Independent B2B Marketing Consultant for $5M to $15M Companies

You’re spending $5-15K a month on marketing, but your pipeline is down.

Your buyers changed how they research. They describe their problem to AI and ask it to recommend vendors.

If AI can’t find you, you don’t make the shortlist.

Hi, I’m David Lee.

I‘m a former HubSpot full-service marketing agency owner. For years, I sold the standard $5K-20K monthly retainers.

  • SEO for traffic

  • Paid ads for leads

  • Blogs for engagement

  • Email campaigns for nurture

  • Social media for reach

The full attention economy playbook.

All of that worked great until buyers stopped searching with Google and started to use AI instead.

And that is when I realized that most marketing strategies are optimizing for the wrong thing.

More About My Background

Picture of David Lee, AI Shortlist Architect

Have you noticed that your marketing stopped working?

You’re spending $5,000 to $15,000 per month on marketing. Maybe more. But pipeline is thinner than last year. Lead quality is down. The campaigns that used to work don’t anymore.

Maybe your agency told you the problem is AI visibility. Get more citations in AI tools. Optimize for AI search. Show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity results. You might have already invested in that strategy.

But the pipeline is still declining.

Here’s what changed: buyers stopped searching for vendors. They started describing their problems to AI and asking for recommendations. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. These tools are now the first filter. They decide who gets on the shortlist and who never gets considered.

89% of B2B buyers now use AI tools throughout their purchasing process, from initial research to vendor comparison to decision validation (Forrester, 2024). Buyers now interact with 22% fewer vendors than the year before (Gartner, 2025). 61% prefer to complete their research without speaking to a sales representative (Gartner, June 2025).

Most companies and most agencies are adapting by applying the old playbook to AI. They’re optimizing for AI citations, getting mentioned in AI conversations, tracking visibility in ChatGPT and Perplexity, measuring share of voice.

But citations measure visibility. Visibility is not the same as being recommended. You can show up in AI citations all day and still not make the shortlist when a buyer describes their situation and asks AI who they should hire.

Learn more about how AI shortlisting works

The 3 Buyer Jobs Framework™

When buyers need to hire someone to solve a business problem, they use AI to complete two of the three jobs involved in selecting a vendor. Both happen entirely inside AI, invisible to you and your CRM. By the time buyers reach Job 3, the shortlist is already set.

Job 1 is Find Vendors

Buyers describe their problem and AI discovers vendors through three channels: direct search of company websites, listicles and “best of” lists, and industry directories. If AI can’t find you through any of these channels, you’re not in the consideration set. This job happens entirely inside AI, before buyers ever visit a website.

Job 2 is Create Shortlist

AI visits vendor websites, reads the content, and evaluates each vendor against six factors: problem fit, methodology, quantified results, ICP fit, credentials, and execution model. If AI can’t find clear answers to these questions in text on pages it can reach, it recommends someone else. This job also happens entirely inside AI.

Job 3 is Validate Vendors

Only after AI creates the shortlist do buyers engage directly. Demos, reference calls, pricing discussions. This is the only job visible in your CRM. By the time it happens, the shortlist is already set.

The AI Shortlist Audit diagnoses where your company is failing at Job 1 and Job 2, the two jobs that happen invisibly inside AI before buyers ever contact you.

See the complete framework

The AI Shortlist Audit

A two-week B2B marketing diagnostic that shows whether AI recommends you when buyers build vendor shortlists. You hand this to your marketing team or agency and say “do this.”

You get a named diagnosis, such as Invisible Expert or Visible Contender, that tells you exactly where you stand, what is broken, and what to fix first.

The audit is built around five custom buyer prompts based on a two-hour discovery conversation about your company, your buyers, and how they actually describe their problems. These are not keyword searches. They are detailed conversations that mirror how buyers actually use AI. I test how AI responds to these prompts the same way a real buyer would.

For Job 1, Discovery. You see the actual keyword phrases AI generated from your buyer prompts, which ones your site matches, which listicles AI referenced, which directories it checked, and the percentage breakdown showing how much discovery came from each channel.

For Job 2, Shortlisting. You see how AI evaluated you across six factors: problem fit, methodology, quantified results, ICP fit, credentials, and execution model. You see which buyer questions AI could not answer about you, and specific recommendations organized by factor, effort level, and who should own each fix.

I’m an independent B2B marketing consultant. I don’t do implementation work and have no retainers to sell. The audit is pure diagnostic work that stands alone. After delivery, you decide how to move forward. Use your internal team, work with your current agency, or ask me for specialist referrals. I don’t accept referral fees.

Fee: $10,000.

Timeline: Two weeks.

Your time: Three hours.

This marketing audit is designed for $5M to $15M B2B companies in SaaS, manufacturing, professional services, or technology services where the CEO or owner is directly involved in go-to-market decisions.

See the full audit details

Want to Understand the Framework first?

Start with a free workshop.

Register for the Workshop

Ready to see where you stand?

Start with a 30 min discussion.

Start my AI Shortlist Audit

FAQ

  • I have an economics degree from UCLA and an MBA from USC. I spent time at Deloitte Consulting. Then I ran a B2B marketing agency for 10 years.

    Most people analyzing this space are either marketers focused on tactics or consultants without agency experience. I’ve been on both sides, running campaigns and advising on strategy.

    I’m an independent marketing consultant, not an agency owner. I don’t have staff, retainers, or implementation services to sell. Just independent diagnosis.

  • You can. Ask ChatGPT to find vendors for the problems you solve and see what it tells you.

    But then you’re left figuring out what you just learned, what’s missing, and what matters most. The audit gives you five buyer prompts tailored to how your actual buyers describe their problems, systematic analysis across both discovery and shortlisting, and a named diagnosis showing exactly where the gaps are and what to fix first.

    You’re not paying for the framework. You’re paying for the diagnosis.

  • They can tell you about AI citations, visibility, and share of voice. Many agencies are now offering AI audits focused on exactly that.

    But the AI Shortlist Audit measures something different: whether AI can match your capabilities to buyer requirements and recommend you when buyers describe their actual situation. That’s not a marketing metric. It’s a sales qualification happening invisibly before buyers contact you.

    Most agencies aren’t set up to diagnose that because they’re focused on driving traffic and generating leads, which happens after shortlists are already formed.

    It’s also worth knowing that most agency audits are sales tools. They’re free or discounted because the audit leads to a retainer proposal. This audit is the product. There’s no retainer behind it.

  • You get the diagnosis. You decide what to do with it. You can fix the gaps with your internal team, have your current agency implement the changes, or bring in specialists for specific pieces.

    I don’t do implementation work and I don’t have retainers to sell. The audit stands alone. If you want referrals to people who can execute the fixes, I can provide them, but I don’t take referral fees.

    You own the decision about what happens next.

  • The audit shows you what gaps are keeping you off shortlists and what to fix first. Whether you can handle those fixes internally or need outside help depends on your team’s capabilities.

    You’re already spending $60,000 to $180,000 a year on marketing. The audit shows you which of that spend is aimed at tactics buyers stopped using and where to reallocate it to actually get on shortlists.

    It’s not about finding new budget. It’s about reallocating the budget you’re already wasting.

  • Research shows that 89% of B2B buyers are using AI in their purchasing process, even if you haven’t seen evidence of it yet.

    Buyers using AI for research is invisible to you. They don’t tell you “I found you through ChatGPT” the same way they used to say “I found you through Google.”

    If you’re wrong about your buyers not using AI, you’re spending $60,000 to $180,000 a year on marketing that’s not reaching them.

    Better to know now than keep spending blind.