Your prospects don't need you
B2B marketers and sellers, Forrester has located your prospects. They're where you thought they'd be.
Remember before AI when Gartner, McKinsey, and Forrester were all telling us that buying decisions were one-half to two-thirds made before prospects engaged meaningfully with a would-be solution provider?
It has only become more challenging to be a part of your prospect’s awareness, consideration, and decision.
Forrester found that 94% of B2B buyers used AI during their last purchase. Five years ago that number didn’t exist.
54% of buyers reported using AI tools for researching product info
55% did vendor comparisons
47% build internal business cases
....all BEFORE engaging any vendors.
Forrester’s 2026 Buyers’ Journey Survey of nearly 18,000 buyers found AI answer engines are now the top research source, ahead of vendor websites, sales reps, and product experts. That’s up from 89% in 2025. Some companies are already reporting 10-40% traffic declines as research moves off their sites.
So, how can you “be in the room” for any of it?
Earned media.
“AI engines do not cite vendor websites as their preferred source. They cite earned media from publications they already treat as credible.”
Just like we humans do.
“When a B2B buyer types a category query into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or a private enterprise AI tool, the answer that comes back is assembled from third-party publications the AI engine has indexed as authoritative — not from the vendor’s homepage or product pages.”
“Forrester’s own conclusion from the 2026 buyer data connects directly: providers need to “evolve from driving traffic through search engine optimization to driving visibility through answer engine optimization” (Forrester, January 2026). The mechanism for driving that AI visibility is the same one that has always driven credibility with human readers: earned placements in the publications AI engines already cite.”
Source: 94% of B2B Buyers Use AI for Vendor Research — Forrester 2026 Survey
I’m Greg Russak, founder and principal consultant of Conscientious Capitalists LLC, a B2B sales strategy, process, and leadership consulting and fractional sales leadership firm.
My mission is to help you to grow sales with greater predictably and uncomprising ethics by answering the 3 Big Questions for Sales Success.
1. Whom do you talk with?
2. What do you say?
3. Why should your prospect care?
Schedule your no cost, no pressure intro Zoom here.
Keep in touch at my blog, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Facebook, YouTube
Conscientious Capitalists LLC
“How You Make Money Matters”(tm)