SBI | GTM Insights

Accelerating Executive Impact: Why Time-to-Productivity Is Now a GTM Metric

Written by Tony Erickson | Oct 3, 2025 6:14:50 AM

If you’re stepping into a new commercial leadership role, you’re not being given time to learn the business. The expectation on you is to change it. 
 
Today’s go-to-market leaders face pressure not just to build strategy, but to create immediate commercial momentum. Your ramp time isn’t an onboarding metric anymore, it’s a business risk indicator. 
 
In a recent SBI podcast with Nicole Rogas, President of RevSpring, we discussed how high-performing executives accelerate their time to impact. We also talked about how AI is quietly becoming a ramp-time accelerant offering sharper visibility, faster context transfer, and more informed decisions in the critical first 90 days. 
 
The message was clear: fast starts drive better outcomes. And for today’s executives it’s execution, not orientation, that defines success. 

The Executive Ramp Problem: Still Too Slow, Still Too Manual

Despite more visibility and enablement tools than ever before, most GTM executives still experience a 6–12 month ramp before delivering material impact. 
 
Here’s the issue: growth can’t wait that long. 
 
SBI’s most recent conversations with CEOs reveal that: 

  • Fewer than 1 in 3 new GTM leaders feel equipped to make informed strategic decisions in their first 60 days.
  • Execution velocity, not strategy, is the most common reason new initiatives stall.
  • Critically, many executives lack access to the data and decision frameworks that would allow them to accelerate performance early. 

The result is a frustrating paradox: smart, capable leaders, trapped in slow-motion starts. 

 

What High-Performing Executives Do Differently 

As a new GTM executive, you’ve been hired to deliver outcomes. The board isn’t grading your onboarding checklist, they’re measuring your ability to: 

  • Uncover hidden friction in the commercial engine.
  • Align teams to a growth path.
  • Deliver visible progress before the next board meeting. 

The truth is, your first 90 days will shape how your organization views your leadership for the next 900. 

From our advisory work with hundreds of commercial leaders, a few consistent patterns emerge in how the most successful GTM executives close the ramp-time gap. 

  1. They Prioritize Learning That Drives Decisions 
    High-performing executives don’t passively absorb information; they actively seek decision-enabling insights. They focus their first weeks on learning that informs strategy and execution.
  2. They Anchor Their First Wins to Enterprise Outcomes 
    Early credibility is earned not by activity, but by impact. These leaders align their first 30-60-90 day wins to real commercial levers.
  3. They Leverage AI to Accelerate Context and Clarity 
    Artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming a force multiplier for commercial leaders. It helps analyze pipeline patterns, surface expansion potential, and extract insights from sales activity at scale. 

Executives who embrace AI as a lens, not just a tool, are making better decisions earlier and commanding more credibility across the org. 

What to Think About, Consider, and Do as You Ramp into Your New Role 

  1. Am I learning what matters or just what’s easy to hand me?
  2. Where can I win early without betting wide?
  3. How can AI make me faster and more informed? . 

Speed and precision are no longer tradeoffs. AI makes both possible if you design for it.

Need a structured framework to move from onboarding to execution? 
Download SBI’s actionable guide, The First 90 Days of a GTM Executive: A Ramp-to-Impact Guide. It includes a week-by-week checklist to help new GTM leaders build early momentum, earn credibility, and create outcomes in their first quarter. 

 

🎧 Want to Go Deeper? 

Listen to the full podcast episode with Nicole Rogas to hear more about how GTM executives are using smarter onboarding, culture fluency, and AI to create faster traction. 

Listen to the Podcast Episode

 

Final Word

If you’re reading this while preparing for or stepping into a new role, you don’t need more noise, you need leverage. 
 
Ramp time is no longer about “getting up to speed.” It’s about demonstrating that you can generate speed. 
 
And in today’s environment, that’s what separates operators from outcomes. 
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