Peep Laja

CEO @ Wynter. 3x Founder. Insights over assumptions. Host of How to Win podcast.

Most of your future revenues are gonna come from future customers. 

If you knew *exactly* what your target customers

think about your category (and your company in particular),
what their top priorities and very big problems are,
what unsaturated channels they use to learn about solutions, 

this is what'd happen to your business:

- you'd nail your messaging, speaking exactly to their pain points
- your conversion rates would go up because your pitch resonates better,
- your CAC would go down as you'd use the right channels with the right message,
- you'd create more meaningful content that moves the dial,
- you'd be more deliberate and accurate in providing more value at every touch point,
- you'd know how to price your products to maximize willingness to pay,
- you'd know how to differentiate,
- you'd know where your go-to-market strategy is off, and could fix it. 
 
The beautiful thing?

You can know all of this with Wynter in under 48 hours.

We asked 101 B2B SaaS CMOs: "Where do you start when searching for new software?"

The results prove that most marketing teams are optimizing for a world that no longer exists.

Here's what they turn to:

∙ Google Search: 72% 
∙ AI/LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) 68% 
∙ Peer communities: 65% 
∙ G2/Review sites: 52% 
∙ Vendor websites directly: 38% 
∙ Analyst reports: 28% 
∙ LinkedIn: 24% 
∙ Reddit: 12%

The headline looks normal. Google still on top. Nothing to see here.

But dig into the data and the story changes completely.

Only 9% *start* by googling a software category.

The other 63%? They use Google after they already have a shortlist. Google has become the verification layer, not the discovery engine.

Meanwhile, 68% now start with AI tools before traditional search.

One CMO told us: "I use Perplexity so I can do a natural language search to find software types. I use Google only if I have certainty about which specific products I want."

Another: "ChatGPT gives me a shortlist in 30 seconds that would have taken me hours of Googling."

Here's what this means for you:

If you're not showing up in ChatGPT's recommendations, you're not showing up.

84% of CMOs use AI for vendor discovery now. 68% start there. Before Google. Before your website. Before your content.

The battle for initial consideration has moved. Most vendors haven't noticed yet. They're still optimizing for a Google-first world that ended sometime in 2025.

The CMOs who buy your software? They're asking Claude "what are the best tools for X" while you're publishing another SEO blog post nobody will read.

Also buried in the data: Reddit at 12%.

Why? One CMO explained it perfectly: "Real users complaining about real problems, that tells me more than any marketing site."

Your unhappy customers on Reddit are now part of the buying process. Fun.

The new discovery stack:

∙ Ask AI for landscape view
∙ Cross-reference with peer community
∙ Check G2 for social proof
∙ Google for red flags
∙ Then visit your website

If you're invisible in steps one and two, they don't get to step 5.

(This is a finding from Wynter's 2026 CMO Software Buying Survey. Link to full report in comments and Wynter website).

AI can't buy your software.

AI can't feel the pain of a broken workflow. It can't sit in a budget meeting and fight for your deal. It can't get burned by a competitor and carry that grudge into the next vendor search.

A human does all of that. And humans are weird.

An example: We surveyed 101 CMOs and VPs of Marketing on how they buy software, here are some things we learned:

Most CMOs still prefer buying through a sales rep. Not self-serve. Not a chatbot. They want a human to walk them through it. 

When a vendor leads with AI in their messaging, many buyers are less interested. They see it as hype. One marketing director told us flat out: "slightly less likely to consider them, sounds like hype, makes them doubt it all." 

A CMO at a PE-backed company told us their investment firm says "No one should be adding more people because AI is gonna deliver that extra capacity we need. I'm watching my budget get slashed while pipeline targets go up." 

That's not a sentiment you get from a synthetic persona. That's frustration with a very specific power dynamic.

A field marketing director shared that small roundtables are outperforming their big signature events and webinars. People want intimate, shorter, smaller. That's a nuance shaped by what happened in their org last quarter, not a general market truth an AI could infer.

This is the thing about B2B buyers.

Their decisions are shaped by internal politics, past vendor trauma, budget timing, org structure changes, what their CEO read on LinkedIn last week. 

An LLM doesn't have access to any of that. It can give you a plausible average. It can't give you the actual answer.

Use AI to analyze responses faster. Use it to write better survey questions. Use it to find patterns in data.

But when you want to know what your buyers actually think? Ask them.

A real buyer can tell you what you didn't expect. And the stuff you didn't expect is where the actual insight lives.

FUDY

Responsible for creating and implementing brand & marketing strategy, growth marketing and media relations for Fudy, which was previously known as a food delivery company, but pivoted to creating a sustainable QR ordering system for restaurants, hotels and events. My tasks - growing the B2C business and building international B2B marketing operations.

Head of Marketing & Growth

Helping startups and SMEs to build their international B2B brand, communications and marketing strategy, PR activities, and corporate communications. Sharing experiences of how to build your brand with a non-existent budget.

B2B Marketing and Corporate Communications Consultant

Cleveron

Responsible for creating an updated brand strategy and positioning, and building a new department. Responsible for global B2B marketing, public relations, distributor marketing, strategic management, team management

Chief Marketing Officer / Head of the department

Responsible for managing and delivering results of the Sales and Marketing division.
Strategic planning and operational management of the great work the marketing, global sales, SME sales, project management and partnership relations teams did to ensure sales results and marketing excellence. Tasks included strategic management, team management, brand management, B2B & B2C marketing (strategy and operational tasks), corporate communications, public relations, stakeholder relations

Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

Creating and implementing a cross-channel marketing strategy for global B2B sales and brand recognition growth. Responsible for B2B & B2C Marketing, Campaign creation, ABM, PR, Global Brand Building & Management, Stakeholder Communication, Strategy, Corporate Communication, Internal Communications, Team Management

Chief Marketing Officer

B2B marketing, PR and stakeholder communication

Marketing Specialist

Age McCann

Copywriting, technical writing, editing, proof-reading, transcreation, adaptation, localization. Short copy, web copy, long copy. Prints, radio ads, TV, social media, promotional materials. Project management. In all fields.

Copywriter

Eesti Rahvusringhääling

Translating, editing, creating and presenting foreign news

Foreign news editor

*OPEN FOR COOPERATIONS*

Currently responsible for building and implementing brand & marketing strategy, growth marketing and media relations for Fudy, the upcoming star in the restaurant industry, who is challenging the status quo and trying to build sustainable ordering system for restaurants as well as consumers.

Former Chief Marketing Officer of Cleveron, the last-mile innovator and pioneer in creating automated parcel lockers and robotic solutions. Today I'm helping SMEs and startups to build their brand, communications and marketing strategy for international B2B products and services and helping to find clever ways how to do it with a limited budget.

During 5 years at Cleveron, we built a top-of-mind brand with an extremely limited budget, with a targeted global B2B marketing strategy. I lead the creation of a new brand strategy, positioning and marketing strategy, corporate communications and PR. As Chief of Sales and Marketing, we managed to turn revenue loss into revenue growth and had first-hand experience in how to align sales and marketing into a mutually supportive ecosystem instead of operating in different silos. In the management team, we experienced great highs and lows (from a success story to 80% revenue loss, layoffs, to achieving success again) and every challenge that comes with these situations when managing a company.

My former colleagues about me ❤️:
- Edith is a player with a big heart. No detail goes unnoticed, and no person is without care. She is a people person and a great leader who helps you with advice and real actions.

- Openness, honesty and justice are values money can't buy, and books don't teach. Edith carries precisely these values and they have shaped her to be who she is: a great leader, teammate and a dialogue partner.

- Edith is one of the warmest and kindest people I have had the honour to work with. She is highly professional in her work, with no discounts, often putting the company's goals before her own. If she commits to something, it is 100%, even if it means sleeping in the factory at 3 AM, because she puts her whole heart into what she does.

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