685 - How B2B Buyers Verify You Through AI
Jens Heitland on how B2B buyers now verify potential partners through AI engines, and why every organization needs to be clearly positioned there.
Want to build your Personal Brand?
Join the free Rising Stars Community
Where B2B Trust Is Now Decided
For many years, part of my work inside large organizations involved choosing partners. Before signing any contract, we looked closely at the company on the other side of the table. We wanted to know whether they were the right partner for us, whether they had done similar work before, and whether they could deliver on their promises. That verification took time and involved calls, references, reports, and a fair amount of reading between the lines.
The underlying need has not changed. Every organization that sells services depends on the trust of the company that buys them, and in B2B that trust carries particular weight. Contracts tend to run for years, budgets are significant, and the person who recommends a supplier carries part of the risk personally. A poor choice reflects on them long after the decision is made.
What has changed is the speed and the place where verification happens. A buyer today can open an AI engine, type the name of a potential partner, and receive a summary within seconds. The engine draws on whatever it can find. Articles, interviews, podcast appearances, client stories, leadership profiles, and the company's own website all feed into the picture it presents. The buyer reads that picture as a first impression, often before anyone at the supplier knows they are being considered.
For the organization being searched, this creates a quiet dependency. Its reputation at the moment of first contact is assembled by a system it does not control, using material it may never have thought about. A company with years of excellent delivery can appear thin if little of that work is visible in public. A competitor with a smaller track record and a clearer presence can appear more established.
Over time, the effect accumulates. Shortlists form earlier, sometimes without a single conversation. Companies that AI describes well are invited into discussions, while others are filtered out without ever learning why. Very little of this is visible to the companies affected. They simply notice fewer opportunities reaching them, or new buyers arriving with assumptions that need correcting.
This also has a human side. Buyers are still people who want reassurance before they commit. When the information they find is sparse or inconsistent, they hesitate. In B2B, that hesitation rarely announces itself. It appears as a delayed reply, an extra reference request, or a decision to stay with the incumbent supplier.
In my experience, organizations that handle this well treat their presence in AI as part of how they build trust, with the same care they give to delivery itself. They make sure their leadership is visible, that their expertise is documented in their own words, and that what they say publicly matches how they actually work. Consistency across these sources matters because AI engines read it all together.
Verification has always been part of buying services. The difference now is that it often happens before the first meeting, through a channel the supplier cannot see. For any organization that relies on the trust of other businesses, positioning itself clearly in AI has become one of the most important things it can do, because that is increasingly where the first judgment is made.
Highlights:
0:00 Why Trust Matters
00:15 B2B Buyer Due Diligence
00:25 Verifying Delivery Promises
00:34 AI Search Changes Everything
00:44 Positioning in AI
00:53 Closing Thoughts
Links:
===========================
Equipment and Software I Use for My Videos and Podcasts
Jens Equipment and Software overview:https://www.jensheitland.com/equipment
===========================
Books that I read and recommend.
My Book Recommendations: https://www.jensheitland.com/books
===========================
Here are the ways to work with me:
Speaking:https://www.jensheitland.com/speaking
Leadership Skills Assessment:https://www.wearesucceed.com/
===========================
Connect with me!
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensheitland/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/JensHeitlandofficial/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/jensheitland/
TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@jensheitland
X/Twitter:https://twitter.com/jensheitland
Newsletter:https://www.jensheitland.com/newsletter
===========================
Subscribe and Listen to The Jens Heitland Show Podcast HERE:
YT:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjuSGi1feauCNSER3IKuGWg
Web:https://www.jensheitland.com/podcasthome
Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jens-heitland-show-human-innovation/id1545043872?uo=4
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/7H0GWMGVALyXnnmstYA1NL
===========================
Subscribe and Listen to The Daily Hint with Jens Heitland Podcast HERE:
YT:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2tLdutVh6b6nCBgWQ817eQ
Web:https://www.jensheitland.com/the-daily-hint
Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-hint-with-jens-heitland/id1722930497
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/4T02uYPvcOrajPC6FgH64r?si=8aab1e7683204160&nd=1&dlsi=0f69c72af017454a
Transcript :
One of the things that is critical for every organization is building trust towards the company that is buying their services. If we think about a service organization, it's the same thing for retail and all the others. But especially in B2B, it is super important because the thing is what a potential buyer does, like I did when I was in large corporate. You look into the other company and you verify are they the right partner to work with?
Can they deliver what they promise? And it has never been easier than today to do that. So you do that inside of any of the AI engines, and you just search
and with this, every organization needs to position themselves in AI, and that's nothing more important these days to do that