The technology company playbook
How to become the software ChatGPT names when buyers ask for a shortlist
For founders and commercial leaders at UK B2B software and SaaS companies with £1m to £20m+ in revenue.
Sector lead for technology companies at Fortitude Media
Download the playbook (PDF, 8 pages, 1.6 MB) ↗
Half of software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot, so the first shortlist is often drawn up before anyone visits your website. This playbook shows what assistants check before they name a product, and what to fix first.
What is inside
- The questions software buyers ask AI assistants
- What assistants check before naming a product
- Which review sites and marketplaces to fix first
- A ten-question scorecard for your company
- How to write a fair 'alternatives to' page
- A plan for this month and the next ninety days
Questions your buyers ask
- Asked an AI assistant
What is the best practice management software for a 30-person accountancy firm in the UK?
- Asked an AI assistant
What are the best repairs scheduling systems for UK housing associations, and how do they compare?
- Asked an AI assistant
What are the alternatives to our current field service scheduling system?
- Asked an AI assistant
Does this CRM integrate with Xero and Microsoft 365?
Three of the ten scorecard questions
- Does your homepage say in plain words which industry and size of customer your product is for?
- Do you have a separate page for each core customer type, written in the words that customer uses?
- Can your key pages show their text without scripts running, and do your robots.txt and hosting settings let AI crawlers in?
The full scorecard, a plan for this month and the next ninety days, and the sources assistants check are in the PDF.
Questions founders ask
Is gating our whitepapers and case studies hurting our visibility in AI search?
Yes, for anything behind the form. An assistant cannot fill in a form, so a gated PDF does not exist for it. Publish case studies as open web pages. For a whitepaper, publish a page with the main findings in plain text, and keep the form for the full download if you must.
Should we make our documentation public?
Most of it. Feature guides, setup articles and integration notes help buyers and give assistants accurate material about what the product actually does. Keep anything security-sensitive or customer-specific behind a login. Competitors can usually sign up for a trial anyway, so hiding the rest protects very little.
How many reviews do we need on G2 or Capterra?
There is no magic number. Recency and detail matter more than volume. Reviews that mention the reviewer's industry, company size and what the product solved give an assistant something to match to a buyer's question. The best time to ask is straight after a successful go-live or renewal.
Do analyst reports still matter if buyers use ChatGPT?
Less than reviews for most firms of your size. TrustRadius's July 2026 survey of 1,862 tech buyers found 74% use reviews and only 13% consulted analyst reports. Of those buyers, 63% had used AI in their purchase, and 94% of them fact-checked it at least sometimes. Put reviews, marketplace listings and customer stories first.
Read the full guide
Sector guides · 12 min read
How does a B2B tech company get recommended when buyers ask ChatGPT?
Half of software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot. What ChatGPT reads about SaaS companies, why most product websites give it too little, and what to publish instead.
- How do AI crawlers read my website, and are we letting them in?11 min
- What happens when buyers let an AI agent build the shortlist?12 min
- Do we need schema markup for AI assistants to understand our site?13 min
- Why does ChatGPT describe my firm wrongly, and how do I fix it?13 min
- How do we find out whether ChatGPT is recommending our firm?12 min
