Trust & Influence in B2B

Four in five CEOs still see B2B marketing as a support function, not a growth driver. That's the headline finding from new Propolis research, and it's the starting point for this conversation between Richard O'Connor, CEO of B2B Marketing's Propolis platform, and host Joel Harrison.

Richard walks through the three blind spots the research surfaced: ghost revenue, the growth marketing creates that sales quietly gets credit for; a credibility crunch, where CEOs say they'd trust marketers more if they understood the numbers; and an AI value trap, where budget cuts are falling hardest on the very work that builds trust over time. He also makes the case, backed by real boardroom examples, for why commercial credibility buys marketers the freedom to take bigger creative risks, and what it will take for marketers to stop lingering in the shadows of the CEO's blind spot.

What you'll learn

• Why 84% of CEOs still see marketing as a support function, and why that starts as a visibility problem before it becomes a trust problem.
• What “ghost revenue” is, and why the growth marketing creates so often gets credited to sales instead.
• Why speaking the “language of business” isn't enough on its own, and what actually earns commercial credibility in the boardroom.
• Why AI is sharpening the CEO's blind spot, and the risk of cutting the very work that builds trust.
• What it will take for marketers to stop lingering in the shadows and own the growth agenda.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: trust in the boardroom

00:57 84% of CEOs call marketing a support function

01:44 What Propolis is, and how it connects to B2B Marketing

02:33 The shape of the research: 150 CEOs surveyed

05:42 Is the CEO blind spot a trust problem or a visibility problem?

08:41 Ghost revenue: the growth marketing creates that CEOs never see

12:05 Why a CFO said he trusts his marketing function

13:11 The credibility crunch: why “the language of business” isn't enough

15:20 Account-based marketing as a model for commercial credibility

17:51 Why marketing gets excluded from growth strategy and forecasting

19:33 The AI value trap: cutting budgets without understanding the cost

23:23 Richard's advice: own the agenda for growth

24:42 What CEOs actually want from marketing

26:03 Where to find the report

Download the CEO Blindspots report here: https://www.b2bmarketing.net/reports/the-ceo-blind-spot-how-b2b-marketers-prove-protect-and-grow-their-commercial-impact/

Follow Richard O'Connor

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmpoconnor/

https://www.b2bmarketing.net/propolis/

Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast: htts://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/podcast

Hashtags

#JoelHarrisonB2B #B2BMarketing #TrustAndInfluence #CEOBlindspot #GhostRevenue #B2BLeadership #MarketingTrust #BoardroomTrust #CommercialMarketing #B2BGrowth #MarketingROI #B2BPodcast

Here's an uncomfortable idea for any B2B business competing for a high-value deal: your biggest competitor may not be a better business. It may simply be one that's easier to believe.

That's the starting point for the second year of the Trust Advantage research from Emmett & Churchman, which surveyed 200 senior technology decision-makers and sat down with 19 CEOs making real, high-stakes buying decisions. The finding: capable businesses lose deals constantly, not for lack of capability, but because of what the research calls the commercial credibility gap, the distance between what a business can deliver and what a buyer can see, believe and defend.

Joel is joined by Lorraine Emmett, founder and managing director of Emmett & Churchman and the lead author of the research, to unpack why 45% of senior buyers say they've ruled out a supplier for failing to prove its credibility, and what leadership teams can do to close the gap in their own business.

Download the 'Trust Advantage' report here: https://emmettandchurchman.com/trust/

What you'll learn

• What the commercial credibility gap actually is, and why it explains lost deals that looked like safe wins on paper.
• The three questions buyers are really asking of every supplier, and which one businesses most consistently fail to answer.
• Why a frank discussion of limitations and risk can build more trust than a flawless pitch.
• What a smaller or less recognised B2B business can do to compete credibly against a better-known incumbent.
• The first practical step for any leadership team that wants to close this gap in its own business.

Chapters

• Introduction: the commercial credibility gap
• Why Emmett & Churchman ran this research for a second year
• The three questions every buyer is asking: can I see it, believe it, defend it
• Why “can I see it” is the one businesses fail most
• Overpromising versus candour: the biggest destroyer of trust
• The human side of commercial negotiation
• Equipping your champion: evidence that travels beyond the room
• Challenger opportunity: why 57% would choose a trusted smaller supplier
• Reframing commercial credibility as a leadership issue
• The CEO commercial credibility test
• Closing thought: where to start closing the gap

Follow Lorraine Emmett

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraineemmett-b2b-strategic-comms/
• Emmett & Churchman: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emmett-churchman/home/

Closing boilerplate

If you found this conversation useful, the best way to support the show is to subscribe and leave a rating wherever you listen. It genuinely helps more B2B marketers find us.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡ www.joelharrisonb2b.com

💬 What's costing your business the deals it should be winning: capability, or credibility? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. www.joelharrisonb2b.com/podcast

#JoelHarrisonB2B #B2BMarketing #ThoughtLeadership #TrustAndInfluence #B2BSales #CommercialCredibility #B2BBuyers #MarketingPodcast #B2BInsights #CMOLeadership #B2BGrowth

Why AI makes human experiences more valuable, not less, with Claire Ellis of JPC

ABM was supposed to be about relationships. As AI makes targeting and personalisation cheap and abundant, the thing ABM was meant to build in the first place, trust with the people who actually decide, has become the real differentiator. Nowhere is that more acute than in ABM's biggest deals, where a single account can be worth millions and keeping it can matter even more than winning it.

➡️ Joel Harrison is joined by Claire Ellis, Managing Director of JPC, to unpack experiential ABM: human moments designed to move specific stakeholders, rather than events that simply fill rooms. Claire explains why buyers are now using AI to form preferences early and out of sight, why so much supplier activity is noise rather than relationship progress, and how to work out who really carries the room. She shares how BT moved from infrastructure provider to strategic partner with Translink, where organisations should deliberately keep human judgement in the loop, and why accountability matters more than accuracy when AI shapes what a senior buyer sees. If you run ABM, or are weighing up where your next experience budget should go, this conversation will sharpen how you plan, measure and own those moments. This episode is sponsored by JPC.

What you’ll learn

• Why AI has made trust harder to earn in complex deals, and what buyers rely on instead.
• How to design experiences around the change you need in specific stakeholders, rather than around the format.
• How to spot who really carries the room, and when to rethink your account plan.
• Where to deliberately keep human judgement, and how open to be about AI's role.
• What credible relationship movement looks like, and who should own what happens next.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: trust and ABM in an AI world

01:55 Claire Ellis and JPC

04:29 Where suppliers go wrong in complex deals

08:26 AI cuts both ways: why trust is harder to earn

11:59 Influencing an account before the opportunity exists

15:30 What experiential ABM is, and what it isn't

18:06 Why the format gets decided first, and what it costs

22:00 Finding who really carries the room

26:17 BT and Translink: when co-creation is real

31:14 Where to keep human judgement in the loop

35:13 Accuracy, authenticity and accountability in AI

37:44 What credible relationship movement looks like

41:47 What a CMO should ask before booking anything

44:11 Close and where to find out more

Follow Claire Ellis

Claire Ellis on LinkedIn ▶ https://www.linkedin.com/in/claireellisjpc/

JPC ▶ https://thinkjpc.com/

Find out more

Read JPC's report, The human advantage in an AI-powered world ▶ https://thinkjpc.turtl.co/story/experiential-abm-roundtable-recap/page/1?pid=6aabbc5b8632548bf34bd33c

Hear Claire and JPC at the Global ABM conference ▶ https://events.b2bmarketing.net/abmconference

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach, whether you're a marketing leader, an ABM practitioner, or working alongside sales on your most important accounts.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What's the last event in your account plan that actually moved a relationship? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing.

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ABM, #AccountBasedMarketing, #ExperientialABM, #ExperientialMarketing, #B2BTrust, #AIinMarketing, #EnterpriseSales, #StrategicAccounts, #SalesAndMarketing, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BStrategy, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth

Everyone's talking about buyer group marketing. Far fewer are doing it well, and most organisations have no reliable way of knowing how mature their approach really is. For this sponsored episode, Joel Harrison is joined by Greg Salmon, CEO of Pretzl, and Jeff Lowe, Pretzl's go-to-market advisor and a former CMO and Chief Commercial Officer at SMART Technologies, to unpack the 2026 Buyer Group Index. Produced in association with the ANA and research firm NewtonX, the Index surveyed 200 senior go-to-market leaders and measured 28 practices against commercial outcomes, from pipeline velocity to time to market.

➡️ Greg explains why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, why the single score of the MQL is so comforting and so misleading, and how to reach the hidden influencers and build trust with people a vendor may never meet. He also warns that AI can scale bad assumptions as easily as good ones. Jeff draws on his years client-side to argue that separate sales and marketing teams are an outdated idea, explains why connected data has become a CMO's problem, and sets out what the leading organisations do differently.

What You'll Learn

• Why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, and how to tell the difference.
• How to identify the hidden influencers in a buying group and build trust with people you may never meet.
• Why AI is speeding up go-to-market activity without automatically improving growth, and what to do about how AI represents your brand.
• Why connected data and genuine sales and marketing alignment are the highest-impact practices, and among the weakest.
• What the leading organisations do differently, and how to benchmark your own maturity in around 15 minutes.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: Pretzl and buyer group marketing

01:57 Introducing the 2026 Buyer Group Index

03:59 When buyer group marketing is persona nurture by another name

04:38 What a maturity score of 63.2 tells us

07:01 Why the MQL is so hard to let go of

10:06 Who the hidden influencers are

11:25 Building trust with people you never meet

12:28 Practical step: mapping your buyer group

14:57 When most buyer research happens out of sight

16:31 Why AI isn't automatically improving growth

17:36 How AI represents your brand

18:49 Practical step: the next 90 days

20:09 Jeff Lowe: from client-side to Pretzl

20:59 Why the real benchmark is lower than 63.2

22:18 Connected data and the systems gap

24:00 Should sales and marketing be one team?

26:56 What the leading organisations do differently

29:23 Practical step: benchmark your own maturity

31:31 Wrap-up

Follow Greg Salmon, Jeff Lowe and Pretzl

Greg Salmon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-salmon-280a1412/

Jeff Lowe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflowe2/

Pretzl: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pretzlco/

Take the free Buyer Group Index assessment: [link]

If you're responsible for go-to-market and want an honest view of where your organisation stands, this conversation is for you. It's practical, candid and packed with first steps you can act on now.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Is your buyer group marketing the real thing, or persona nurture with a new name? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BStrategy, #BuyerGroupMarketing, #BuyerGroups, #GoToMarket, #GTMStrategy, #SalesAndMarketing, #ABM, #RevOps, #AIinMarketing, #CMOLeadership, #B2BGrowth

Nostalgia sells everything from trainers to TV reboots, yet it barely registers in B2B marketing. To find out why, Joel Harrison went through three years of B2B Marketing Awards entries in search of the exceptions, and invited Guy O'Brien, co-founder of B2B influencer marketing agency Custom Influence, into the studio to make sense of what he found.

➡️ Together they unpack five ways B2B brands are going retro, from Exel Composites retelling the Three Little Pigs to Allica Bank's bowler hat, and ask why so few try it. Guy's verdict is that nostalgia isn't wrong for B2B, it's just hard: target the wrong generation and you alienate the buyers coming through; lean too far into the joke and people remember the ad but not the brand. Joel adds a warning of his own about nostalgia that stirs the wrong memories. If you're weighing a bolder creative idea, this conversation will help you judge when going retro will pay off.

What You'll Learn

• Why nostalgia is everywhere in consumer marketing but rare in B2B, and why that comes down to difficulty rather than suitability.
• The five creative approaches B2B brands are using to go retro, with campaign examples from the B2B Marketing Awards.
• How to avoid alienating buyers from other generations as B2B buying groups get younger.
• Why the brand, not the nostalgic idea, has to be what people remember.
• How a nostalgic idea can build a community rather than a one-off moment.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: where this conversation came from

01:52 - Guy O'Brien and Custom Influence

03:44 - Nostalgia and the humanisation of B2B

04:27 - Trend 1: Generational era cues (Just Group)

09:45 - Why nostalgia is so rare in B2B

11:25 - Trend 2: Childhood storytelling (Exel Composites)

17:16 - Trend 3: Retro media formats (Infoblox and 6sense)

22:45 - Trend 4: Period-specific aesthetics (Ecolab)

27:14 - Trend 5: Iconography of tradition (Allica Bank)

34:29 - The verdict: is nostalgia viable in B2B?

36:14 - When nostalgia backfires

40:47 - Where to find the campaigns

Follow Guy O'Brien

LinkedIn: [link]

Custom Influence: https://custominfluence.com/

Closing boilerplate

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to creative and thought leadership, whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡️ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Would you take your B2B brand retro, or is nostalgia best left to consumer marketers? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/ Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/ Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #NostalgiaMarketing, #B2BCreative, #CreativeEffectiveness, #BrandBuilding, #InfluencerMarketing, #B2BMarketingAwards

The winning vendor is usually already on the buyer's shortlist before a single sales conversation happens, and increasingly, it isn't a salesperson or a website that put them there. It's a large language model, quietly checking what real people are already saying about you.

John Rockhold, VP of Market Engagement at Spotlight, joins Joel Harrison to unpack Influence Orchestration, Spotlight's new research into how buying preference now forms in AI answer engines, peer communities and analyst conversations, long before a deal ever reaches a pipeline. John's team interviewed 23 leaders who build and measure B2B influence, reviewed 27 published studies of buyer behaviour, and analysed millions of AI engine answers and citations across B2B technology categories. The conversation also draws on Spotlight Summit, the event John's team ran in Kansas City the week this episode was recorded, where Joel spoke alongside Bijou Barry, Megan Burns and other voices shaping this shift.

What you'll learn

• Why buyer preference now largely forms out of sight, in AI prompt windows, peer conversations and communities, before a vendor even knows a deal exists
• What separates the vendors AI answer engines actually recommend from the ones they ignore
• Why earned trust compounds over time, while paid attention resets the moment you stop paying for it
• Who should really own influence inside a B2B company, and why almost nobody does today
• What to check in your own AI visibility on Monday morning, and what to do if you don't like what you find

If you find this conversation valuable, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating or review. It really helps other B2B marketers discover the show.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: the shortlist is already written

01:47 Welcome, John Rockhold

02:08 Inside Spotlight Summit

04:22 What Spotlight does, and where the report began

08:25 Why “Influence Orchestration”

11:22 The day one shortlist: 95% and what it means for the buyer journey

15:05 Robots, humans, and the return of intermediaries

16:55 The verification loop: how buyers check what the machine tells them

19:20 Earned versus owned: the quote, the sidebar, and the flip

22:13 Megan Burns and the internal trust problem

25:28 Why nobody owns influence, and why that has to change

26:42 The 50% ceiling: when owned content collapses your visibility

28:20 Three predictions for 2027 and 2028

33:48 What to check on Monday morning

35:15 Does compounding influence favour challengers or incumbents?

38:33 What John learned at Spotlight Summit

Chapter times are taken from the pre-edit transcript. Re-time against the published cut once the final edit is locked.

Follow John Rockhold

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrockhold/

Spotlight: https://spotlight-io.com/

More from Trust & Influence in B2B

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 What's the one place your buyers are checking that you haven't thought about yet? Let us know in the comments.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing: https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web:

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast: https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#B2BMarketing #TrustAndInfluence #InfluenceOrchestration #AIinMarketing #GEO #AEO #BuyerJourney #AnalystRelations #B2BPodcast #MarketingPodcast #JoelHarrison #Spotlight #JohnRockhold

Every B2B vendor now has an AI story. Michelle Huff, Chief Marketing Officer at Alteryx, argues that's exactly the problem: when everyone makes the same promise, positioning around AI stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes. Michelle brings more than 25 years leading marketing and go-to-market strategy at Oracle, Salesforce and UserTesting to the question of how a 25-year-old analytics brand earns its place in the AI era without sliding into hype.

Joel and Michelle talk through how Alteryx replaces claims with proof – a 760,000-member user community, customer stories, and a framework (Visible, Understandable, Repeatable, Auditable) for what makes an automated decision trustworthy. Michelle also unpacks a strikingly simple way to think about handing judgment to AI: treat it like onboarding a new hire, earning autonomy step by step rather than switching it on and walking away.

What you'll learn

• Why positioning around AI is now table stakes rather than a differentiator – and what to do about it
• How to move a brand beyond me-too claims to demonstrable, genuine value
• What proof of substance actually looks like to a buyer who's heard every AI promise before
• Why the real AI story is about automating judgment, not just tasks
• A practical framework for deciding what's ready to automate and what still needs a human in the loop

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: why AI positioning is now table stakes

02:02 Meet Michelle Huff and Alteryx's 25-year evolution

04:54 25 years across tech shifts: the instinct that carries through

08:49 Beyond the AI me-too: proving value, not just claiming it

10:36 Community and advocacy at scale

12:21 Building movements, not monuments: the Salesforce influence

14:00 Where AI genuinely changes the product vs. just the language

15:50 Vision vs. reality: staying grounded while pointing ahead

16:19 Repositioning a legacy brand without over-claiming

20:15 The BIRA framework: visible, understandable, repeatable, auditable

23:50 Data vs. story: which one wins when they pull apart

26:45 Automating judgment: the new-hire analogy and the trust score

31:02 Task-owners vs. problem-owners: staying valuable as AI reshapes marketing

32:58 Advice for teams that don't trust their AI output yet

34:29 Closing thoughts

Follow Michelle Huff

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellehuff/

Alteryx: https://www.alteryx.com/

Closing boilerplate

If you care about making B2B marketing more meaningful, useful, and memorable, this conversation is for you. It's honest, reflective, and packed with takeaways that can help elevate your approach to thought leadership – whether you're a content creator, strategist, or brand leader.

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community ➡ https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

💬 Where's the line for you between AI that's a genuine step change and AI that's just new language on old capability? Let us know in the comments below.

🔔 Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing. https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

📲 Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn ▶ https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/Podcast ▶ https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/Instagram ▶ https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

Iron Mountain is nearly 75 years old, built on physical records storage, and structured as a real estate investment trust — known for most of its history for warehouses and shredding trucks, not brand campaigns. Then Karen Feldman arrived as the company's first-ever Chief Marketing Officer.

Karen joins Joel Harrison to explain what it actually means to become a legacy business's first CMO when marketing already exists, just without a seat at the top table — and the trust-building playbook that got her there. We cover the brand health study that reshaped her budget priorities, the McLaren Racing partnership that mirrors Iron Mountain's own value proposition, how AI is reshaping B2B search behaviour, and her advice for any marketing leader walking into a legacy business.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe and leave a rating or review — it really helps other B2B marketers find the show.

Guest

Karen Feldman, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Iron Mountain

Karen Feldman is SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Iron Mountain, a role she took on in November 2024 as the company's first-ever CMO. She joined from IBM Consulting, where she spent over 25 years at IBM, including as CMO leading the business's repositioning following the Kyndryl spin-off.

Karen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-feldman-217440/

Host

Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B and host of Trust & Influence in B2B.

Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

In this episode

00:00 Welcome, and introducing Karen Feldman

02:27 What Iron Mountain actually does today

04:48 Karen's path from IBM Consulting to Iron Mountain

11:06 The brand platform: protect what matters, unlock what's possible

14:43 Earning the leadership trust to build a real CMO mandate

19:09 The McLaren Racing partnership

21:59 Brand, demand, and speaking the business's language

28:28 AI and trust in the B2B mid-funnel

32:25 Advice for marketers walking into a legacy business

35:11 Two years in: what's been unlocked so far

Follow Karen Feldman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-feldman-217440/

Iron Mountain: https://www.ironmountain.com/

Closing & Calls to Action 🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/ What would you tell a marketing leader walking into a legacy B2B business for the first time?

Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to the channel for weekly insights, interviews, and on-the-ground perspectives from the world of B2B marketing: https://youtube.com/@JoelHarrison-B2B?sub_confirmation=1

Follow Joel Harrison and Trust & Influence in B2B across the web: LinkedIn:

https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

Podcast: https://trust-influence-in-b2b.captivate.fm/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/joelharrisonb2b/

#JoelHarrisonB2B, #B2BMarketing, #ThoughtLeadership, #ContentStrategy, #MarketingTrends, #B2BContent, #BrandStrategy, #Storytelling, #MarketingPodcast, #B2BInsights, #JoelHarrison, #B2BVideos, #B2BStrategy, #CMO, #MarketingLeadership, #BrandTrust, #LegacyBrands, #B2BGrowth, #TrustAndInfluenceInB2B, #IronMountain

NPS has survived more obituaries than almost any other metric in B2B marketing — and it's still standing. Bain & Co.'s newest research doesn't try to kill it off again; it argues the real predictor of B2B growth is something else entirely: whether a vendor makes a buyer's 'day one' shortlist, the mental list formed before anyone picks up the phone. Tony Larks, a B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience spanning sales, enterprise technology and zero-to-one startup builds, read that research and asked the obvious next question — could you estimate your shortlist position without ever surveying a buyer?

➡️ Tony walks Joel through the AI prompt he built to do exactly that — scoring companies against Bain’s five-part framework using nothing but public signals: analyst coverage from the likes of Gartner and Forrester, peer review sites such as G2, forums including Reddit, and even employee sentiment on Glassdoor. He shares the story of an NPS score skewed by SMB customers who’d rather pay a compliance fine than do the hard work of getting compliant, unpacks why ‘shortlist share’ risks becoming exactly the kind of vanity metric NPS became if marketers try to game it with PR spend, and explains why fixing the fundamentals — service, roadmap transparency, honest pricing — beats gaming any signal. He’s open-sourced the tool and is giving the prompt away free to anyone who wants it. If you’ve ever wondered whether your brand is even in the room before the RFP lands, this conversation will change how you think about being ‘in the market’ versus being in contention.

What You'll Learn

• What's actually wrong with NPS, the B2B trust metric — and why nobody's replaced it, until now

• What the ‘day one list’ is, and why Bain says most lost deals were never winnable to begin with

• How Tony built an AI model that estimates buyer confidence from public signals alone, and where the approach is strongest and weakest

• What brands should actually do once they know where they sit on the shortlist

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction: Why We're Finally Talking About NPS

01:35 - Meet Tony Larks: From Sales Floor to Startup Marketing Leadership

04:45 - From Sentiment Tracking to Bain's ‘Day One List’

09:28 - What's Actually Wrong With NPS (And What Isn't)

12:14 - NPS's Cultural Blind Spot: Sevens, Nines and Detractors

15:07 - Inside Bain's Day One List: Why ‘Lost’ Deals Were Never Winnable

17:56 - Do You Need Bain's Budget? Mining Your Own CRM Data

21:02 - The Hidden Buyers Bain's Framework Surfaces

23:55 - Building an AI Proxy for Buyer Trust: How the Shortlist Matrix Works

26:26 - Estimation vs. Measurement: How Rigorous Is Good Enough?

28:07 - The Gaming Risk: Can Shortlist Share Be Bought?

31:26 - Could ‘Shortlist Share’ Become the Next Vanity Metric?

33:27 - What Marketers Should Actually Do With Their Score

35:02 - Explaining the Two-by-Two Grid

36:13 - NPS Isn't Dead, It's Just Incomplete

37:42 - Wrap-Up and How to Get the Tool

About the guest

Tony Larks is a B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience, starting his career in sales before moving into marketing roles spanning distribution, systems integrators and enterprise technology businesses. He has spent his most recent years leading zero-to-one marketing builds inside startups, and over the past year has been building a suite of AI agents to track brand and market sentiment — work that led him to develop the open-source ‘shortlist matrix’ featured in this episode.

Tony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonylarks/

Blog featuring shortlist matrix prompt: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-measuring-market-share-start-shortlist-tony-larks-hazje/?trackingId=BHbT3G1Q76e9aaY0PZoOcg%3D%3D

About the podcast

This is a full episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, hosted by Joel Harrison, founder of Joel Harrison B2B.

Joel on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/

If this was useful, subscribe for more on trust, influence and the metrics that actually predict B2B growth — and tell me in the comments where you think you’d land on the day one shortlist.

Most B2B marketing leaders aren't short on expertise — they're short on the confidence and the practised skill to be visible with it, whether that's in the room with their own board or out in public. Archana Dhankar, VP Marketing EMEA at Proofpoint, TEDx speaker and LinkedIn Top Voice, joins Joel Harrison to unpack what it actually takes to build that visibility, internally and externally, and turn it into real influence.

➡️ She breaks down the practical mechanics of building influence: a 2:1 ratio for balancing self-promotion against value-added content, a three-stage framework for knowing when visibility has become influence (likes, saves, and inbound interest), and why trust compounds differently on a public platform than it does inside your own organisation. She's also candid about the cost — the professional accountability, the late nights, the posts that flop despite your best instincts — and closes with practical advice for reluctant leaders and junior marketers on where to start.

• Why visibility and influence are not the same thing, and how to tell them apart
• The 2:1 ratio Archana uses to keep self-promotion from tipping into ego
• A three-stage framework for measuring whether your content is building real influence
• Why trust compounds differently on social platforms than it does in daily work
• The personal cost of building a public profile – and why consistency, not confidence, is the hard part
• How to start building influence if you're a reluctant leader, or a junior marketer just starting out

• 00:01 – Introduction and episode setup
• 02:08 – Archana's journey: two decades in B2B marketing, content roots back to 2008
• 04:20 – Visibility vs. influence: the core distinction
• 06:17 – What prompted Archana to go public, and the “side hustle” advantage
• 09:33 – Three phases of measuring when visibility becomes influence
• 12:51 – Self-promotion vs. ego, and the 2:1 content ratio
• 14:18 – Balancing personal brand with company brand
• 16:47 – Why trust is the foundation of influence
• 18:41 – Winning over skeptical stakeholders: SEMrush and Adobe as B2B influencer examples
• 20:28 – How being an influential leader has shaped Archana's career
• 23:29 – The personal cost: accountability and consistency
• 26:08 – Where to start if you want influence, not just visibility
• 30:19 – Advice for junior marketers
• 31:14 – The one mindset shift that matters most

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archanadhankar/

🌐 Visit Joel Harrison's website to explore exclusive reports, upcoming events, and join the B2B marketing community: https://www.joelharrisonb2b.com/

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LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/