B2B buyers already use AI to research vendors and check what those vendors claim, and Forrester expects AI agents to take on more of the buying process, from supplier discovery to RFP drafting. Forrester predicts two-thirds of B2B providers will lose deals because buyers can’t verify their claims. The answer is to make every claim that wins you business easy to confirm, by a person or an AI tool, in more than one place.
On October 21, Forrester released its 2027 predictions for B2B go-to-market leaders. Three of them describe the same shift from different angles. Here’s what they say, and what we’d do about it.
What changed in the B2B buying process
Forrester predicts agentic buying “will play a role in 75% of B2B purchases” in 2027. That sounds like robots placing orders, but Forrester is careful about what it means. In its Predictions 2027: B2B Go-To-Market guide, Forrester expects 75% of business buyers to use AI agents for bounded tasks: supplier discovery, information gathering, RFI and RFP creation, spend analysis, and contract-renewal analysis. The agents will usually stop just short of placing an actual order. Truly autonomous buying, Forrester says, will stay concentrated in high-volume, low-risk, repeatable purchases.
So the agent isn’t signing your contract. It may be doing the supplier discovery that decides whether you’re considered at all. As Rick noted in March, citing 6Sense research, the winning vendor is already on the buyer’s shortlist on day one 95% of the time.
Why claims fail the check
According to Forrester’s Business Buyers’ Insights Survey, 2026, buyers who use AI-assisted search or analysis tools most often use them to gather information about products and vendors. With those tools, Forrester says, buyers pull provider claims together and check the facts, which exposes sales and marketing statements that are hollow or inconsistent.
Picture a client count that reads one way on your website and another way on your LinkedIn page. A person might not notice. A tool built to compare sources will.
According to Forrester’s 2025 data, only 40% of B2B decision-makers who work on content said their teams are restructuring it so AI tools can interpret and summarize it accurately. Forrester expects buyers’ use of AI fact checks to grow faster than go-to-market teams can restructure their information, and it predicts two out of three B2B providers will fail some part of that verification.
AI narrows the list. People still make the call.
Here’s the part that gets less attention. Forrester also predicts buyers will double their human interactions to validate AI-generated recommendations. AI can compare vendors in minutes, but Forrester points out it can’t fully judge fit, feasibility, trust, or accountability. So buyers will look for conversations with provider teams and with trusted third parties: analysts, customer references, and partners.
Forrester’s advice is to shift from simply being visible to AI systems toward building the strongest network of trusted experts who can validate your claims. Visibility gets you considered. Proof from people other than you is what a buyer can check.
How to make your claims easy to verify
None of this calls for a new website. It calls for an honest inventory and some discipline about consistency. Here’s the order we’d work in.
1. List the claims that win you business
Write down the 10 or so statements that make a buyer pick you: years in business, awards, certifications, results, the industries you serve, where you work. If your sales team says it on calls, it belongs on the list.
2. Check each one against its source
Every claim should trace to something a buyer, or a buyer’s AI tool, can find without asking you: the publisher’s own list for an award, the issuing body for a certification, a case study for a result. When we rebuilt our About page in October, we checked our award listings against the publishers’ own sites and corrected one award name before the page went live. If you can’t find the source, rewrite the claim or retire it.
3. Say it the same way everywhere
Your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn page, and industry directories should tell the same story, in the same words and numbers. Forrester’s advice to go-to-market teams is to provide credible and consistent proof points that AI tools can index and validate. We covered the basics of being easy to identify in SEO vs GEO vs AEO.
4. Give each claim a page that proves it
A result belongs in a case study with the numbers, the time frame, and the client’s name if they’ve agreed to share it. An award should name the publisher, and the years when it has them. On our own site, our founding year is answered in an FAQ on our About page, and our Corporate Report 100 recognition names Ingram’s and all three years: 2022, 2023, and 2024.
5. Put dates on anything that changes
A number with no date can look stale even when it’s current. Date your results, your client counts, and your recognition, so a reader and an AI tool both know when each one was true.
6. Line up the people who can vouch for you
If buyers are going to double their human checks, make those checks easy. Have customer references ready before you’re asked, name the experts behind your work on your site, and keep partner pages current.
7. Ask the AI tools yourself
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot what they know about your company and what it’s known for. Compare the answers with your list from step 1. Every mismatch is a claim to fix. We run this kind of check for clients every month, next to their search rankings.
How is AI changing the B2B buying process?
Buyers already use AI tools to research vendors and check their claims. Forrester predicts agentic buying will play a role in 75% of B2B purchases in 2027, with AI agents handling bounded tasks like supplier discovery, information gathering, RFP creation, and spend and renewal analysis. Claims that are consistent and provable hold up better when a buyer’s AI checks them.
If you’d like to see how your claims hold up when a buyer’s AI goes looking, we’d love to help. Start a conversation with us, and let’s take a look together.
Sources
- Forrester, “Forrester’s 2027 B2B Go-To-Market Predictions: AI Agents Will Influence 75% Of B2B Purchase Decisions,” press release, October 21, 2026: forrester.com/press-newsroom/forresters-2027-b2b-go-to-market-predictions-ai-agents-will-influence-75-of-b2b-purchase-decisions/
- Forrester, Predictions 2027: B2B Go-To-Market: forrester.com/predictions/b2b-2027/
- Forrester, Business Buyers’ Insights Survey, 2026, and 2025 content data, as reported in Predictions 2027: B2B Go-To-Market