Our long-term clients are starting to use off-the-shelf AI to bring the work we used to do for them in-house. How do we adjust our Target Market and 3-Year Picture on the V/TO to account for this structural demand shift?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When clients use AI to insource standard execution, your historical target market begins shrinking from the bottom up. Do not waste energy trying to convince clients that their internal tools cannot handle baseline work. Instead, use your next annual planning session to interrogate your Target Market on the V/TO.

Identify the tier of client where internal AI adoption creates more operational complexity than it solves. These are typically organizations that can generate draft outputs or analyze data internally, but lack the specialized judgment to make high-stakes executive decisions from that data. Your Target Market definition must shift from companies needing task completion to organizations navigating complex strategic or regulatory ambiguity.

In your 3-Year Picture, quantify this evolution clearly in the What Does It Look Like section. Detail the shift in your customer profile:
- Fewer total accounts paying significantly higher average contract values for strategic governance and orchestration.
- Service delivery focused on validating, certifying, and operationalizing work rather than producing raw drafts from scratch.
- Revenue composition shifting toward retainer-based decision support or shared-risk outcome fees.

By adjusting the 3-Year Picture today, your sales team stops chasing legacy clients who will inevitably insource work next year. You give your Integrator and leadership team the mandate to build capabilities that complement client AI usage instead of competing against it.