One Seismic
Shift ’26 Day 1: Build Trust. Accelerate Growth.
By John Rivers — On October 14, 2026
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One Seismic
By John Rivers — On October 14, 2026
Seismic CEO Rob Tarkoff opened his keynote by challenging organizations to move beyond go-to-market (GTM) preparation towards GTM performance across teams. And while AI is driving unprecedented capabilities, simply making teams faster doesn't necessarily equate to growth. This requires organizations to strike the proper balance between speed and control.
Rob referenced F1 racing legend, Mario Andretti, who said, "It's amazing how many drivers, even at the Formula One level, think the brakes are for slowing the car down." Brakes give drivers the control they need to navigate turns at speed, Rob explained. The same principle applies to GTM performance: the right guardrails help teams move faster with confidence.
To perform their best, teams need the proper controls around their content, data, and agents, so they can trust the systems in place and execute effectively.
"The future belongs to those who can bridge the worlds of agentic flows (the speed) with content governance (the controls). So they're working better together and so you're performing better quarter after quarter after quarter."
Rob Tarkoff
CEO, Seismic
Getting there means bringing governed intelligence to sellers wherever they already work, instead of asking them to go find it. "The best guidance will no longer sit in a dashboard waiting to be found or growing outdated as AI moves faster," said Rob. "It will show up in the flow of work and drive the next best action for those responsible for producing wins, driving growth, and winning."
To make that possible, Seismic continues to build integrations that put its intelligence everywhere teams work, with innovations inside Slack, Microsoft, Claude, ChatGPT, ServiceNow, IBM, Canva, and more, connected through MCP.
IBM is a leading example of what it looks like to move from GTM preparation to performance. Rebecca Reyes, Global VP of Enablement for IBM Sales, took center stage to explain how the team embedded Seismic into its own AI platform, watsonx Workshop, to help sellers perform when it counts.
IBM first established enablement to solve an information problem, and while a governed source of truth for sellers and partners improved trust, content alone did not create great execution. "Information is no longer scarce. It's abundant. The bottleneck has moved from preparation to performance," Rebecca said. "The question of our craft is no longer, 'how do we give sellers what they need?' It's 'how do we help every seller perform at their best in the moments that matter?'"
Three lessons shaped IBM's answer, all through the lens of the seller.
By bringing Seismic's enablement and meeting intelligence into sellers' flow of work through a headless experience, IBM connected that intelligence with its own enterprise context and governance. Sellers now anticipate objections, practice responses, and get real-time coaching and meeting summaries, with notes landing in the CRM automatically. One IBM seller noted that the prep work that once took two to three hours, now takes 15 minutes.
For Rebecca, adoption is only the starting line, as technology scales overnight but behavior change does not. "It's not what AI can replace that I get excited about," she said. "It's what it can accelerate and amplify for us. The future belongs to the organization that can improve execution faster than the other guy."
In financial services, growth comes from earning your clients' trust while expanding your teams' capacity to serve them. Craig Schachter, SVP of Financial Services Sales, and Dave Myron, SVP of Financial Services Industry Solutions at Seismic, led a breakout session to show how firms can execute with confidence in every meaningful moment, while maintaining the proper guardrails.
The team outlined four areas that bring that to life, covering what Seismic is delivering now and what comes next.
"Our goal is to help your teams put your firm's expertise to work when clients need it most," Dave said, "with the confidence to act and the right safeguards in place."
Beyond the main stage, Tuesday's breakout sessions gave attendees practical ways to put AI to work. Here a few takeaways that stood out:
The final keynote of Day 1 focused on a niche but important topic: Partner Enablement, or the process of equipping channel partners, resellers, distributors and more with the training, content, guidance, and tools they need to succeed. Partner Enablement leaders from Zoom Communications, Genesys, Elastic, and AVEVA joined Seismic's Steph Hartsog, Senior Director of Customer Marketing, to share their insights on the components of a strong partner enablement strategy and how to translate that strategy into GTM performance.
Zoom's Colleen Matthews, Head of Global Partner Experience and Partner Success, shared how she led a discovery process for Zoom partners in the same fashion for discovering a new buyer audience – listening, understanding their journey with the brand, and unpacking how to support partners in their moment of need.
"Your partners are similar to your customers in that they're forming an opinion about your brand, and will come back if they have a positive, frictionless experience with your brand," said Colleen.
Dana Kinsella, Senior Director, Global Field and Partner Enablement at Genesys, echoed that sentiment. At Genesys, partners are a key lever for orchestrating excellent customer experiences.
"We don't treat partners as an afterthought – they're an extension of our sales force. They have access to the same content our sellers get, the same training, so that any partner can walk into a customer engagement and represent the Genesys brand with confidence."
The panel reinforced that partners are not simply side characters in your company's GTM story, and they deserve main character resources, enablement, and a great experience with your brand – helping turn your GTM strategy into winning action, no matter who's in front of your buyer.
That's a wrap on Day 1 of Shift!
There’s more to come from our keynotes, breakout sessions, and more. For real-time updates and insights from Shift, check out Seismic on social media (LinkedIn and Instagram) and stay up to date on all Seismic news by visiting our Newsroom.
