One of the funniest mistakes in B2B right now is pretending AI made expertise optional.
It didn’t.
It made expertise easier to verify — and way more valuable when the stakes rise.
That’s why I keep coming back to Forrester’s 2026 B2B predictions. Forrester says 30% of buyers viewed genAI tools as a meaningful interaction during the final commit stage of a purchase, compared with 17% who said the same about interacting with product experts.
But the same release argues that human expertise will rival genAI in appeal as buyers seek deeper validation. It also says 75% of enterprise B2B companies will increase budgets for influencer relations as buying groups rely more on external voices like analysts, experts, and subject-matter authorities. In the broader buying research, Forrester also notes that buyers are widening their networks and leaning on people they trust.
That sounds exactly right to me.
Because AI is very good at compression.
When the decision gets expensive, people still want validation.
The new funnel includes borrowed trust
For years, B2B teams treated “influencer” like a consumer internet word.
Meanwhile, real buyers were already listening to:
analysts,
operators,
consultants,
technical creators,
category experts,
power users,
and respected people inside their peer network.
Now that AI can summarize the category faster, those trusted human voices matter even more — because buyers use them to pressure-test what the machine told them.
That is not a side channel.
That is part of the funnel.
GenAI created a trust rebound
This is the part people missed.
A lot of executives assumed that if buyers had better AI tools, they would need fewer human experts.
The opposite is happening in a lot of important decisions.
Why?
Because when information becomes abundant, certainty becomes scarce.
AI can generate the first answer.
It can shortlist.
It can compare.
It can synthesize.
But when a buyer needs to defend a purchase, they still want someone credible to say:
“Yes, this is the right category.”
“Yes, these tradeoffs are normal.”
“Yes, this vendor is believable.”
“No, that feature does not matter as much as they say.”
“Here’s what would actually break in implementation.”
That is expert work.
Most B2B “influencer” programs are still painfully shallow
A lot of companies say they do influencer relations when what they really mean is:
sponsor a newsletter,
buy a webinar slot,
ask someone with a following to post once,
and then wonder why pipeline did not magically appear.
That is not what this moment requires.
If expert validation is becoming a real buying input, then the job is not just exposure.
It is credibility transfer.
That means the company needs real experts to engage with:
clearer point of view,
better proof,
sharper product truth,
more useful category framing,
and fewer fake thought-leadership PDFs written by nobody in particular.
My practical advice
1. Know which experts your buyers already trust
Not who your team thinks is cool. Who your buyers actually cite.
2. Give experts substance, not slogans
Original data, clear product truth, implementation details, strong customer stories, honest tradeoffs.
3. Invest in relationships, not one-off placements
Borrowed trust compounds when the market sees repeated, credible alignment over time.
4. Put real operators in public
Founders, product leaders, customers, practitioners — the people with scar tissue tend to be the most believable.
5. Use AI to support expert distribution, not replace the expert
Summaries, clips, repackaging, targeting, follow-up. Fine. But the trust still starts with a real brain.
My founder take
The next phase of GTM will belong to teams that understand a simple truth:
AI can accelerate explanation.
Humans still close conviction.
So yes, use AI aggressively.
But do not confuse information abundance with trust abundance.
Those are not the same thing.
And the companies that remember that will build much stronger demand than the ones trying to automate credibility itself.
