ForgeX Executive Council 5.15.26

AGENDA

How do mature AI organizations look, sound, and operate differently from the rest, and what the council should take away from it.

01 ForgeX Updates

02 AI in ABM Benchmark Data Review

03 Group Discussion

5-min Survey: Targeting & prioritization

(Accounts, Buying Groups, Contacts)

01 FROM THE BOARD / VC / PE

AI is now a board-level question.

02 FROM THE MARKET

Competitors are building AI practices.

03 FROM THE TEAM

Teams have differing degrees of AI skills and adoption.

FORGEX

Marketing leadership is feeling pressure from three directions.

The ForgeX AI in GTM Maturity Model™

“More Mature” “Less Mature”

No Org is Fully Here (Yet)

*Use cases vs. Strategy

Should we consider adding another box between “emerging” and “operationalizing”? Perhaps called “Formalizing”? This is where the organization prioritizes specific use cases, decides which tools to use, works on governance, starts building the strategy…

You can hear the maturity in the verbs.

LESS MATURE MORE MATURE trying 78

figure out 17

testing 9

exploring 9

pilot 4

demo 4

experimenting 3

play with 2

build 69

roadmap 42

workflows 34

scale 23

implement 22

enablement 9

framework 9

governance 2

Staying behind has a real price

LOW PERFORMERS HIGH PERFORMERS

23% Have a defined AI roadmap 59%

51% Expect strong AI gains in next 12 months 88%

2.4 channels Average AI channels deployed 3.7 channels

Justify AI value Primary strategic challenge Scale AI execution

Source: ForgeX 2026 AI in ABM Benchmark Survey.

The difference is not what mature companies do. It is how they organize.

DIMENSION

1. AI Strategy

2. Practice Ownership

3. Tool Environment

4. Enablement Model

5. Use Case Discipline

6. Implementation Depth

10 / 16

AI Strategy

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

Roadmap ● No defined AI roadmap. ● Adoption is opportunistic and

vendor-led.

● A defined AI roadmap, owned and revisited regularly.

Sequencing ● Use cases stacked, not sequenced. ● Tools chosen before strategy.

● Use cases sequenced by priority and revenue impact. and risk

Fit with ABM plan

● AI initiatives sit outside the ABM operating plan.

● AI roadmap is part of the ABM operating plan, not parallel to it.

Tooling logic ● Decision fatigue. ● The “blank page” problem persists. ● Tooling decisions follow the roadmap

"There is no governance across the org. There is no governance across even my team. I am just going, everyone, explore on your own, figure out how you best use it." VP Marketing · Employee Recognition SaaS

11 / 16

Practice Ownership

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

Named owner ● No named AI owner inside marketing or GTM. ● A named AI lead inside the GTM org.

Knowledge ● Expertise is local to individuals. Knowledge does not institutionalize.

● Governance, prompt libraries, and reuse are deliberate.

Org structure ● Best work lives in one person's tabs and prompts.

● A Center of Excellence or task force with executive sponsorship.

"A competitor of ours had been hiring for an AI lead and it just got filled. A company about our size is building out their AI practice. We are behind." Director, Demand Generation · Employee Recognition SaaS

12 / 16

Tool Environment

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

Sanctioned stack

● The team uses whatever they can access elsewhere.

● A sanctioned LLM or LLM-based tools with the right plan for the use cases.

System connectors

● No connectors into CRM, content, or account data.

● MCP and API connectors into CRM, content, and account data.

Procurement visibility

● Shadow AI on personal licenses. ● Procurement does not see it.

● Procurement aware of the AI tool category and the budget logic.

Tool / workflow fit

● Data debt exposed by AI but never addressed.

● Tool decisions tied to specific funded workflows.

"We have Copilot internally. That is what we are told to use. Meanwhile team members kind of go off and use whatever they want. It is fragmented."

ABM Manager · Employee Recognition SaaS

13 / 16

Enablement Model

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

Format ● Training is a one-time event. ● License equals enablement.

● Tiered curriculum by role and use case.

● Star players plus competent floor.

Skill distribution

● Skill levels and outputs are uneven across the team.

● Office hours, internal certifications, and prompt libraries.

Focus ● Workshops promise transformation in 30 minutes.

● Enablement tied to specific workflows, not generic AI literacy.

Quality standards

● Front-end speed lost to back-end QA on AI outputs.

● Human-in-the-loop standards defined per use case.

"You have your star players. And then you have the rest of the team who needs to use it without investing huge amounts of time in the core technology. Both matter."

14 / 16

Use Case Discipline

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

Pilot volume ● Many small pilots. Few make it to production.

● Two or three priority workflows funded end to end.

Measurement ● Outputs get measured. Outcomes do not.

● Each workflow tied to a revenue outcome, not an activity metric.

Selection process

● Vanity metrics. Volume of content, posts sent, blogs generated.

● A strategic prioritization process that brings the team along.

Lifecycle ● Quality drift toward whatever is easiest to count.

● Use cases retired when they stop producing pipeline impact.

"Volume over outcomes seems to be the approach right now. In the world of ABM that is what we need to push back on. ABM was always about engagement, not output."

15 / 16

Implementation Depth

MARKER LESS MATURE MORE MATURE

System placement

● AI runs parallel to the systems. ● Copy and paste into the CRM.

● AI signals flow into Slack, Salesforce, Marketo, and outreach tooling.

● “Headless” via MCP

Workflow triggers

● Outputs do not trigger downstream actions.

● Personalized assets generated and uploaded automatically.

Scale pattern ● Personalization at scale remains aspirational.

● Programmatic ABM personalization across hundreds of accounts.

"Every contact click flows to the BDR team within 24 hours. Personalized landing pages upload to the CRM. The team calls it autopilot."

Head of ABM · Enterprise Workflow SaaS

16 / 16

5-min Survey: Targeting & prioritization

(Accounts, Buying Groups, Contacts)