Infra Play #89: Reports from the field
This week we dig into multiple industry report that reveal how are GTM teams performing (and getting rewarded for it)
We are almost full 4 months into 2025. New AI models keep coming out, companies are firing and hiring sales reps left and right, the economy is keeping everybody on edge. In times like these, it’s good to take a long look at some of the recent trends in tech sales related to deal velocity and compensation. The reports I’ll review were highlighted to me by a friend of the newsletter Matt Harney.
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The key takeaway
For tech sales: If you are currently not in the upper 50% performance-wise when compared to your peers, you need to take a hard, long look at what you can do to improve. Time is running out, and the industry will spit you out over the next 2 years.
For investors: The companies that start to cut more aggressively in their sales teams and discuss their focus on sales productivity as a core part of that decision are likely to outperform the rest of their competition that is delaying the hard decisions.
State of GTM
The recent report by Ebsta and Pavilion visualized a number of metrics on what makes a top performer stand out in 2025:
Source: GTM Benchmark Report 2025
This is mostly self-explanatory, but basically, if you want to rank in the top percentile, you have to generate more pipeline and qualify it faster. Pipeline generation without discernment is just chaos; overfocus on progressing existing business and delaying pipeline generation for “some other time” is a recipe for a PIP.
Source: GTM Benchmark Report 2025
There is a lot to unpack here. I think that some of the key points are:
Negotiation ability and emotional control have a proportional effect on the final deal value and sales cycle length. If they think they can squeeze more out of you, they’ll drag the buying decision until they can.
One of the big differences between A and B players is the “hopes and dreams” state of their pipeline.
Daily productivity is highly dependent on time management and focus.