Answers
Straight answers, two sentences first.
The questions B2B revenue leaders ask about AI in go-to-market, answered the way we would answer them on a call. Each page opens with the short version, then explains it. Written for people, and readable by the assistants they ask.
All answers
- AEOWhat is answer engine optimization (AEO)?Answer engine optimization is the work of making a company legible to AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, so that when a buyer asks one for options it can find the company and describe it accurately. Where SEO competes for a position in a list of links, AEO competes to be part of the answer itself.
- AEOWhat is llms.txt, and does my site need one?llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at the root of a website that tells AI systems what the site contains: a one-paragraph summary of the company followed by a short, annotated list of its most important pages. If you want AI assistants to describe your company accurately, you need one, because it is the only page on your site written for them.
- OutboundWhat is signal-based outbound?Signal-based outbound is prospecting that starts from an event rather than a list: a new sales leader in seat, a third SDR job posting, a CRM migration, a funding round with a hiring plan attached. The signal is the reason to write, so the message is about something true and recent instead of a template sent to everyone who fits a filter.
- AI ImplementationWhat is AI lead scoring, and how is it different from rule-based scoring?AI lead scoring uses a model trained on your own won and lost deals to estimate how likely each new lead is to become revenue, then ranks the queue so reps work the best ones first. Rule-based scoring adds points for attributes someone guessed were important; AI scoring learns which attributes actually predicted a sale in your history.
- AI ImplementationHow long does it take to implement AI lead scoring?A first working model is usually live inside 30 days, and it takes about 60 days for its results to settle, because the model needs several weeks of real leads before its thresholds can be tuned. Most of the time goes into data and adoption, not into the model.
- Revenue OperationsRevOps consultant, agency or in-house hire: which should a B2B company choose?Hire in-house when you have continuous operations work and the budget for a senior person; use a consultant when you need a specific system built or fixed and handed over; use an agency when you want ongoing execution of a defined task, such as campaign operations. Most companies between $2M and $50M in revenue need the second before they can make good use of the first.
- GTM Due DiligenceWhat is GTM due diligence, and when do investors need it?GTM due diligence is a buy-side review of whether a company's revenue engine is real and repeatable: the quality of its pipeline, the durability of its revenue, its unit economics, and the team and motion that produce them. Investors and acquirers need it whenever the price depends on growth continuing, which financial diligence alone cannot confirm.
- AutomationWhat is speed to lead, and how do you improve it?Speed to lead is the time between a prospect raising their hand, by filling a form, replying or requesting a demo, and a person from your company responding. It is improved mostly by removing the steps between the form and the rep: instant enrichment, automatic routing by rule, and an alert with context, so the first reply takes minutes rather than hours.
- Revenue OperationsHow do you prepare CRM data for AI?Make the data mean one thing, fill the fields the model will read, and mark outcomes honestly: clear stage definitions, enrichment for the attributes you score on, duplicates merged, and every closed deal labeled won or lost with a reason. You do not need perfect data to start, but you do need to know which fields can be trusted.
- AI ImplementationShould a B2B company build AI into its own sales stack, or buy an AI sales tool?Buy a tool when the job is generic and self-contained, such as call recording or email warm-up; build into your own stack when the value depends on your data, your rules and your CRM, such as scoring, routing and account research. Most teams need both, and the expensive mistake is buying a tool to do a job that only works when it sits inside your systems.
Longer pieces live in Insights. The free tools let you check most of this on your own site, and the FAQ covers how zRev works.