Get Selected in AI-Driven Buying Journeys
Buyers are researching your category right now - using AI tools. The AI decides whether you appear, how you're positioned, and if you make the shortlist. This is The Selection Layer - the space between your brand and your buyer where B2B decisions are increasingly being formed.
We help you get selected in it - not just mentioned.
○ WHAT WE DO
Here's what we help you control:
Get Included
Appear in the AI-generated research that shapes buyer shortlists in your category, before your sales team enters the picture.
Get Positioned
Ensure AI tools interpret and compare your brand accurately - not by default, and not to your competitors' advantage.
Get Selected
Convert AI-shaped demand into qualified pipeline, and make sure the buyer's check on what AI said confirms it.
Inclusion gets you considered | Positioning gets you shortlisted
| Preference gets you recommended | Selection wins the deal
○ WHAT'S CHANGED
Here's why you're losing deals before you even know about them.
51% of B2B software buyers now start their vendor research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google - up from 29% eleven months earlier.
And it's changing who wins. Seven in ten software buyers say AI surfaced information that changed which vendor they chose.
(G2, "The Answer Economy", April 2026. Survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers across North America, EMEA and APAC)
That means shortlists are being formed, vendors compared, and decisions shaped, before your sales team has a single conversation.
AI now sits between your brand and your buyer. It decides who gets considered, how each option is framed, and which one it recommends.
- If AI can't find you, you're absent from the research phase entirely.
- If AI finds you but can't interpret you, you're compared at a disadvantage.
- If AI interprets you but doesn't prefer you, you're on the list, but not the recommendation.
- If AI prefers you but your post-AI experience breaks down, the deal dies on arrival.
More content won't fix this. Getting selected is engineered: layer by layer, from evidence.
○ HOW WE WORK
A practical method for getting selected when AI builds the shortlist.
Most B2B teams don't know where they stand when AI builds the shortlist, or what's shaping that position.
We don't guess. We diagnose it, engineer it, then defend it.
Included, positioned, selected: those are outcomes. Getting them is a sequence. This isn't a content audit or an SEO review. It's Selection Engineering, and it runs in a deliberate order.
Three stages. One outcome: get selected.
1. Diagnose
The AI Shortlist Scan benchmarks how AI includes, positions and compares your brand against competitors, and identifies exactly what's driving it.
£1,995 · seven days · 60-minute walkthrough · money-back guarantee.
Outcome: An evidenced picture of where you stand, and why.
2. Engineer
The Selection Engineering Sprint rebuilds the content, proof and positioning signals that shape inclusion, positioning, preference and selection, targeted by your Scan, layer by layer.
Six weeks · one-to-one · fixed scope · from £15,000 · ends with your first benchmark.
Outcome: Better inclusion, sharper framing, stronger preference.
3. Optimise
The Quarterly Benchmark re-runs your prompt set every quarter and reports movement: what improved, what slipped, what to defend next. Because AI answers move, and a position has to be held.
Available after your Scan or Sprint · twelve-month term · four runs a year.
Outcome: Position defended quarter on quarter.
You can't influence a decision until you understand how it's being made. That's why the work starts with evidence: we establish exactly what AI is doing with your brand today, before we change anything.
○ OUR THINKING
Getting selected isn't a content problem.
It's an evidence problem.
Most approaches to AI discovery focus on content optimisation: structure, citations, retrieval signals. That matters, but it's the floor, not the ceiling.
Decoding Growth operates at the layer above: understanding how AI systems are interpreting your category, evaluating your brand, deciding who to prefer. And how the buyer's experience after the AI recommendation reinforces or contradicts that.
That's a different discipline. Not content, not SEO - it starts with how the decision gets made.
Because the question we're answering isn't "can AI find your content?" - it's "when a buyer asks AI to recommend a vendor, does your brand make the cut?"
Those are different questions. They demand different answers.
○ WHERE TO START
Start with the AI Shortlist Scan
A fast, decision-grade analysis of how AI is shaping buyer shortlists in your category - and exactly where you sit.
£1,995. Delivered in 7 days. 60-minute walkthrough. Money-back guarantee.
Before you can improve your position, you need to know what it is.
The AI Shortlist Scan shows you:
- Whether your brand is appearing in AI-generated buyer research in your category
- How AI tools are comparing and positioning you versus your key competitors
- What's driving inclusion, exclusion, and comparison signals right now
- Why specific competitors may be getting shortlisted ahead of you
- The top five changes that will most improve your position, ranked by impact
- Your Shortlist Rate: how often you're in the recommended set, not just the answer
You'll leave knowing whether you're being included, compared, or filtered out - and precisely what to do about it.
Then keep the picture current: the Quarterly Benchmark re-runs your Scan prompts four times a year and reports what's moved.
○ WHO WE WORK WITH
Built for B2B vendors whose buyers research with AI.
Decoding Growth works with B2B SaaS and technology vendors whose categories are researched, compared and shortlisted through AI tools before a buyer ever gets in touch. Based in the UK, working with clients across the UK, US and Europe.
Our clients use the work to:
- Identify hidden selection gaps before competitors exploit them
- Improve inclusion across the AI answers that shape their category
- Strengthen buyer trust at the research phase, not just the sales stage
- Make sure the post-AI experience confirms what the buyer was told
- Connect AI-shaped demand directly to pipeline
You can't convert what AI doesn't surface. And you can't scale revenue without first knowing where you stand.
Start with the Scan. Build from there.
Decoding Growth is led by John Webb.
Twenty-five years of commercial leadership across B2B technology, media and information businesses, now applied to one problem: how brands get selected when AI builds the shortlist. The Selection Layer is his framework.
MORE ABOUT JOHN →
○ INSIGHT
The Selection Layer Library
Working thinking on how B2B brands get included, positioned, preferred and chosen in AI-mediated buying.
Not sure where to start?
See where you stand
Tell me about your category and your competitors. I'll review it, run three of your buyer prompts, and reply personally within one working day.
Submitting isn't buying. If the Scan isn't right for you, I'll say so.
£1,995 · seven days · 60-minute walkthrough · money-back guarantee
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For a specific question, or anything that doesn't need a call yet.
I'll reply personally within one working day.
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Fortnightly thinking on how B2B brands get included, positioned and chosen in AI-mediated buying.
Page last updated: 7 September 2026