AI and martech should support a shared direction, not replace it. The companies that progress are the ones that stay curious, stay grounded, and keep asking the same question at every stage: What are we trying to achieve? Simple, but often the first thing lost in the rush to adopt the next new thing.
I’ve been on the customer side for over 20 years and now work at Luxid as Strategic Marketing and Sales Consultant. I’ve seen programs succeed and fail, and I’ve made my own mistakes along the way. That experience shapes how I work with customer teams today. I start by understanding what they want to achieve and how they plan to get there. From there, I guide them toward decisions that create lasting value instead of more tools. The goal is always the same: clarity first, tech second.
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