The AI Shortlist

Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman
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The AI Shortlist is a 10-part podcast exploring how AI is transforming B2B sales, marketing, and the way companies get discovered. Hosted by tech writer and podcaster Mark Hillary and marketing strategist Matt Bowman, the series examines what AI is saying about your company, how buyers are using tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity before they ever contact sales, and what businesses need to do to become visible, credible, and recommended. Each episode combines practical advice with real-world experience, showing how better ideas and content can get you on the AI shortlist.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    What Evidence Does AI Actually Trust?

    The AI Shortlist – Episode 5: What Evidence Does AI Actually Trust? Hosts: Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman Every company claims to be innovative, customer-focused, and an industry leader. But if everyone is making the same claims, how can AI distinguish between companies that genuinely deliver results and those that simply have good marketing? In episode five of The AI Shortlist, Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman explore why traditional marketing claims are no longer enough when AI is helping B2B buyers research suppliers and build shortlists. The discussion focuses on three essential types of evidence: expertise, outcomes, and independent corroboration. Mark and Matt explain why publishing more content isn't necessarily the answer, why a company's website tells only part of the story, and how independent research, customer experiences, industry commentary, and genuine human expertise can help establish credibility. They also explore an enormous opportunity hidden inside many businesses: proprietary data and the accumulated knowledge of employees. These assets may provide unique insights that competitors cannot replicate and AI cannot simply invent. Key topics include: Why AI needs more than unsubstantiated claims of innovation and industry leadership. The three essential categories of evidence: expertise, outcomes, and corroboration. Why independent sources can be as important as a company's own website. How publishing genuine human expertise can strengthen visibility and credibility. Why proprietary operational data may be a company's most valuable marketing asset. How executives can shift their marketing strategy from producing more content to publishing better evidence. The central question for executives is simple: What does your company know that the internet doesn't? If that knowledge isn't publicly accessible and supported by credible evidence, how can AI recommend your business to a potential buyer? In the next episode, Mark and Matt explore another overlooked source of valuable insight: Your Sales Team Already Wrote Your Content Plan.

  2. Oct 7

    Why AI Gets Companies Wrong

    Episode 4: Why AI Gets Companies Wrong Why does AI sometimes describe your company in a way that feels incomplete, generic, or simply wrong? In this episode of The AI Shortlist, Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman explore why the problem is not always AI hallucination. More often, AI is forming conclusions from the public evidence it can find — and that evidence may be incomplete, inconsistent, outdated, or too generic to show what really makes a company different. They discuss the difference between the company you know internally and the company AI knows publicly. Organizations may contain decades of expertise, customer experience, technical knowledge, and specialist insight, but AI cannot see internal meetings, Slack conversations, customer discussions, or private methodologies. It can only work with what has been made visible. Mark and Matt also explain why AI tends to fill in the gaps. When there is not enough specific evidence, models fall back on broader industry patterns. This can produce a description that is technically accurate but fails to explain why one company is different from its competitors. The episode argues that every case study, podcast appearance, research report, methodology, conference presentation, or expert contribution helps teach AI what an organization actually knows. Marketing is therefore becoming more than attracting attention — it is also about documenting expertise in a form that both buyers and AI can understand. The episode finishes with a practical challenge: ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity to describe your company, then ask why it formed that impression, what evidence influenced the answer, and what information would help it better understand what makes your company unique. Those answers can reveal where the gaps in your public evidence really are.

  3. Oct 1

    Why AI Recommends Some Companies and Not Others

    In Episode 3 of The AI Shortlist, Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman explore one of the biggest questions facing B2B executives today: how does AI actually decide which companies to recommend? They challenge some common assumptions about AI visibility. Traditional SEO, backlinks, domain authority, and large marketing budgets may help companies get discovered online, but they do not automatically make a company part of an AI-generated recommendation. AI is not simply ranking websites — it is trying to answer a buyer’s question or solve a business problem. The discussion explores several important ideas: AI starts with the buyer’s problem, not the vendor. A buyer may ask how to reduce contact centre attrition or improve a business process. AI first tries to understand the problem before deciding which companies have relevant expertise. Evidence builds confidence. Research, case studies, technical documentation, executive interviews, conference presentations, analyst reports, podcasts, and expert commentary can all help demonstrate what a company actually knows. Expertise that stays inside the company may be invisible. A business can have decades of experience, but if that knowledge remains inside presentations, private meetings, or employees’ heads, AI has very little public evidence to work with. Clarity matters more than slogans. Claims such as “innovative,” “customer-centric,” or “global leader” reveal very little. AI gains more understanding from specific explanations of problems solved, approaches used, and measurable outcomes achieved. Visibility now means being understood as well as being found. SEO remains important, but companies also need to make their expertise clear enough that AI can confidently introduce them into a buyer’s research journey. Mark and Matt finish with a practical exercise: ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity about several problems your company solves — without mentioning your company by name. See which companies appear, examine the evidence behind those recommendations, and then ask why your own company was not included. The central lesson is simple: AI visibility is not about manipulating an algorithm. It is about creating a clear, consistent body of public evidence that demonstrates what your company knows and the problems it can solve.

  4. Sep 23

    The Invisible Buyer Journey

    In Episode 2 of The AI Shortlist, Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman explore how the B2B buyer journey has moved into places that sales and marketing teams can no longer easily see. Buyers are increasingly using tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity to research problems, compare suppliers, explore pricing, assess risk, and even build internal business cases — often long before they visit a company website or speak to a salesperson. Mark and Matt discuss why traditional marketing dashboards may now capture only the final stages of the buying process, how AI is influencing which companies make it onto shortlists, and why executives need to rethink where the buyer journey actually begins. The key question is simple: if buyers are researching your company before you know they exist, what are they learning about you?

  5. Sep 16

    What is AI saying about your company?

    What are the AI tools saying about your company? Your clients and prospects may already be asking AI about your company, but you have no idea what answer they are getting. Buyers are not just asking AI 'who are the top companies in category X.' Far more often, they are asking AI how to solve a specific problem such as reducing agent attrition, evaluating insourcing versus outsourcing, or avoiding hidden costs in a contract. When a company has published clear, specific, public evidence about that exact problem, AI can make available that company's name, language, or even a quote inside its answer. That is a backdoor introduction: the buyer never searched for the company by name, but the company still earned a place in the answer. The fear every executive should now feel is not just 'is my company invisible.' It is 'my prospects are already getting answers to their real problems, and I have no idea whether my company is part of those answers, or absent from them entirely.’ Hosts Mark Hillary https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhillary/ Matt Bowman https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewabowmanmba/

  • 5 Episodes

About

The AI Shortlist is a 10-part podcast exploring how AI is transforming B2B sales, marketing, and the way companies get discovered. Hosted by tech writer and podcaster Mark Hillary and marketing strategist Matt Bowman, the series examines what AI is saying about your company, how buyers are using tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity before they ever contact sales, and what businesses need to do to become visible, credible, and recommended. Each episode combines practical advice with real-world experience, showing how better ideas and content can get you on the AI shortlist.

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Mark Hillary and Matt Bowman
  • Show Website
    The AI Shortlist