From pilots to scale: why GTM execution wins in 2026

You know a strong prototype can open doors. It might win a pitch, or even a major pilot. But this is shaping up to be the year when pilots stop being a badge of honour and start feeling more like a form of delay. 

Recent analysis from Deloitte suggests that the leadership conversation is increasingly focused on how to move from experimentation to real impact – with new urgency around the idea that ‘endless pilots’ need to give way to real business value. 

For tech investors, that changes what ‘traction’ really means. And for founders, it changes what needs to be built first; not just the product, but the path the product takes through an organisation. 

Another report, this one from McKinsey, offers a simple framework you can use here: a maturity ladder that runs from experimentation, to piloting, to scaling, and finally to ‘fully scaled’ integration where value has been recognised.

The mistake many startups make is assuming they sell at step three (a pilot) and magically arrive at step five (fully scaled). In reality, step four (scaling in progress) is where most of the work lives. And it’s mostly go-to-market (GTM) work.

The three GTM realities founders need to design for

1. Buyers are buying rollout 

McKinsey’s definitions are revealing. ‘Experimentation’ is explicitly described as small prototypes “typically without a focus on a near-term ROI.” 

And it’s worth taking that as a warning label.

Because as we settle into the new year, many enterprise buyers have had their fill of ROI-free experimentation. Now, they want solutions that come with a credible route to deployment: integration, governance, change management, training. And, most importantly, proof that value survives contact with the organisation.

If you’re a founder, this means it’s time to build a ‘deployment narrative’ as deliberately as you build the product narrative:

• What’s the rollout sequence?
• Who owns adoption?
• What’s the first workflow you’ll change, and what metric shifts inside 90 days?

For investors, it means looking for founders who talk about implementation and value realisation with the same fluency they talk about features.

2. Your GTM stack is becoming a product in its own right

A third report from AlixPartners makes a bold prediction for enterprise software: by the end of 2026, an average of 70% of go-to-market activities (covering client acquisition, onboarding, value realisation, and expansion) will be AI-enabled.

Take the AI out of that sentence and the meaning still holds: GTM is becoming more instrumented, more automated, and more measurable. The sales journey is being rebuilt as a set of observable, optimisable systems.

This doesn’t make GTM less human. In fact, AlixPartners explicitly notes enterprise sales remains “fundamentally human,” even as it becomes more AI-enabled. The point is that the winners will treat onboarding, customer success, pricing, and expansion as a discipline – supported by tooling, and constantly iterated.

If you’re a founder, your move here is to build for the post-sale moment, with: 

• Onboarding that feels like a workflow
• Value dashboards that tell you if the product is working
• Expansion hooks designed into the product 

And if you’re an investor, you need to assess whether a startup can land and expand smoothly. 

3. The pilot-to-production gap is telling you where your real competition lives

Deloitte’s report highlights an important gap: 11% of organisations have agents in production, even though 38% are piloting them.

Whether you care about agents specifically is kind of beside the point. That spread is the story of 2026: intent is high and pilots are everywhere, but production is hard.

So what is your startup competing against? Rather than a rival product, it’s often internal inertia: procurement cycles, IT backlogs, risk committees, and the sheer difficulty of changing how people work. 

That means you can make genuine progress with the boring stuff right now:

• Security reviews pre-answered
• Procurement pathways anticipated
• Implementation playbooks repeatable across customers

For investors, now is the moment to favour teams who can confidently describe the last mile – how a pilot becomes standard. 

A GTM checklist for 2026

If you’re building towards scale this year, pressure-test your GTM with these questions:

• Can we articulate ROI without a bespoke consulting wrapper? (McKinsey’s experimentation trap is real)
• Is onboarding a repeatable product motion? (Not founder-led improvisation.)
• Can we evidence value realisation in-product? (So expansion is earned, not requested.)
• Do we have a credible path from pilot to production? (Deloitte’s gap is worth taking seriously)

And if you’re pressure-testing GTM for scale, LEAP is built for the conversations you need to have. Meet founders or investors; line up focused 1:1s via the Matchmaking Zone; and see which teams can really sell and deliver in the Rocket Fuel pitch competition. We can’t wait to see you there.