Last updated 15 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States survey data; the test applies to NZ owners too.

Before your next customer calls, emails, or walks through your door, there’s a good chance they’ve already asked an AI tool about you. A 2026 survey of 1,009 US consumers by Exploding Topics found that 77.6% had used AI to help them shop in the past six months, and 43.2% do it at least weekly. That doesn’t mean AI is buying things on their behalf: the median consumer in that survey would cap autonomous AI spending at $50, and only 11.7% would be comfortable trusting it above $100. It means AI has quietly become an early stop in your customer’s research, and most SME owners have no idea what it’s saying about them.

For years, “being found” meant ranking on page one of Google. That’s no longer the only place the race starts. Bain’s US generative AI consumer survey (1,500 respondents, September 2025) found that 44% of online buyers mostly start their journey in an AI tool, or split their search between AI tools and traditional search. Bain’s qualitative research also suggests small and medium-sized business buyers are beginning to build vendor shortlists inside AI chat tools, then checking those names through websites, reviews and demos. Treat that as a direction of travel, not a measured percentage.

The shortlist forms early. In the 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study (nearly 4,000 buyers, mainly North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific), buying groups filled four of the five spots on their vendor shortlist on Day 1 of the buying process. Buyers contacted their top-ranked vendor first about 80% of the time, and ultimately bought from that top-ranked vendor 77% of the time. Not necessarily the cheapest vendor, and not necessarily the biggest. The one already ranked first before the formal comparison started.

So a big part of the competitive battle isn’t happening in the sales call anymore. It’s happening earlier, in a conversation your customer is having with a machine, about you, that you’re not part of.

You don’t need to become an SEO specialist to find out where you stand. Run these three checks, the AI Shortlist Test, and you’ll know more about your visibility than most of your competitors do.

1. The Citation Check. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google and ask: “Who are the best [your category] in [your city or region]?” Does your business get named? If three different tools give three different answers, or no answer at all, that’s your starting point.

2. The Proof Density Check. AI tools don’t just repeat your marketing copy; they lean on what other people have said about you: reviews, testimonials, case studies, press mentions, directory listings. Count your genuinely independent public proof points. If you can only find a handful, that is a visibility gap, not a marketing problem you can write your way out of.

3. The First-Contact Clock. Visibility only matters if you can convert it. Because buyers tend to contact their top-ranked vendor first, a prospect who has done their AI homework may reach you already leaning your way. How long before someone replies? Clock your real response time, end to end.

“Kevin assists businesses to understand their "Secret Sauce" and assists them to implement a strategy to grow the company's brands and in turn, business opportunities. … his guidance and strategic advice is always well thought through and gets fantastic outcomes.”

— Gareth Bayliss, Sales Manager, The Icehouse

That is one person’s experience, not a promise of your result.

This is exactly the gap Kevin works through with clients before they spend another dollar on marketing. The businesses that show up on an AI shortlist aren’t the loudest. They’re the clearest about what makes them different, and they’ve made that difference easy for others to repeat back.

None of this is a secret once it’s pointed out. So why do most SME owners still have no idea what AI tools say about their business? Usually it’s one of three things: nobody owns the job, since it falls between “marketing” and “IT” and ends up belonging to no one; there’s no system for collecting the reviews and proof that AI actually cites; or the business has never tested itself the way a prospective customer actually would.

This is where the Simple-Growth System™ earns its keep: not as another thing on the to-do list, but as the sequencing. Find the real constraint first, often proof or response time rather than “we need more leads,” fix that one thing properly, then move to the next.

1. Run the Citation Check. Ask three AI tools who they’d recommend in your category and your city or region. Write down exactly what they say.

2. Count your proof. Tally your genuinely independent proof points (Google reviews, testimonials, case studies, press) and set a target to add five more in the next 30 days.

3. Time your response. Clock your actual response speed to a new enquiry, end to end, and compare it honestly against same-business-day.

Sources (US data, opened 15 November 2026): Exploding Topics consumer AI commerce survey, via Search Engine Land (United States); Bain, Your next customer will find you using AI. Now what? (United States, April 2026); 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report and CustomerThink research round-up (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific). Last updated 15 November 2026.

If you don’t know what AI tools are telling your next customer about you, that’s the first constraint worth fixing, before you spend another dollar on marketing.