Over the last five years, the business world has undergone a more dramatic transformation than it did in the entire decade before. Just as companies were adapting to permanent shifts in workplace dynamics, consumer behavior, and global economics - all sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic - generative AI emerged. This delivered a shock to business comparable to the internet revolution of the 1990s.
If you're still debating whether answer engine optimization (AEO) belongs in your go-to-market strategy, you are already behind the curve. From January to May 2025, website traffic from AI-powered platforms surged more than 500%. And at a recent CMO roundtable I co-hosted in Boston, leaders agreed on one thing: how your brand appears in AI-generated responses now shapes how buyers perceive your company, evaluate your executives and categorize your product or service.
Coming out of last year we had an important shift in strategy. We'd realised that going out to Q4 [1 November 2024 - 31 January 2025] our product innovation had accelerated to the point where it was putting a burden on our sales organisation to have to sell all products to all people.
If you believed AI startups and the world's greatest AI-forward tech companies are just hiring engineers, data scientists, and developers, you're clearly missing out. Behind tech powerhouses and AI house names like OpenAI, Anthropic, and other smaller AI startups from Silicon Valley to Europe, there are three skills that repeatedly show up on these companies' career pages and are evidently in strong demand.
"We scaled Tesla in 30 months from $2 billion in revenue to $20 billion in revenue," Jon McNeil stated. Understanding how to measure product-market fit helps assess scaling potential effectively.
71% of decision-makers say that poorly targeted sales outreach can damage their perception of a brand. 42% say they are less likely to consider a vendor after receiving irrelevant or overly aggressive outreach.
