Pretzl: A New Recipe for B2B Agencies? | Clive Armitage on a Five-Into-One Merger with AI Baked In

Here's an uncomfortable idea for any B2B business competing for a high-value deal: your biggest competitor may not be a better business. It may simply be one that's easier to believe. That's the starting point for the second year of the Trust Advantage research from Emmett & Churchman, which surveyed 200 senior technology decision-makers and sat down with 19 CEOs making real, high-stakes buying decisions. The finding: capable businesses lose deals constantly, not for lack of capability, but because of what the research calls the commercial credibility gap, the distance between what a business can deliver and what a buyer can see, believe and defend. Joel is joined by Lorraine Emmett, founder and managing director of Emmett & Churchman and the lead author of the research, to unpack why 45% of senior buyers say they've ruled out a supplier for failing to prove its credibility, and what leadership teams can do to close the gap in their own business. Download the 'Trust Advantage' report here: https://emmettandchurchman.com/trust/ What you'll learn What the commercial credibility gap actually is, and why it explains lost deals that looked like safe wins on paper. The three questions buyers are really asking of every supplier, and which one businesses most consistently fail to answer. Why a frank discussion of limitations and risk can build more trust than a flawless pitch. What a smaller or less recognised B2B business can do to compete credibly against a better-known incumbent. The first practical step for any leadership team that wants to close this gap in its own business.

Why AI makes human experiences more valuable, not less, with Claire Ellis of JPC ABM was supposed to be about relationships. As AI makes targeting and personalisation cheap and abundant, the thing ABM was meant to build in the first place, trust with the people who actually decide, has become the real differentiator. Nowhere is that more acute than in ABM's biggest deals, where a single account can be worth millions and keeping it can matter even more than winning it. ➡️ Joel Harrison is joined by Claire Ellis, Managing Director of JPC, to unpack experiential ABM: human moments designed to move specific stakeholders, rather than events that simply fill rooms. Claire explains why buyers are now using AI to form preferences early and out of sight, why so much supplier activity is noise rather than relationship progress, and how to work out who really carries the room. She shares how BT moved from infrastructure provider to strategic partner with Translink, where organisations should deliberately keep human judgement in the loop, and why accountability matters more than accuracy when AI shapes what a senior buyer sees. If you run ABM, or are weighing up where your next experience budget should go, this conversation will sharpen how you plan, measure and own those moments. This episode is sponsored by JPC. What you’ll learn Why AI has made trust harder to earn in complex deals, and what buyers rely on instead. How to design experiences around the change you need in specific stakeholders, rather than around the format. How to spot who really carries the room, and when to rethink your account plan. Where to deliberately keep human judgement, and how open to be about AI's role. What credible relationship movement looks like, and who should own what happens next.

Everyone's talking about buyer group marketing. Far fewer are doing it well, and most organisations have no reliable way of knowing how mature their approach really is. For this sponsored episode, Joel Harrison is joined by Greg Salmon, CEO of Pretzl, and Jeff Lowe, Pretzl's go-to-market advisor and a former CMO and Chief Commercial Officer at SMART Technologies, to unpack the 2026 Buyer Group Index. Produced in association with the ANA and research firm NewtonX, the Index surveyed 200 senior go-to-market leaders and measured 28 practices against commercial outcomes, from pipeline velocity to time to market. ➡️ Greg explains why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, why the single score of the MQL is so comforting and so misleading, and how to reach the hidden influencers and build trust with people a vendor may never meet. He also warns that AI can scale bad assumptions as easily as good ones. Jeff draws on his years client-side to argue that separate sales and marketing teams are an outdated idea, explains why connected data has become a CMO's problem, and sets out what the leading organisations do differently. What You'll Learn Why so much of what passes for buyer group marketing is persona-based nurture under a new name, and how to tell the difference. How to identify the hidden influencers in a buying group and build trust with people you may never meet. Why AI is speeding up go-to-market activity without automatically improving growth, and what to do about how AI represents your brand. Why connected data and genuine sales and marketing alignment are the highest-impact practices, and among the weakest. What the leading organisations do differently, and how to benchmark your own maturity in around 15 minutes.

Nostalgia sells everything from trainers to TV reboots, yet it barely registers in B2B marketing. To find out why, Joel Harrison went through three years of B2B Marketing Awards entries in search of the exceptions, and invited Guy O'Brien, co-founder of B2B influencer marketing agency Custom Influence, into the studio to make sense of what he found. ➡️ Together they unpack five ways B2B brands are going retro, from Exel Composites retelling the Three Little Pigs to Allica Bank's bowler hat, and ask why so few try it. Guy's verdict is that nostalgia isn't wrong for B2B, it's just hard: target the wrong generation and you alienate the buyers coming through; lean too far into the joke and people remember the ad but not the brand. Joel adds a warning of his own about nostalgia that stirs the wrong memories. If you're weighing a bolder creative idea, this conversation will help you judge when going retro will pay off. What You'll Learn Why nostalgia is everywhere in consumer marketing but rare in B2B, and why that comes down to difficulty rather than suitability. The five creative approaches B2B brands are using to go retro, with campaign examples from the B2B Marketing Awards. How to avoid alienating buyers from other generations as B2B buying groups get younger. Why the brand, not the nostalgic idea, has to be what people remember. How a nostalgic idea can build a community rather than a one-off moment.

The winning vendor is usually already on the buyer's shortlist before a single sales conversation happens, and increasingly, it isn't a salesperson or a website that put them there. It's a large language model, quietly checking what real people are already saying about you. John Rockhold, VP of Market Engagement at Spotlight, joins Joel Harrison to unpack Influence Orchestration, Spotlight's new research into how buying preference now forms in AI answer engines, peer communities and analyst conversations, long before a deal ever reaches a pipeline. John's team interviewed 23 leaders who build and measure B2B influence, reviewed 27 published studies of buyer behaviour, and analysed millions of AI engine answers and citations across B2B technology categories. The conversation also draws on Spotlight Summit, the event John's team ran in Kansas City the week this episode was recorded, where Joel spoke alongside Bijou Barry, Megan Burns and other voices shaping this shift. What you'll learn Why buyer preference now largely forms out of sight, in AI prompt windows, peer conversations and communities, before a vendor even knows a deal exists What separates the vendors AI answer engines actually recommend from the ones they ignore Why earned trust compounds over time, while paid attention resets the moment you stop paying for it Who should really own influence inside a B2B company, and why almost nobody does today What to check in your own AI visibility on Monday morning, and what to do if you don't like what you find