By Raluca Baciu · Published 25 October 2026
Last updated: 25 October 2026
Your next customer may build the shortlist before calling sales. A side-by-side comparison of your company and your competitors now takes an AI assistant seconds, and it is drafted from what is publicly written about you. This check gives a commercial leader three steps to run once a quarter: ask the assistants, audit what you have published, and name an owner for the public record. The full template is below, and you can get an editable copy by email.
The 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, based on nearly 4,000 B2B buyers across industries, found that buyers first contacted a seller about 61% of the way through their journey, and 77% said their first vendor conversation was with the vendor they ultimately chose. Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026 reports 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers in the typical buying decision, with procurement a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles. Engineers, plant managers and procurement leads meet your company through what is published, and increasingly through an assistant's summary of it. An AI comparison is not supplier qualification, which is exactly why the sources behind it have to be right.
Once a quarter, and after any launch, certification change or acquisition, ask the main AI assistants the questions your buyers ask:
Keep every answer in the record below. When an answer is wrong, correct the source it relied on, not the AI, then check again next quarter.
| Buyer question | AI answer | Source the assistant cited | Verified discrepancy | Owner of the fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Compare us with Competitor A for food packaging lines | Lists us third, describes an old product range | A distributor page from two years ago | Product range out of date | Sales, with product management |
Which certifications do we hold? | Names a certificate we no longer hold | An old datasheet PDF | Certificate retired | Quality |
The two rows are illustrative, to show how the record is filled in.
Assistants and buyers read the same material: specifications, certifications, capacities, lead times and application examples, on your own site and on everyone else's. Check for:
Fix the facts first, backed by the original technical or regulatory documents, before writing anything new.
In many manufacturers the public record belongs to no one. Marketing owns the website, product management the datasheets, quality the certificates and sales the distributors. Give one commercial leader the whole picture, with product management and quality validating technical facts, and connect it to sales so that what reps hear in the field reaches the record: the competitor a buyer mentioned, the specification they could not find, the question they asked twice.
Keep it modest: the number of discrepancies found and corrected each quarter, and what buyers say in first meetings about what they already knew. Neither proves a deal. Both tell you whether your company is described accurately in the places buyers now look first.
Our guide to executive thought leadership explains how leaders become a trusted source in their market, and the three-signal log shows how to link the CEO's voice to the pipeline.
Ask the main AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, such as a comparison with your three closest competitors for a named application, and record each answer with the source it cites. Repeat it every quarter.
Correct the source the assistant relied on, such as an outdated datasheet, distributor page or directory listing, then check the answer again next quarter. Assistants summarise public sources; they do not take corrections directly.
One commercial leader, with product management and quality validating technical facts and sales feeding in what buyers ask. Without an owner, nobody sees the picture a buyer sees.
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