B2B Reads: Buyers, Out-Dated Segmentation, AI Search, Influencer Marketing, and More

Summary

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

Every Saturday morning we share some of our favorite B2B sales and marketing posts from around the web 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.

B2B buyers want less sales contact by Mike Pastore

B2B buyers are shifting toward self-serve—around 61% don’t want to talk to sales reps unless it’s absolutely necessary. But right at those crunch-time moments, like choosing the best solution or weighing risk, they actually welcome sales’ help to simplify complex decisions. Sellers who step in with tailored insights during these key moments are 3x more likely to close deals than those who just stick to basic 1-on-1 conversations.

Stop Segmenting Like It’s 2015: Why B2B Marketers Are Still Struggling to Reach the Right Buyers by Sonia David

B2B marketers are still stuck in the past, using outdated firmographic and account-based segments instead of focusing on real humans and their actual behavior. They’re often targeting companies instead of the decision-makers, influencers, blockers, or users inside them. To do better, teams need to shift toward dynamic, behavior-driven segmentation that maps out who’s involved and what they’re actually doing.

Forrester: AI search is reshaping B2B marketing by Mark Brohan

Forrester’s report shows that AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are shaking up B2B marketing by delivering “zero-click” answers—2–6% of organic traffic now comes from AI, and that share is growing over 40% each month. Instead of browsing vendor websites, buyers are getting smarter insights straight from AI, arriving at sites more informed, sticking around longer, and asking deeper questions. Marketers need to rethink their playbook and craft bold, AI-friendly messaging, optimize for generative search, and create clear, quotable content that AI systems love to surface.

Influencer marketing best practices for B2B brands by Tim Murphy

Influencer marketing in B2B is most powerful when it’s interactive and collaborative, like hosting polls, challenges, or user-generated content campaigns with influencers rather than just handing them scripted posts. Webinars aren’t dead, but they should educate and entertain with dynamic formats, polls, and Q&A rather than dry slide decks. In short, successful B2B influencer campaigns lean into co-creation, meaningful engagement, and authentic content that respects both your brand goals and the influencer’s voice.

Why B2B Sales And Marketing Need To Stop Aligning And Start Unifying by Sarah Goodall

Sales and marketing teams in B2B are past the “alignment” stage. It isn’t enough anymore. Instead, unification is about building shared priorities, programs, and success metrics from the ground up. Right now, sales blames marketing for low-quality leads and marketing blames sales for letting leads go cold, but that back and forth just slows everything down. Treat sales and marketing as one unified engine that collaborates from planning to results, showing up together for buyers and measuring performance as a team.

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.