‘Tis the season–for the holidays, yes, but also for the surge in content centered on predicting where the business landscape is heading in the coming year. As usual, I’ll play along. This year, I have some strong opinions on the topic, informed by deep immersion in the world of startups and much research. To that end, here’s what I expect to see in the next year.
- The Rise of One Centralized Leader
Recently, many companies have been creating a chief partner officer (CPO) role–and I’m absolutely against it. All it does is create yet another silo. Instead, it’s my hope that all go-to-market (GTM) aspects of businesses will become centralized under a single leader: the chief growth officer.
This would mean that departmental-based org charts would be replaced by functional leadership structures. If all functions of GTM get consolidated under one leader, everything from partnerships to revenue outcomes will be vastly improved.
- The Path to Partnership Remains the Same
While some things always change, the path to solid partnership will stay constant. As always, it must be based on tangible customer interest, utilization, and value creation. The first step should always be customer design partners, rather than back-room strategy and hand wringing.
By prioritizing direct customer feedback and collaboration, teams can ensure they’re delivering true value, rather than getting lost in internal processes that don’t drive results.
- AI Gets Adopted Further, Evolves & Presents New Opportunities
The adoption of AI will continue to grow–no surprise there–especially in the area of administrative alleviation. But beyond this, the technology offers a significant opportunity to clearly understand and improve the strength of relationships within an organization.
Right now, it’s inefficient to rely on one person or a small team to track opportunities and manage relationships. Instead, the whole organization should focus on working together. AI can facilitate this by identifying important opportunities that come from strong relationships by looking at both data and communication across different systems within the company.
- An Increase in Tech and Service partnerships
I’ve always believed in service providers serving a critical role in supporting business’ technology use, which is what my company LeadMD was built around. Today, and into 2025, I expect to see more and more of this.
The best technology firms will work alongside services firms to create dedicated practices or lines of business as a result of their software. In turn, services firms will bring technology partners into their services that were previously standalone. This bidirectional synergy is really important to the success of all parties involved, and I think we’ll see this practice continue to grow.
Final Thoughts
It’s always interesting to predict what’s coming next in the B2B SaaS world–and overall business landscape more generally. In 2025, I don’t expect to see a lot of major shakeups.
Instead, I believe we’ll see savvy leaders apply what they’ve learned through trial and error, make smarter decisions (like consolidating all GTM functions under one leader), rely on technology and partnerships strategically, and pair tech with the right services.
If they do, they can look forward to greater internal alignment, cohesion, and accelerated growth. You know, that thing we’ve been chasing for decades?
