B2B Reads: Synthetic Buyers, GTM Plays, and Agent-Aware Measurement

Summary

Some of our favorite B2B sales and marketing posts from around the web this week.

Every Saturday morning we share some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web from the last week (so it’s fresh!). We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please let us know.

Can Fake Buyers Reveal What Real B2B Customers Really Want? by John McCarthy, The Drum
Synthetic buyers can answer your research questions in seconds, but they have no career on the line. At B2B World Fest, S&P Global and NewtonX put simulated buyers up against real ones. Forrester warned that convincing answers aren’t the same as customer understanding.

5 GTM Plays Working Right Now by Kyle Poyar, Growth Unhinged
Five plays from Clay, Granola, Vercel, incident.io and Lovable that are working right now. Our favorite is Clay’s AI attribution agent. It found the early touches that last-touch reporting missed on a $200K deal.

AI Startups May Have Fewer Sales Reps. But Not as a Percent of the Team. Has the Playbook Really Changed All That Much? by Jason Lemkin, SaaStr
AI startups run leaner sales teams, mostly because they’re smaller companies. Sales still sits near 18% of headcount. The real efficiency gains are showing up in support and back-office roles.

Rethink Measurement in the Agentic Era by Jen Jones, Fast Company
AI agents now do much of the research and comparison before a buyer ever hits your site. Clicks can’t see that. Jen Jones makes the case for measurement that tracks whether you show up in AI answers and how you’re described.

Openness and Optionality Benefit Both Martech Customers and Vendors by Scott Brinker, Chiefmartec
MCP, APIs and warehouse connections are turning martech into infrastructure. Scott’s look at 2,203 real stacks shows most popular tools are already open. His bet: the most open vendors win.

Have a wonderful weekend and thank you for reading! If you have B2B news sources you rely on we’d love to hear about them. Please share them with us.