🔍 AI search is shaping trust before your first call

We have a saying in the sales and sales-adjacent media community: "Variety is the spice of life." 

You may have heard it elsewhere, but I swear we invented it. 

In that spirit, we're going to do a little something different here. 

This send will fold in data from a survey of 200 B2B decision-makers on how they engage with AI search — not just our usual surveys of 300 sales leaders.

Hopefully, a little insight from the other side of the coin will help.

Buyers already trust AI recommendations — half of sales leadership hasn't noticed the channel shift.

Our surveys found:

42%

of B2B decision-makers say an AI brand recommendation makes that brand more trustworthy

48%

(combined) of sales leaders say they haven't noticed or have only seen anecdotal signs of AI changing how prospects discover their brand

Two-thirds of buyers arrive pre-educated by AI, and the #1 discovery call mistake is skipping rapport.

Our surveys found:

67%

of B2B decision-makers, combined, regularly read and use AI-generated search answers

30%

of sales leaders say skipping rapport — jumping straight to questions — is the #1 first-five-minutes discovery call mistake

My whole "I don't trust robots" thing in the previous section was mostly posturing. 

I regularly read and use AI-generated search answers. The same goes for two-thirds of B2B decision-makers (23% almost always and 44% often). 

Those answers let buyers start sales conversations pre-equipped with crucial insights: brand comparisons, feature summaries, pricing signals. They've democratized "doing your homework." 

But discovery calls haven't necessarily caught up. 

A plurality of sales leaders (30%) say skipping rapport-building and jumping into questions is the most common mistake they see reps make. 

AI-supported product research has sapped many the benefits of data extraction — making buyers who've already done it even more receptive to developing relationship credibility.

What can you do with this next-level insight?

For reps:

Treat AI search as pre-call intelligence — similar to LinkedIn. Knowing what AI tells your prospect about your product and category changes how you open, what you emphasize, and what you skip entirely.

For managers:

Coaching reps on what buyers see in AI search before they ever pick up the phone is the cheapest enablement investment most teams aren't making. It requires no new tooling — just awareness.

For leadership:

AI search is shaping buyer trust before the first human touchpoint. Organizations that invest in understanding and influencing how they appear in AI-generated results are building a moat their competitors can't see yet.

The Mount Rushmore of sales newsletter writers is just me making four different faces: one serious, one smiling, and two silly. 

Jay Fuchs. Managing Editor, The Science of Scaling Newsletter

Your CRM should work harder than your SDRs

Most reps spend 20% of their day on data entry. No biggie — unless you'd rather they spend it selling.

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Here's what's running in the background while your team sells:

• Call summaries — Logged and recapped automatically when a call ends.
  

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Less admin. More pipeline. See what HubSpot Smart CRM can do for your team.

CRM that closes

The data in question

As always, we sourced our data through Panoplai.

[From a Marketing Against the Grain Receipts survey of 200+ B2B Decision-makers] When AI-generated search answers recommend specific brands or products, how does that affect your perception of those brands?

• 42% — More trustworthy — if AI recommends it, it's probably vetted
• 25% — No different than seeing it in traditional search results
• 16% — It depends on whether I've heard of the brand before
• 11% — Less trustworthy — I assume it's paid placement or manipulated
• 3% — I don't notice or pay attention to specific brands in AI answers
• 3% — None of the above

To what extent has your organization noticed a shift in how prospects discover your brand or product — specifically through AI-powered search tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews)?

• 33% — We've observed a measurable shift in discovery channels
• 27% — We haven't noticed any shift
• 21% — We've seen anecdotal signs but haven't measured it
• 13% — AI-powered search is becoming a primary discovery channel for our prospects
• 6% — We don't currently track this

[From a Marketing Against the Grain Receipts survey of 200+ B2B Decision-makers] When AI-generated search answers recommend specific brands or products, how does that affect your perception of those brands?

• 44% — Often read them, sometimes use them
• 23% — Almost always read and use the AI answer
• 18% — Occasionally glance at them, rarely rely on them
• 9% — Almost always scroll past to traditional results
• 5% — I haven't noticed AI-generated answers in my search results
• 1% — None of the above

What's the most common mistake reps make in the first five minutes of a discovery call?

• 30% — Skipping rapport entirely — jumping straight to questions without establishing any connection
• 25% — Over-explaining the agenda — spending too much time on logistics before engaging the prospect
• 15% — Asking about known information — covering ground they should have researched beforehand
• 13% — Ceding control too early — letting the prospect redirect the conversation before discovery begins
• 12% — Leading with credentials — talking about company or product before understanding the prospect
• 5% — None of the above