Your buyers are handing evaluations to agents, your content is being ranked by AI citations, and your team is still running Claude solo: time to catch up.

This week's edition covers:

  • Kevin's Take: agents are becoming the buyer, and your inbound funnel wasn't built for them
  • The Signal: Signal: fresh G2 data on how AI is reshaping buyer evaluations, plus 15.7M citations worth of clues on getting quoted in AI Mode
  • Tools & Tactics: a framework for scaling Claude across your whole team, and SparkToro's new brand affinity data for sharper positioning
  • Quick Links: AI speeds discovery but stalls the buy, software stocks slide as tokens surge, AI traffic converts 23x better than organic

Kevin's Take

Agents are becoming the buyer. Your inbound funnel wasn't built for that.

There's a claim in this Limy piece by Aviv Shamny that I think a lot of CMOs will dismiss too quickly, which is that inbound as we've known it for the last fifteen years is basically over, because the humans we've been optimizing for aren't the ones doing the discovery and shortlisting anymore, agents are.

He calls the new motion Agent-Led Growth, and while I'm not sure I love the name, the underlying observation is one I've been sitting with for a while and I think he's directionally right in a way that most of us aren't ready for.

The entire inbound playbook, SEO-optimized blog posts, gated whitepapers, nurture tracks, MQL scoring, all of it, was built on the assumption that a human being sits down, types a question into a search box, reads three or four things, downloads a guide, gets a follow-up email, and eventually raises their hand. Every single step in that chain is now something an agent can do faster, more thoroughly, and without any of the cues we spent years building into the funnel.

When an agent evaluates you against a few competitors, it doesn't care that your homepage hero is beautiful or that your G2 badge says leader. It cares whether your product page has structured data, whether your docs are readable to a model, whether your pricing is legible, and whether the claims you make can actually be verified. That's a completely different content brief than the one most of us are writing to.

Where I'd push back on Shamny is the idea that this is a hard cutover. I don't think inbound dies, I think it splits. There's still a human buyer at the end of the chain who needs to feel something, and there's now an agent in the middle of the chain who needs to parse something. Most marketing teams are staffed and budgeted for the first job and doing almost nothing about the second. If I'm running a marketing org right now, the question I'd be asking my team this week is a simple one, what does our site, our content, and our product data actually look like to an agent, and would that agent put us on the shortlist?

That's it for this week. Talk soon.

— Kevin Kerner, CEO, Mighty & True

The Signal

New G2 data shows AI rewriting B2B buyer evaluation paths (1 min read)

G2's 2026 Buyer Behavior Report, based on a survey of over 1,000 B2B software buyers and 50+ sales/marketing interviews, finds AI is reshaping how buyers evaluate and choose vendors. The report frames buyer evaluation as an increasingly complex 'maze' shaped by AI tools inserting themselves into research and shortlisting.

Why it matters: This is fresh primary data on how your buyers are actually using AI in evaluations, so you can adjust your GTM and content strategy before your competitors do.

What 15.7 million Google AI Mode citations show about getting quoted (3 min read)

Pillarbase's year-long study of 15.7 million Google AI Mode citations across 148 industries reveals which passages Google highlights and reuses. The research identifies patterns in content structure and phrasing that correlate with getting quoted.

Why it matters: This gives you the first large-scale data set on what actually earns AI Mode citations, so you can rewrite your content playbook instead of guessing at AEO.

Tools & Tactics

A framework for scaling Claude use across your whole marketing team (1 min read)

Emily Kramer introduces a '4 Cs' framework (context, collaboration, coordination, and a fourth C) for how B2B marketing teams can move from individual Claude usage to shared, team-wide AI workflows. The piece focuses on how to share prompts, context, and skills across a marketing org rather than letting AI use stay siloed per person.

Why it matters: If your team is all using Claude solo without shared context or workflows, you're leaving most of the productivity gains on the table.

SparkToro adds brand affinity data to audience reports (1 min read)

SparkToro has added brand affinity data to its audience research reports, showing which companies, products, and brands a given audience is most familiar with or buys from. The feature launched today and builds on the tool's existing audience data sources.

Why it matters: You can now see which brands your target audience already trusts, giving you a fast way to sharpen positioning and find co-marketing or influencer targets.

Read Inference — long-form essays

Inference is our long-form essay series on the future of B2B marketing. Where Drag and Drop is the weekly signal, Inference is the deeper analysis. Subscribe to get the new pieces in your inbox.

▶ Read Inference

Pipeline feel stuck?

Every week I talk to CMOs who are spending six figures on channels that stopped working two quarters ago. If your pipeline feels stuck and you are not sure which lever to pull next, let us talk. 30 minutes, no strings. Reply to this email.

▶ Book a strategy call →