At UNBOUND 2026, New Breed unveiled the latest edition of our State of HubSpot research, examining how organizations are adapting to a go-to-market environment that is becoming more sophisticated and more difficult to coordinate.
AI has moved into everyday operations, buyer journeys continue to evolve, and organizations are combining more growth motions across the customer lifecycle. At the same time, technology ecosystems are expanding while marketing, sales, service, and operations teams face continued pressure to accomplish more with limited resources.
To understand how organizations are responding, New Breed partnered with Censuswide to survey 1,250 professionals across the U.S. and U.K. who use CRM platforms directly or hold responsibility for CRM strategy, administration, or executive sponsorship.
The findings point to a market in transition. Organizations are investing in many of the same technologies and pursuing many of the same growth opportunities, but they are not achieving the same results.
One of the clearest factors separating stronger performers is operational maturity.
Throughout the research, operational maturity refers to an organization’s ability to execute consistently across its people, processes, systems, and data. It is reflected in connected technology, stronger data quality, standardized processes, cross-functional alignment, deeper platform utilization, and the ability to integrate capabilities like AI into everyday execution.
Across the report, organizations with stronger operational maturity consistently report stronger GTM effectiveness, greater AI readiness, deeper platform utilization, and more confidence navigating the challenges ahead.
So, what are the strongest GTM organizations doing differently?
For years, conversations about growth have centered largely on strategy, technology, and team capacity. The State of HubSpot research suggests another factor is becoming increasingly important: how effectively an organization can coordinate all three.
To understand those differences, respondents were grouped into four stages of operational maturity:
Foundational: Core GTM capabilities are still developing. These organizations are more likely to experience fragmented technology, siloed data, and challenges executing consistently.
Developing: Organizations are increasing technology adoption and experimenting with new capabilities, but operational consistency is still taking shape.
Integrated: Teams report stronger coordination across GTM activities and increasingly benefit from connected systems, improved data transparency, and greater cross-functional alignment.
Operationally Mature: Organizations consistently report the strongest operational effectiveness and are more likely to maximize their technology platforms, consolidate systems, improve data transparency, use AI more effectively, and coordinate execution across the business.
Company size does not appear to determine who gets there. The percentage of Operationally Mature organizations remains relatively similar across employee bands, suggesting stronger operational execution is something businesses can build intentionally rather than something that comes automatically with more headcount or budget.
That changes the question leaders need to ask. Choosing the right strategy and technology still matters, but so does whether the systems, data, processes, and operating model behind those investments are strong enough to support them.
Organizations are increasingly moving beyond a single approach to growth.
Customer-led growth and sales/outbound remain the most common core GTM strategies, while product-led growth, account-based marketing and sales, community-led growth, ecosystem-led growth, and signal-led strategies are also contributing to a broader mix of motions. The bigger story, however, is not which individual approach companies are choosing. It is how frequently they are combining them.
In 2026, 86% of organizations report using two core GTM strategies, up eight percentage points from the prior year.
That creates more ways to reach buyers, but it also introduces greater demands on the operating model behind those strategies. Each additional motion can add new customer touchpoints, workflows, reporting requirements, data dependencies, and handoffs between teams.
The challenge is not simply running more than one strategy. It is coordinating those strategies as part of one connected revenue system.
For multi-motion GTM to work effectively, customer data needs to move across functions, teams need visibility into the same customer journey, and reporting needs to connect activity across motions rather than treating each department as a separate operation. Systems and processes also need to support those relationships without creating additional friction as the business scales.
The findings suggest the organizations gaining the greatest advantage may not be those adopting the most GTM motions. They are the ones building the operational infrastructure required to orchestrate those motions effectively.
That need is also influencing future technology investment. 83% of respondents say they either plan to or would consider migrating to an additional HubSpot hub, with particularly strong interest in areas such as Data Hub, Revenue Hub, and Content Hub. Those capabilities help organizations connect data, automate processes, coordinate customer experiences, and support increasingly sophisticated execution.
The research also reveals a shift in the types of challenges organizations are being asked to solve.
Traditional revenue concerns such as pipeline generation remain important, but many of the highest-ranking issues now involve coordination across people, technology, data, and processes.
AI implementation, for example, depends on technology integration, data quality, governance, and clearly defined workflows. Reducing administrative work often requires better process design and automation. Reliable reporting depends on how consistently data is captured, maintained, and shared across teams.
The report connects operational effectiveness to an organization’s ability to move information and work across functions without losing visibility or context along the way.
The technology foundation matters here as well. HubSpot users surveyed report that their CRM supports them more effectively than non-HubSpot users across several of the areas where operational complexity is most pronounced. For AI integration, 82% of HubSpot users say their CRM supports them well compared with 35% of non-HubSpot users. Similar differences appear around changing technology, administrative burden, talent challenges, and cross-functional alignment.
The takeaway is not simply that GTM organizations need more technology. They need systems that make the business easier to connect, coordinate, and operate.
AI provides one of the clearest examples of the difference between adopting technology and having the operational maturity to capitalize on it.
Organizations are no longer debating whether AI should play a role in their business. Generative AI ranks as the top area for increased investment across the short, medium, and longer term, ahead of categories such as sales productivity, customer service, hiring, and product-led growth.
That investment is already producing value. Some of the most commonly reported areas of positive AI impact include:
Those results show that AI is already affecting day-to-day work, but they also reveal where most organizations are in their maturity journey. Many of the strongest impacts remain concentrated in productivity, automation, and execution-oriented use cases, while outcomes such as revenue growth and broader organizational transformation rank lower.
That gap becomes even clearer when organizations are asked about readiness for emerging AI capabilities.
Only 30% of respondents say they are mature and ready to capitalize on autonomous AI.
Many of those barriers are not problems with AI itself. They are problems with the operational environment into which AI is being introduced.
Organizations need connected systems, trusted data, defined processes, clear governance, and scalable workflows before they can move from experimenting with AI to embedding it effectively across the business.
The difference between adopting AI and operationalizing it becomes particularly clear when comparing organizations at opposite ends of the maturity spectrum.
67% of Operationally Mature organizations believe AI-driven automation and data infrastructure will create a major competitive advantage over the next three years. Only 17% of Foundational organizations say the same.
That difference is not limited to expectations about the future. More mature organizations are already more likely to report positive AI impact across every business area measured.
A few of the clearest differences include:
These organizations may have access to many of the same AI capabilities as their less mature peers. The difference is how effectively they can connect those capabilities to existing workflows, customer journeys, decision-making, and business processes.
That distinction is central to the report.
AI adoption alone does not create competitive advantage. The organizations moving furthest ahead are beginning to redesign the way work happens around AI-enabled execution rather than simply layering AI onto existing processes.
Another consistent pattern across the research is the relationship between operational maturity and deeper platform usage.
Among HubSpot users, organizations that have been on the platform longer are more likely to be classified as Operationally Mature. The same trend appears as organizations adopt more hubs, with maturity generally increasing alongside platform depth.
That relationship should not be interpreted to mean that simply adding technology makes an organization more mature. The more important question is what a connected platform allows the organization to do.
When customer data, workflows, automation, reporting, marketing, sales, service, and content increasingly operate within the same environment, teams have a stronger foundation for coordinating activity across the customer lifecycle. The research also shows that confidence in achieving revenue goals generally rises as organizations deepen their use of the HubSpot platform.
The same relationship appears in AI readiness. Organizations using a broader set of HubSpot capabilities are significantly more likely to describe themselves as prepared to capitalize on autonomous AI and Answer Engine Optimization. By the time organizations reach six-hub adoption, they are almost twice as likely as one-hub organizations to report readiness for those emerging capabilities.
Platform depth only creates value, however, when organizations are able to use those capabilities effectively.
Operationally Mature HubSpot users are also substantially more likely to say they have begun using AI more regularly and effectively since adopting the platform.
The goal, then, is not simply broader adoption. It is using a connected platform to create stronger execution across the business.
As GTM environments become more difficult to coordinate, many organizations are also looking beyond their internal teams for additional expertise and execution capacity.
Their reasons for working with a HubSpot Solutions Partner extend well beyond implementation. The top reasons include:
1. 51% need help executing the marketing, sales, service, and operations strategies required to achieve the outcomes they invested in HubSpot for.
2. 45% need to drive more revenue-generating programs but lack the internal capacity to execute.
3. 39% need to break down silos across sales, marketing, service, and operations.
4. 36% need to address inaccurate data across disparate technologies.
5. 36% need to integrate other systems with HubSpot.
Those priorities closely mirror the operational challenges that appear throughout the report. Teams are not only being asked to manage technology. They are coordinating more sophisticated GTM strategies, integrating AI, improving data quality, redesigning processes, and delivering stronger revenue outcomes at the same time.
Organizations working with Solutions Partners also report deeper platform utilization. 43% say they are maximizing all HubSpot features, compared with 28% of organizations not working with a partner.
They are also more likely to report readiness across emerging capabilities such as autonomous AI, AEO, predictive analytics, first-party data strategies, intent data, and connected data infrastructure.
That does not mean working with a partner automatically creates operational maturity. The relationship instead points to the role that additional expertise, capacity, and operational guidance can play as organizations try to get more from their technology while managing increasingly sophisticated execution.
The State of HubSpot findings point to six priorities for organizations looking to strengthen their operational maturity.
Reduce fragmentation across the technology ecosystem and establish a connected source of customer and operational data. Prioritize integrations that improve visibility and allow information to move across marketing, sales, service, operations, and revenue teams.
Connected data only creates value if teams can trust it. Establish clear ownership and standards for how information is captured, maintained, shared, and used across the organization.
Technology cannot compensate for inconsistent processes. Define repeatable workflows, clarify ownership, and create shared ways of working that allow teams to coordinate increasingly sophisticated GTM strategies.
Before adding more technology, make sure the organization is getting value from the capabilities already available. Look for opportunities to consolidate tools, automate workflows, connect functions, and extend platform usage across the customer lifecycle.
Focus less on adding AI tools and more on where AI can create meaningful value. Prioritize clear use cases, connect AI to trusted data and existing systems, and redesign processes where needed to make AI part of everyday execution.
Evaluate whether changes to systems, processes, platforms, and AI are actually improving execution and contributing to meaningful business outcomes. Where internal capacity or specialist expertise is limited, determine where outside support can accelerate progress.
The goal is not operational maturity for its own sake. It is building an organization capable of adapting, executing, and scaling as GTM continues to evolve.
The State of HubSpot 2026 paints a picture of a market where organizations increasingly have access to similar technology, are pursuing many of the same growth opportunities, and are investing heavily in AI. Yet the research shows meaningful differences in how prepared those organizations are to turn those investments into results.
The strongest organizations are more likely to have connected systems, trusted data, standardized processes, deeper platform utilization, and stronger coordination across teams. Those foundations help them manage multi-motion GTM, extract more value from AI, navigate operational complexity, and continue adapting as the environment around them changes.
That may be the most important takeaway from this year’s research. The next phase of GTM transformation may be defined less by who adopts the newest technology first and more by who has built the operational foundation to put it to work effectively.
Want to explore the complete research and benchmark your organization against the findings?