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.

Fred Rockwell

B2B events are changing.  The most value comes from smaller, highly targeted groups having deeper conversations. We focus on making networking EASY.

EASY Way = Fun + Authentic + Engaging + Meaningful Convos + Budget Friendly

The Old Way = Boring + Fake + Painful + transactional booths + awkward to break the ice + asynchronous content 


The Future of B2B Conferences = Justify the spend based on longer bottom of the funnel conversations with the decision maker 


Our audience:

• VPs and C-Level 
• Mid-Market - $5M to $1BN ARR
• B2B Software/Tech

My DMs are open if you'd like to see how Ascent can connect you with your buyers 

Founder CEO

Ascent is a network of c-suite leaders who come together to share insights, build relationships, and discover new technologies that supercharge their companies and careers.

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