Over the last 18 months, artificial intelligence (AI) has dramatically rewritten the rules of B2B purchasing— expanding competitive fields, compressing evaluation cycles, increasing pricing transparency, reducing early-stage sales influence, and increasing the demand on sales reps to provide value-added domain expertise.
Buyers are not just researching differently; they are evaluating and shortlisting differently and increasingly deciding before sales reps ever enter the conversation. Sales teams are losing early-stage influence. Pricing power is shifting. Vendor differentiation is happening algorithmically, and the top of the funnel is tightening rapidly.
The implications for Chief Revenue Officers (CRO) and Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) are profound. A recent multi-industry survey confirms what many commercial leaders have sensed anecdotally: traditional sales motions are being displaced by an AI-accelerated, increasingly self-service buying process.
The Rise of AI Usage
In fact, 60% of buyers use AI moderately or extensively when researching potential solutions and 43% of buyers say AI has saved 30% or more of their time in discovery and qualification.
CROs and CMOs that adapt quickly will shape buying journeys in their favor; those that do not risk being excluded before conversations ever begin. Following are the four commercial imperatives that demand immediate action and what CMOs and CROs need to do to meet them.
Engineer Your Digital Footprint for AI Discovery
If AI can’t interpret you clearly, it won’t recommend you. The test executives can use to determine how they are faring with this is to look at when AI summarizes your category, does your perspective shape the answer?
Here’s what CMOs and CROs need to do:
- Restructure websites, case studies, pricing pages, and technical documentation so AI systems can easily ingest, analyze, and synthesize them – including proprietary research, named frameworks, and proof points.
- Make positioning explicit and declarative. Remove ambiguity in how you describe your category, differentiation, and ideal customer profile.
- Strengthen authority signals through consistent thought leadership, backlinks, and AEO driven formatting to increase AI citation likelihood.
- Conduct quarterly AI mystery shopping to assess how generative engines describe you versus competitors and close narrative gaps immediately.
Win the First Five Minutes
In an AI-accelerated buying cycle, speed and substance determine inclusion. The new standard means that the first touch must advance the buyer’s thinking.
Here’s what CMOs and CROs need to do:
- Redesign lead management to achieve best-in-class response times (five minutes or less) – with real-time measurement and accountability.
- Ensure the first human interaction adds insight, not friction. AI-sourced leads expect expertise, not qualification scripts.
- Equip SDRs with AI tools to instantly contextualize the buyer, personalize outreach, pre-qualify intelligently, and route precisely.
- Elevate frontline technical fluency through training and revised coverage models; introduce SMEs earlier where it materially accelerates trust and deal velocity.
Remove Friction from the Buying Experience
If buyers can research faster, they expect to purchase faster. The commercial reality is that speed and simplicity are increasingly competitive advantages.
Here’s what CMOs and CROs need to do:
- Compress internal decision cycles – streamline pricing approvals, legal review, and contract negotiation.
- Simplify packaging, terms, and onboarding to reduce perceived risk and time-to-value.
- Deploy interactive ROI models, configurators, and AI-driven demo walkthroughs – now table stakes in competitive categories.
- Audit every stage of the buying journey for latency, redundancy, and unnecessary internal complexity.
Make Pricing AI-Resilient and Strategically Defensible
AI is increasingly interpreting and comparing your pricing model before a rep ever engages. The question executives should ask themselves to determine how they are faring with this is if AI is reinforcing your premium (or undermining it) when it explains your pricing to a buyer.
Here’s what CMOs and CROs need to do:
- Clarify competitive advantage and differentiation in ways that are explicit, structured, and machine interpretable.
- Simplify pricing architecture to ensure it is benchmark-aligned, value-backed, and easy to explain – both by sellers and by AI systems.
- Evaluate outcome-based or hybrid pricing structures where they reinforce strategic positioning.
- Align pricing tightly to your core value drivers; ambiguity will be exposed and commoditized.
AI has abruptly and fundamentally reshaped the B2B buying journey. Buyers research more, shortlist differently, evaluate faster, expect transparency, and require higher-value interactions from reps. Sales organizations that respond proactively, redesigning content, tools, pricing, and capabilities, will thrive. Those that do not will increasingly lose deals before conversations ever begin.
Michael Smith is the Senior Managing Director – Technology, Media & Telecom Practice Leader at Blue Ridge Partners. Michael has over 35 years of experience helping companies accelerate revenue growth and develop winning sales strategies. Previously, Michael worked at McKinsey & Company and in multiple corporate executive operating roles running businesses and sales teams. Michael received his MBA from Stanford University and lives in the Boston, Massachusetts area.
