What ChatGPT Says About Your Product Is Now Your Top KPI

Eli Schwartz's 2026 marketing predictions identified a shift that deserves deeper examination: the "Zero Click" phenomenon becoming standard as AI synthesizes answers without requiring website visits.

But there's a consequence of this shift that's reshaping B2B go-to-market in ways most companies haven't fully grasped yet.

There's a new dashboard metric that exec teams are obsessing over in 2026. It's not MQLs. It's not pipeline velocity. It's not even win rate.

It's what ChatGPT says about their product.

When a board member or CEO asks "how are we positioned in the market?" they're no longer satisfied with analyst reports or win/loss analysis. They're opening ChatGPT and asking: "What's the best [category] for [use case]?" And if the company isn't mentioned—or worse, is mentioned unfavorably—that's now a product marketing crisis.

Welcome to the new era of B2B buying, where LLM perception has become the most consequential measure of competitive positioning.

Why LLM Perception Became the Top KPI

The "Objective" Source Problem

Here's what's driving this shift: buyers perceive AI assistants as objective.

When a vendor says "we're the leader in our category," buyers are skeptical. When an analyst firm ranks vendors, buyers know vendors pay for placement. When G2 shows review scores, buyers question whether reviews are incentivized.

But when ChatGPT says "the leading solutions in this space are X, Y, and Z"—that feels objective. It feels like an unbiased synthesis of available information. It feels like truth.

Whether that perception is accurate is almost irrelevant. What matters is that buyers act on it. And when buyers treat LLM responses as objective market truth, what LLMs say about your product becomes existentially important.

The Zero Click Reality

Schwartz predicts search queries will reach record highs while website clickthrough traffic declines. This "Zero Click" world fundamentally changes the game: buyers get their answers without ever visiting your site.

In traditional SEO, you optimized to get clicks. In the Zero Click world, the answer IS the destination. If ChatGPT's answer doesn't include you—or positions you unfavorably—you've lost the buyer before they ever had a chance to experience your product, your messaging, or your sales team.

The implication is stark: your website, your content, your entire marketing infrastructure doesn't matter if the AI answer excludes you from consideration.

The New B2B Buying Behaviors

Let's map the specific shifts in how B2B buying actually looks in 2026:

Shift 1: AI-First Discovery

Before: Buyers started with Google searches, review sites, or peer recommendations
Now: Buyers start with ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to get an instant market overview

The first question is no longer "let me search for solutions." It's "let me ask AI what my options are." This is faster, feels more comprehensive, and provides synthesis that would take hours to compile manually.

As Schwartz notes, AI isn't replacing search—it's becoming how search works. And in that model, you're either in the synthesized answer or you're invisible.

Shift 2: Conversational Evaluation

Before: Buyers read comparison pages, feature matrices, and analyst quadrants
Now: Buyers have back-and-forth conversations with AI about their specific requirements

"Which of these is better for a 200-person company in healthcare?" is a question buyers now ask AI directly. They're getting personalized comparison guidance without talking to any vendor.

Shift 3: Pre-Formed Opinions

Before: Buyers arrived at vendor websites with curiosity
Now: Buyers arrive with opinions already formed by AI recommendations

By the time someone requests a demo, they've already been told by ChatGPT whether you're a good fit, how you compare to alternatives, and what your weaknesses are. Your sales team isn't shaping perception—they're confirming or fighting it.

Shift 4: Compressed Consideration

Before: Buyers evaluated 5-10 options before narrowing to 2-3
Now: Buyers start with 2-3 options based on AI recommendations and rarely expand

The long list is dead. AI creates the short list directly. If you're not in the initial AI response, you're unlikely to be considered at all.

Shift 5: Objective Positioning Perception

Before: Buyers recognized that vendor claims were biased
Now: Buyers trust AI positioning as more objective than vendor or analyst positioning

This is the most significant shift. When ChatGPT describes your product's strengths and weaknesses, buyers treat it as market truth—not as one perspective among many.

The Exec Team Obsession

Walk into any B2B growth company's leadership meeting in 2026 and you'll see this play out:

"What does ChatGPT say about us versus [competitor]?"

"When someone asks for the best [our category], are we mentioned?"

"What's our share of voice in AI search?"

These questions have moved from marketing curiosity to board-level concern. And for good reason—the answers directly predict future pipeline.

Consider the implications:

• If ChatGPT consistently recommends your competitor for enterprise use cases, your enterprise pipeline will suffer
• If ChatGPT describes your product as "expensive but comprehensive" while describing a competitor as "best value," you've lost the value positioning war
• If ChatGPT doesn't mention you at all for key use cases, those buyers never even consider you

Exec teams are obsessing over LLM perception because LLM perception is now a leading indicator of revenue.

The Browser Wars Add Another Layer

Schwartz's prediction about intensifying "Browser Wars" adds complexity. Chrome, Edge, Safari, and newcomers are all competing with different AI integrations, each with distinct synthesis algorithms.

This means your LLM perception isn't uniform—it varies by platform. ChatGPT might position you one way, Claude another, Perplexity another. And as browsers integrate different AI capabilities, the fragmentation increases.

For product marketing, this means monitoring and influencing perception across multiple AI platforms, not just one. The company that only optimizes for ChatGPT may be invisible in Perplexity or whatever AI powers Safari's synthesis.

What This Means for Product Marketing

If LLM perception is the new top KPI, product marketing strategy has to evolve:

Monitor LLM Positioning Like You Monitor Competitors

Most companies have competitive intelligence practices. Few have LLM intelligence practices.

You need to know:

• What does ChatGPT say about you versus each major competitor?
• For which use cases does AI recommend you? Which ones recommend competitors?
• What weaknesses or limitations does AI associate with your product?
• How has this changed over the past month? Quarter?

This isn't a one-time audit. It's ongoing monitoring, just like competitive positioning.

Influence the Narrative in a Zero Click World

Traditional content marketing creates assets and hopes they drive clicks. In the Zero Click world Schwartz describes, the content's job isn't to generate visits—it's to influence what AI says.

This means:

• Creating definitive content that clearly states your positioning
• Ensuring accurate information is accessible to AI crawlers
• Responding to industry developments quickly (LLMs favor recent content)
• Building content that directly addresses comparison queries

The metric isn't clicks. It's whether your content shapes the AI answer.

Align Internal Perception with LLM Perception

One of the strangest new challenges: your internal team may believe one positioning while AI tells a different story.

Your sales team says you're the enterprise leader. ChatGPT says you're best for mid-market. Who's right? More importantly, who do buyers believe?

Aligning internal messaging with LLM perception—or deliberately working to shift LLM perception—becomes a critical product marketing function.

Make LLM Perception a Dashboard Metric

If exec teams are going to obsess over it anyway, make it measurable:

• Share of voice: How often are you mentioned versus competitors for category queries?
• Positioning accuracy: Does AI describe your product the way you want to be positioned?
• Use case coverage: For which use cases does AI recommend you?
• Sentiment: Is AI description positive, neutral, or negative?
• Platform variance: How does perception differ across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity?

Track these over time. Report on them. Set goals. Treat them as seriously as you treat pipeline metrics—because they predict pipeline metrics.

The SEO Evolution Connects Here

Schwartz notes that traditional rank tracking becomes obsolete as results are dynamically personalized. The same applies to LLM perception—there's no single "ranking" because every response is synthesized dynamically.

This is why the job, as he predicts, transforms from "technical minutiae" into strategic oversight. You can't optimize your way to a #1 ranking in ChatGPT. You have to influence the information ecosystem that shapes AI synthesis.

That's a fundamentally different skill set. It's less about keywords and more about narrative. Less about technical SEO and more about what buyers need to believe about your product.

The Uncomfortable Implications

You're Not in Control

Unlike your website, your ads, or your sales scripts, you don't control what AI says about you. You can influence it, but you can't dictate it.

This is uncomfortable for marketing teams used to controlling the message. But it's the new reality. LLM perception is shaped by thousands of sources, and your ability to influence it depends on creating content that becomes part of that synthesis.

Accuracy Isn't Guaranteed

LLMs can be wrong about your product. They can cite outdated information, misunderstand your positioning, or hallucinate features you don't have.

And buyers will believe them anyway.

This means proactive correction isn't optional. If AI is saying something wrong about your product, you need to create content that corrects the record and ensure that content is accessible to LLM crawlers.

Competitors Can Influence Your Perception

If a competitor publishes extensive content comparing themselves favorably to you, that content influences how AI describes the comparison.

LLM perception is a competitive battlefield. Companies that actively manage their AI narrative gain advantage over those that don't.

From Obsession to Strategy

Exec teams are right to obsess over LLM perception. But obsession without strategy is just anxiety.

The companies winning in 2026 have moved from "what does ChatGPT say about us?" panic to systematic LLM perception management:

1. Continuous monitoring of AI search positioning across platforms and queries
2. Gap analysis identifying where AI perception doesn't match desired positioning
3. Content strategy designed to influence LLM knowledge bases
4. Technical optimization ensuring AI can access and understand your content
5. Measurement frameworks tracking LLM perception as a core KPI

This isn't a one-time project. It's an ongoing function, as important as traditional product marketing.

The Bottom Line

Schwartz's 2026 predictions point to a world where AI becomes an ordinary part of discovery and Zero Click becomes standard. The implication that deserves more attention: what AI says about your product becomes the most important thing it says.

Buyers trust it. Exec teams obsess over it. And it directly predicts pipeline outcomes.

You can resist this shift or you can adapt to it. But you can't ignore it.

The companies that treat LLM perception as a top KPI—that monitor it, measure it, and actively manage it—will shape how buyers perceive them. The companies that don't will have their positioning decided by AI, based on whatever information happens to be available.

In 2026, product marketing has a new mandate: own your AI narrative, or someone else will.