Bob Ruffolo

My biggest takeaway from Endless Customers Live this week: when AI recommends a company, it starts with a pool of 30-40 options, then starts eliminating. Here's how it cuts the list, and the fix for each step 👇

How AI recommends a company and what you can do to get recommended more. The process varies, but here’s the pattern we’ve seen in our research: 1. It takes the prompt and tries to understand the user’s true intent. 2. It looks at everything it knows about the user (context, which may be a lot or a little) to understand exactly what they need. 3. It creates an initial pool of options (products, companies, places, services, etc.) from search results or credible published sources. In our research, this is often 10 to 40 options. 4. It eliminates options in rounds. First, it quickly scans each company’s website to see what it offers, who it serves, and where it specializes, then cuts the ones that don’t fit the user’s needs. 5. Next, it looks for evidence the remaining companies can back up their claims: customer results, accreditations, awards, etc. More cuts. 6. It then acts like a buyer with questions, digging deeper into the remaining websites for answers about pricing, potential problems, and comparisons to alternatives. This is where it finalizes its short list. 7. It does one last confidence check, looking for bad reviews and patterns of complaints. 8. It presents its top recommendation with a few backups and explains why they fit. Next time you ask AI for a recommendation, ask how it got there. It will often describe a very similar process. Notice the pattern: a big pool, a quick skim, easy eliminations. Then deeper passes, spending most of its time on the finalists. Just like human buyers often do. Here’s how to position your company to be recommended more: 1. Have a website. If you already do, congrats! You’ve already completed step one. 2. Be extremely clear about the problems you solve, what you do, who you do it for, where you’re a fit, and where you’re not. Do this for each product or service too. Make it easy to see why you belong in the next round. 3. Back up your claims. If you say “reduce costs,” aim for 3 to 5 customer stories with data. How much did costs drop? For whom? Over what period? Specificity is key. Show or link to the proof. 4. Answer every question a buyer may have, ESPECIALLY PRICING. Explain price ranges, cost drivers, options, payment terms, financing, and guarantees. 5. Know your bad reviews (everyone gets them), respond to them, and fix your business so you get fewer and fewer. 6. Stop trying to be all things to all customers. Become the best in your market at something specific. Show plenty of proof, and back it with a clear promise, guarantee, or warranty. The clearer your focus and the stronger your proof, the easier you make it for AI to recommend you. You can use a tool like @HubSpot's AEO tool to track your visibility in AI recommendations. Share with anyone who needs this. My team helps companies with all of this. What are you seeing in your own tests? Does this match your experience? I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

Yesterday I spoke to a marketing class at UConn. Three student groups. Three real marketing projects. One of them is working for the university itself. The dean gave that team a big challenge: position the university as the best for experiential learning. That's what they want to be known for in the coming years. I love that goal. With how much the world is shifting right now, it's exactly where a university should be focusing. As they planned their research, here was my advice: Go to ChatGPT and ask, "What would a university have to do for you to recommend it as the best for experiential learning?" My guess is nobody at the university has asked that yet. What comes back will likely fall into two buckets: • Tactical moves. What to put on the website. Which student experiences and outcomes to document and share. • Fundamental shifts. What would we have to change? Where would we invest? What would we stop doing so we could go all in? That second bucket is the hard part. Being the best at something means making choices, including deciding what other things you'll pull energy, focus, and resources away from. I told the students to treat that first answer as a starting point. Keep probing. Stay curious. Shape it around what they heard from the dean. I'd bet they walk back in with something the dean hasn't seen before. Not a list of marketing ideas, but a clear picture of what it would actually take to own that position, from the "buyer's" point of view. And this applies to every business. Pick the one thing you want to be known for. Be specific about who you want to serve. Then ask AI: "What would a company have to do for you to recommend it as the best at this for these customers?" Then ask what evidence it would need to see. Then ask what you'd have to stop doing. Some of the answers will be wrong, incomplete, or unrealistic. Building a great business still takes human judgment. But you'll have a starting point you can question, test, and bring to your team. And you'll know exactly what AI says you'd need to do before it recommends you. Has anyone been doing this in their business? What did you learn, and what did you change?

They Ask, You Answer / Endless Customers didn’t work for my company until ______________. How would you answer that?

Bold prediction: within six months, ChatGPT and Claude will both launch a CMS. ChatGPT Sites already hosts websites on your own domain. Claude can publish live pages. Next: managing your whole site from a chat. An interesting alternative to WordPress or HubSpot.

Is your homepage the most important page for AI recommendations? I asked Gemini. Its estimate: • Service pages: 45-50% • Homepage: 5-10% Fix your service pages first.

The simplest AI visibility test I know, from IMPACT coach Mandy York: Ask ChatGPT to recommend the best company for what you do. If you're not there, ask why. Then ask what you'd need to do so it would. AI will literally tell you.

A buyer can understand your company, appreciate your content, and trust your people... and still ask: "What gets enough better for me to justify the effort and risk of changing?" That question is why "a business worth choosing" is Factor One.