The Death of the "System of Record": Why the GTM Tech Stack is Being Reimagined for 2026

In the early 2000s, the CRM was hailed as the "Holy Grail" of sales—a single source of truth where every deal lived or died. But fast forward to 2026, and the script has flipped.

In a recent episode of the Sales Transformation Lab, Waleed Shaarani, Head of Revenue at Spikey.ai, sat down with Matt Milligan to unpack why the traditional sales stack is failing modern teams and how a new "intelligence layer" is taking its place.

1. From Systems of Record to Systems of Intelligence

For years, tools like Salesforce and early versions of Gong were valued as Systems of Record. They captured data, archived calls, and hosted dashboards. But as Waleed points out, "Visibility alone doesn't change outcomes."

The shift we are seeing today is the rise of Systems of Intelligence. We no longer need tools that just tell us what happened; we need a "revenue operating brain" that tells us why it happened and how to fix it in real-time.

2. Why Data Infrastructure Trumps AI Infrastructure

A common trap for revenue leaders in 2025 was chasing the latest AI "shiny object" while ignoring their messy data. Waleed’s take is direct: Data infrastructure is $X$ times more important than AI infrastructure.

If you build an AI layer on top of garbage data, you get garbage results. The winners in 2026 are the teams focusing on "rubbish in, rubbish out." By using AI to automatically clean, sync, and enrich CRM fields directly from call transcripts and Slack threads, companies are finally achieving the clean data foundation they’ve been promised for a decade.

3. The "Whisper" Era: Coaching in the Moment

We’ve all seen AI role-playing tools. While helpful for onboarding, Waleed notes a hard truth: most reps dread them. The real breakthrough isn't practicing for a call; it’s the Live Guidance during the call.

Imagine a "Whisper" feature—a side panel that listens to your prospect and surfaces the optimal response to a tough objection or competitor mention instantly.

"Think of it as training wheels for a bike," says Waleed. "Once you become a killer rep, you don't need them anymore, but they ensure you never miss a beat while you're learning."

4. The Human Element in a Multi-Threaded World

Will AI replace the sales rep? Not for the deals that matter.

While AI is perfectly suited to handle Discovery (Stages 1 and 2) or high-volume transactional sales, the enterprise landscape still belongs to humans. Complex deals require multi-threading, deep relationship building, and the "human touch" that an algorithm can’t replicate over a steak dinner. In 2026, the best reps aren't being replaced; they are being augmented to focus solely on these high-value interactions.

5. The Strategy for 2026: Consolidation vs. Innovation

Buyers are currently facing "tool fatigue," but they aren't necessarily buying fewer tools—they are buying smarter ones.

The 2026 strategy is about co-existence. AI-native startups like Spikey are no longer trying to replace incumbents like Salesforce or Gong on day one. Instead, they sit on top of them, ingesting their data to provide the actionable intelligence the legacy players lack.

The Bottom Line

The future of go-to-market isn't about having more dashboards; it’s about having less friction. If your tech stack isn't proactively helping you close deals while they are still in progress, you’re sitting on a museum, not a machine.

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