Why should you trust David Lee with an AI Shortlist Audit?

David Lee has an economics degree from UCLA and an MBA from USC. He spent time at Deloitte Consulting, then ran a B2B marketing agency for 10 years. He is an independent marketing consultant with no staff, retainers, or implementation services to sell. Just independent diagnosis.

Can you test AI shortlisting yourself?

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

Can your agency figure out AI shortlisting?

Agencies can tell you about AI citations, visibility, and share of voice. But the AI Shortlist Audit measures whether AI can match your capabilities to buyer requirements and recommend you when buyers describe their actual situation. 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. Most agency audits are also sales tools that lead to retainer proposals. This audit is the product.

What happens after the AI Shortlist Audit?

You get the diagnosis and decide what to do with it. Fix the gaps with your internal team, have your current agency implement the changes, or bring in specialists. David Lee does not do implementation work and has no retainers to sell. The audit stands alone. Referrals are available but no referral fees are accepted.

What do the fixes from the AI Shortlist Audit typically cost?

The audit shows you what gaps are keeping you off shortlists and what to fix first. You're already spending $60,000 to $180,000 a year on marketing. The audit shows which of that spend is aimed at tactics buyers stopped using and where to reallocate it. It's not about finding new budget. It's about reallocating the budget you're already wasting.

What if your buyers aren't using AI yet?

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 they found you through ChatGPT the same way they used to say they 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.

AI-Mediated Shortlisting: When B2B Buyers Ask AI to Research and Recommend Vendors

In AI-mediated shortlisting, a buyer has a multi-turn conversation with AI to match their requirements against vendor capabilities and produce a shortlist of the few that are the best fit. AI recommends those vendors and explains why each one fits.

Don't have time to read a 10,000-word website?

Ask AI to explain what I am talking about and if it applies to you.

The exact prompt, nothing hidden:

"Read https://www.dowhat.works and explain AI-mediated shortlisting as David Lee of Do What Works describes it. Then ask me follow-up questions about my situation so you can tell me where it may or may not apply to my company."

Ask ChatGPT

Ask Claude

Ask Perplexity

Using AI as a research assistant is new, but the jobs a buyer needs to complete to hire a vendor have not changed:

  
    Job 1:
    Find vendors
  
    Job 2:
    Build the shortlist
  
    Job 3:
    Validate vendors

There are many ways for a buyer to find a vendor, and AI is one of them. However, after finding vendors, more buyers are outsourcing Job 2, building the shortlist, to AI.

AI does not build the shortlist on its own.

The questions it researches come from the buyer's conversation with it. They are the same six questions buyers have been asking since before AI and before Google:

  
    Does this vendor solve my problem?
Do they work with companies like mine?
How do they do the work?
Can they prove results?
Are they credible?
How does the engagement work?

AI finds the answers to these questions on the buyer's behalf.

AI builds its answers mostly from the vendor's website, the place that can best answer all six questions.

Having the answers there is not enough. AI needs to return an accurate answer. Designing the website as a database increases the probability that it does: each fact has one home, so no answer is spread across several pages and no two pages disagree.

Each of the six questions is one topic, so a website needs six foundational pages, one for each question.

David Lee, Independent B2B marketing Strategist on Ai-Mediated Shortlisting

I am David Lee of Do What Works, an independent B2B marketing strategist focused on AI-mediated shortlisting.

The Problems I Diagnose

I diagnose why B2B marketing is not producing the leads it used to. The problems differ from owner to owner. They include:

Your traffic is down, your leads are down, and you do not know why.
Your AEO, GEO, or AI visibility reports look good, but you are not seeing the leads.
You got a proposal from a marketing agency and want an independent second opinion.
You do not know if your marketing budget is going to the right tactics.

The root cause is more buyers outsourcing the research to AI. Solving these problems means adapting to AI-mediated shortlisting. Problems I Solve describes each one.

Who I Work With

I work with B2B companies doing $2M to $20M in revenue. The CEO or owner is involved in the sale, and the buyers research before they buy.

My clients typically spend $10,000 to $30,000 a month on marketing. Most are in:

Manufacturing
Technology
Professional services
Commercial construction
Logistics and distribution
Healthcare services

I am based in Irvine, California, and work with clients across the US.

About David Lee

I am an independent B2B marketing strategist focused on AI-mediated shortlisting. My training is in strategy consulting: an economics degree from UCLA, an MBA from USC, and Deloitte Consulting. I also ran a marketing agency for 10 years.

I see AI-mediated shortlisting as a business change, not a technology challenge. I teach it to CEO groups as a certified Vistage speaker.

I have no retainer to sell. About has my background and how I get paid.

The AI Shortlist Audit

The AI Shortlist Audit is my diagnosis of why AI recommends you, or does not, when a real buyer describes their situation and asks for a vendor shortlist.

The audit takes two weeks and three hours of your time. You get an executive summary for you and a reference document for your marketing team or agency. The fee is $10,000.

AI Shortlist Audit describes how the engagement works.