09/14/2026
Today, there are really four main strategies to drive sales.
These are specific to B2B. And in my view, most other things outside of these four things are basically noise.
AI Search or AEO:
Starting with AI search or AI SEO, which also goes by labels like GEO and AEO. (We really need to decide and commit to one)
In simple terms, this really comes down to two things -- articles in written form and video content.
Starting with articles, I’d focus on platforms like LinkedIn that have influence and the ability to have your article get attention and be cited. LinkedIn is a powerful platform and most should have a LinkedIn Newsletter that is well done, builds a community, and consistently publishes to it.
Last year, I started a new newsletter for Richter and wrote its first article, “ChatGPT Created a Beautiful Ad Campaign” and that article was found by a New York Times journalist who emailed me to do an interview. We spoke for 45 minutes about the article and my views, and the New York Times published this article A New Ad Campaign Tries to Make A.I. a Little Less Scary
I wrote another article for my LinkedIn Newsletter about deal acceleration, and that was cited in ChatGPT as a top source.
Outside of LinkedIn, the other avenue is to have a really well-done blog or editorial newsletter off your site. I have an earlier article about how Hoodinkee (the watch site and newsletter) literally built their business and sales to $100M with editorial-style content alone.
There are companies who are doing this now. Kyndryl, a client of ours, created a newsletter called The Kyndryl Institute. My advice is to do both. Create and publish content to a LinkedIn newsletter, distribute to Medium and Substack, and create a newsletter that you own off your site or standalone that can be a thought leader source and something people want to subscribe to and something that AI cites.
The next strategy for AI search is video content. There are a few key plays here. One is to optimize your YouTube channel. I visit company YouTube channels frequently and some are fine but many lack a lot of content like turning all long-form content into shorts. Short-form content reads well for AI; people watch it often first before long-form, and when you search a company name on Google and click the short video tab, it shows up there.
The other areas for video are Vimeo to build a company channel and optimize it with all tags, descriptions, titles and so forth and again have long and short. For B2B, I’d also recommend LinkedIn to frequently post all video (long and short). These are going to show up for Google search and be cited by AI.
One word of caution: today, most social media sites are filtering AI content. And while the algorithm might not penalize it, you will have to click that it’s AI content on YouTube and so far, the end-user reception has been negative. You can scroll to the comments to see for yourself. LinkedIn also has an AI slop button for people to click if it appears to be AI and Instagram now makes people label it as well. So my feeling is that the audience has spoken in many ways - they want original, authentic content.
Content and Social Strategy
The vehicle, which today, in my view, is arguably the number one for attention and driving new business, is video content and social media strategy. Think about this for a second: did you watch any video content today? Ok, how about an ebook or white paper? Did you read one of those? No? Right, so it’s really video long and short-form, delivered via social media.
What makes it work? Something that is relevant to the audience and speaks to a pain they have or solves a problem somehow and gets them to take action. These days there’s a ton of fluff and noise around video. A lot of hype that doesn’t do any selling. It gets clicks and views, but did it sell in any way? Did it move people to an action? This is something that can be massively overthought. For a B2B company -- you need to know your audience and you need to know their challenge and you need to speak to those. And you need to do that at every point of the sales journey so the message hits and it sells them in various stages including having proof content, customer case stories, overview or walkthroughs that get them sold. We know they have a buying committee and the video content can sell them and then be shown to everyone involved in buying to sell them as well. For this, they don’t need hype; they need explanation and proof so they are confident and understand.
This combined with a solid social media strategy, is really the key these days. Social media is the distribution channel. It’s where the audience is. The video is the vehicle to deliver the message. We know they are on LinkedIn. We know they go to YouTube. Be there and deliver great content that sells or educates them and helps them learn, understand and feel confident.
One strategy is LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads. These work. They have absolutely gotten me and the stats back it up.
Here are a few:
* 252% higher click-through rate
* 62% lower cost per click
* 48% higher lead-form completion rates
* 23% lower cost per lead
Don’t go anemic on the video content and social media strategy. It needs to be big, great and relevant as well as consistent.
High-Quality B2B Sales
Sales transformation, bus dev, deal acceleration -- calls, emails, decks, sales process, net new logo, abs, and DMs ...
Then you have the old tried-and-true methods. These take experience and talent and tenacity plus very good assets to support the team so they can do what they do best -- win new logos and sell existing customers.
We recently worked with a large digital services company that has 180 sales reps, and most were engineers who lacked some of the tools to sell with a repeatable model. We helped redesign their sales process start to finish with action steps for every stage and step and someone accountable for each. Then we helped create the main sales deck the team would use for their AI product with relevant case studies and changeable per industry. Beyond that we created the sales enablement content to educate the team on the process so it could be one cohesive team on the same page doing the right things.
Great selling and sales acceleration comes down to having a great sales process, having a great team that is trained and giving them the right tools at very stage of the sales process to help them sell and win deals.
Do you have a method for winning net new logos? Or account-based selling? Does the team have the best possible asset at every stage that will sell the entire buying committee?
I won’t lie, B2B sales, and especially enterprise, these days is a grind so you really have to lean in to support the sales team to make their life as easy as possible. Sales is a group sport and it requires everyone to get behind it.
Events
Finally, we have IRL (in real life) -- and this is key these days. Events like trade shows can produce a lot of traffic and eyeballs, but if you don’t capture attention and route that attention it quickly becomes a very expensive trip. Wifi alone can cost tens of thousands. So you want to nail the content and ensure that what you have at your booth grabs the audience and routes them to sales.
We recently worked with Blue Yonder to build an interactive kiosk that was industry-specific and persona-specific so the audience can click, find the relevant answers and then move to sales. It became their number one sales-converting tool at the shows.
Outside of in real life events are webinars, and these can be a little hit or miss. Hitting requires great promotion and video pitches to get people signed up, and winning the webinar requires having content that is engaging and holds the audience’s attention from start to finish. It’s pretty easy to make this boring and dull. Don’t. Put extra work into the content. This can be a great sales channel.
So these are really the four areas you want to nail for B2B in 2026. And every dollar should go into these. I know it’s all the rage to invest in AI agents or the next AI GTM tool but for the most part, how are those really working? A lot of hype and fluff out there these days.
Always assess by looking at what worked. Are sales up? Are you getting leads? Is the team closing?
