In their groundbreaking work The Trusted Advisor, the authors offer what I think is one of the most underrated principles for anyone in marketing and sales.
Of course this is not a new idea. Chanakya, the great Indian war and governance strategist of lore, famously wrote in Arthashastra that
While he was not writing about the modern-day sales funnel, Chanakya’s wisdom offers an interesting parable for modern day and it is this: “By the time you're in the room, the buying decision has already been made.”
“The most effective selling technique is to not sell, but to commence the service process.”
Of course this is not a new idea. Chanakya, the great Indian war and governance strategist of lore, famously wrote in Arthashastra that
"The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity to defeat the enemy."
While he was not writing about the modern-day sales funnel, Chanakya’s wisdom offers an interesting parable for modern day and it is this: “By the time you're in the room, the buying decision has already been made.”
Origins: The idea of a trusted advisor helping clients succeed was central to the early days of modern banking. In Rainer Liedtke’s research paper titled “Agents for the Rothschilds: A Nineteenth-Century Information Network” he talks about how “The gathering, transfer and utilisation of information happened through people who were constantly crossing borders, sometimes physically but more often culturally.” In essence, the merchant banks of the 19th century, the Rothschilds, the Barings, and the Morgans were not only the bankers, but they operated more like private councils for their clients. They did not just arrange capital, they were the intelligence network that helped the clients transact, but more importantly offer their clients information and counsel. They had correspondents in every major city. Information often travelled through them. By controlling the asymmetry of information, they kept both the institution and client ahead.
The modern 20th century avatar of the merchant corporate bank brought in these agents and correspondents as full time employees. Or as we call them Relationship Managers today. The Relationship Manager (RM)-led model remains the dominant approach in corporate and investment banking until today, because of the asymmetry of information advantages provided by that model. As investment banking institutionalised through the 20th century, the RM became the designated carrier of institutional knowledge. About markets, about deals, about what competitors were doing. The coverage sales model was literally designed around the assumption that the client needed a human conduit to make sense of complexity – both of market and product.
The shift: The advent of the information age and the internet shifted this slightly. The Cambrian explosion of information democratization that the age of the internet unleashed has already dented that asymmetry. Google’s initial founding principle was perhaps the best way to articulate that dent - “Provide all the world’s information to all the peoples of the world.”
The modern 20th century avatar of the merchant corporate bank brought in these agents and correspondents as full time employees. Or as we call them Relationship Managers today. The Relationship Manager (RM)-led model remains the dominant approach in corporate and investment banking until today, because of the asymmetry of information advantages provided by that model. As investment banking institutionalised through the 20th century, the RM became the designated carrier of institutional knowledge. About markets, about deals, about what competitors were doing. The coverage sales model was literally designed around the assumption that the client needed a human conduit to make sense of complexity – both of market and product.
The shift: The advent of the information age and the internet shifted this slightly. The Cambrian explosion of information democratization that the age of the internet unleashed has already dented that asymmetry. Google’s initial founding principle was perhaps the best way to articulate that dent - “Provide all the world’s information to all the peoples of the world.”
However, age old institutions don’t crumble so soon. Democratisation of information led to the deluge of information. The new advantage was not about the volume of information, but about the curation of it. It became the oligarchy of the curators of information. The financial agents were successfully able to ride the digital revolution to become the smart curators of information to help clients not get drowned in data and find the signal in the noise. Research now became the moat. Sell-side research — the analyst, the morning note, the sector call — was the bank's way of formalising that asymmetry. Clients read the Bank’s research which shaped their worldview. That was the deal. And for decades, it worked, because there was no other way to get that quality of synthesis at that speed.
But the internet did more than democratise information. I like to call what happened next a shift in "informational gravity." Far more important than the volume of information available was what it made possible — independent judgement. Yes, algorithmic curation has introduced its own distortions and filter bubbles. But even accounting for that, the average person today commands more information to form their own view than the most powerful industrialists of a century ago ever could.
The edge: But more recently, the next evolution of the digital explosion is likely to upend this or at least change it in a much more significant way. We are in the early days of the AI revolution, but the changes that it has already brought about portend a significant upheaval. Decision making is changing – from relationship led to informed consensus. The coalface of this new path is showing up in the way AI infused information curation is changing the B2B corporate buying cycle and cracking the centuries-old RM led model in corporate banking.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not a fan of the doomsayers who seem to think every new digital trick heralds the death of the time-tested models. But there is something deeper afoot. The tension is not just that "buyers are more informed." It is that AI has changed what counts as a credible source, and that the traditional marketing and sales models have only partially registered this threat.
Let me rely on some stats to describe this.
Writing in October 2025, McKinsey noted that “About 50% of Google searches already have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75% by 2028, according to trend analysis.” More recently in March 2026, WSJ noted that “For two decades, companies have relied on search-engine optimization, or SEO, to battle for customer attention online—tuning keywords and backlinks to climb Google’s rankings. Now, as AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude increasingly answer questions directly, visibility depends less on ranking first and more on being the source those systems trust.”
But that's only half the story. A change in channel — where people source information — is significant. What's more important, and what has gotten less attention, is that AI has changed what counts as a credible source in the first place.
McKinsey’s analysis of Google AI results shows that “In industries such as financial services, more than 65% of sources across AI-powered searches are publishers (magazines and microsites), user-generated content, and affiliate sites.”
Why is this important? Back to the age-old truth. Edelman’s research shows that “Most deals are not won or lost in the boardroom. They are defined by corridor chats, Teams conversations, Slack threads, AI-driven search, word-of-mouth, and quiet vetoes you never saw coming. With much of the B2B buying journey increasingly self-guided, the people you meet in sales conversations or in the pitch room have already decided what they think about your company and its capabilities.” The key insight here is that hidden buyers have more influence than previously expected. The B2B Institute reports that 40% of B2B deals are abandoned because the buying group cannot reach a consensus.
And where are these hidden buyers forming their opinions? Increasingly the answer is AI led curation. Edelman writing in June 2025 continues “The use of Generative AI is growing faster than the adoption of the computer or internet, with Gartner predicting that brands’ organic search traffic will plummet by 50% by 2028 as B2B decision makers switch to Large Language Models (LLMs) to help them evaluate companies and potential service providers.”
So here we are. The century-old model, built on information asymmetry is being challenged by a slow and structural shift in where trust is formed and is eroding from the outside in.
Three things are happening simultaneously which combined makes this moment different from previous disruptions.
First, AI-led curation has delivered the next significant increment in breaking information asymmetry. Clients no longer rely on the RM banker as much to curate complexity. They arrive with a view already formed.
Second, decision making has shifted from relationship-led to consensus-led. The buying group, including hidden influencers the RM has never met are shaping outcomes before the pitch room is ever booked.
Third, and most critically, AI does not summarise the web evenly. It makes editorial decisions about which sources are worth absorbing and which can be safely ignored. And in financial services, the bank is largely not in those sources. As Kantar puts it — AI doesn't index your brand. It interprets it.
Therefore:
So, what does this all mean? I am going to focus on the implications for the role marketing can play as the sales cycle shifts.
B2B marketing must rethink its key channels to adapt to the changing role and step up to being the function that shapes the room before anyone enters it. If the relationship-manager is no longer the primary intelligence layer, marketing must become it. Deliberately and structurally, before the first conversation happens.
Marketing in B2B banking must stop acting like a support function for sales and start acting like the pre-sales intelligence layer. Its role in shaping the client's AI-curated worldview — before they even write the RFP — will become the difference between being considered and being invisible.
Content is no longer collateral. It is the thing that determines whether your brand exists in the client's considered set before the conversation even begins.
But the nature of that content has to change fundamentally. Generic thought-leadership won't make it through the AI filters. Neither will product advertising, or anything that doesn't offer specific insight into specific problems. AI is a demanding curator — it trusts sources that are structurally useful, not ones that are merely present.
That means marketing teams have to start differently. Not with a content calendar. With a diagnosis — of what clients are actually asking, what problems they are trying to solve, and what questions they are putting to AI before they put them to a banker.
Events will need to be more than broadcast moments. They should provide clients an opportunity to network with others, and crucially as validation forums for decisions already in motion. Therefore, the value of events may lie not just in who attends, but in whether they help clients build conviction—through comparison, peer signals, and real-world validation.
A word of caution:
An important question sits underneath all of this that many are asking. Is this just another wave that institutions will absorb and ride out, the way they did with the internet? Perhaps. The history of banking is also a history of adaptation. And there is no shortage of AI-generated noise (or slop) that would give even the most enthusiastic observer pause.
But the direction of travel feels different this time. Not because AI is infallible. It most definitely is not. But because the quality of reasoning it offers is improving faster than any previous technology, and because it is already changing behaviour at the edges where buying decisions begin. The signal is getting stronger, even if the noise hasn't gone away.
Now what:
But the information gravity has indeed shifted. And when gravity shifts, there are two ways to lose your footing. You become too heavy to move with it and get stuck. Or you become so weightless you drift away from it entirely.
Bain research captures the common lament among CMOs and sales head at B2B firms plainly when they quote "Our customers have gotten way ahead of our sales efforts. Too often, we're not even getting invited to the dance." And yet, Gartner's research shows that fully digital, rep-free buying journeys frequently end in purchase regret. Buyers increasingly have AI provided independence, but they still need a moment of human conviction before they commit.
And therein lies the opportunity for the relationship manager’s new role.
The antidote is not more technology. It is the right human, in the right moment. The RM doesn't disappear. In fact, their job description intensifies in one area.
But the internet did more than democratise information. I like to call what happened next a shift in "informational gravity." Far more important than the volume of information available was what it made possible — independent judgement. Yes, algorithmic curation has introduced its own distortions and filter bubbles. But even accounting for that, the average person today commands more information to form their own view than the most powerful industrialists of a century ago ever could.
The edge: But more recently, the next evolution of the digital explosion is likely to upend this or at least change it in a much more significant way. We are in the early days of the AI revolution, but the changes that it has already brought about portend a significant upheaval. Decision making is changing – from relationship led to informed consensus. The coalface of this new path is showing up in the way AI infused information curation is changing the B2B corporate buying cycle and cracking the centuries-old RM led model in corporate banking.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not a fan of the doomsayers who seem to think every new digital trick heralds the death of the time-tested models. But there is something deeper afoot. The tension is not just that "buyers are more informed." It is that AI has changed what counts as a credible source, and that the traditional marketing and sales models have only partially registered this threat.
Let me rely on some stats to describe this.
Writing in October 2025, McKinsey noted that “About 50% of Google searches already have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75% by 2028, according to trend analysis.” More recently in March 2026, WSJ noted that “For two decades, companies have relied on search-engine optimization, or SEO, to battle for customer attention online—tuning keywords and backlinks to climb Google’s rankings. Now, as AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude increasingly answer questions directly, visibility depends less on ranking first and more on being the source those systems trust.”
But that's only half the story. A change in channel — where people source information — is significant. What's more important, and what has gotten less attention, is that AI has changed what counts as a credible source in the first place.
McKinsey’s analysis of Google AI results shows that “In industries such as financial services, more than 65% of sources across AI-powered searches are publishers (magazines and microsites), user-generated content, and affiliate sites.”
Why is this important? Back to the age-old truth. Edelman’s research shows that “Most deals are not won or lost in the boardroom. They are defined by corridor chats, Teams conversations, Slack threads, AI-driven search, word-of-mouth, and quiet vetoes you never saw coming. With much of the B2B buying journey increasingly self-guided, the people you meet in sales conversations or in the pitch room have already decided what they think about your company and its capabilities.” The key insight here is that hidden buyers have more influence than previously expected. The B2B Institute reports that 40% of B2B deals are abandoned because the buying group cannot reach a consensus.
And where are these hidden buyers forming their opinions? Increasingly the answer is AI led curation. Edelman writing in June 2025 continues “The use of Generative AI is growing faster than the adoption of the computer or internet, with Gartner predicting that brands’ organic search traffic will plummet by 50% by 2028 as B2B decision makers switch to Large Language Models (LLMs) to help them evaluate companies and potential service providers.”
So here we are. The century-old model, built on information asymmetry is being challenged by a slow and structural shift in where trust is formed and is eroding from the outside in.
Three things are happening simultaneously which combined makes this moment different from previous disruptions.
First, AI-led curation has delivered the next significant increment in breaking information asymmetry. Clients no longer rely on the RM banker as much to curate complexity. They arrive with a view already formed.
Second, decision making has shifted from relationship-led to consensus-led. The buying group, including hidden influencers the RM has never met are shaping outcomes before the pitch room is ever booked.
Third, and most critically, AI does not summarise the web evenly. It makes editorial decisions about which sources are worth absorbing and which can be safely ignored. And in financial services, the bank is largely not in those sources. As Kantar puts it — AI doesn't index your brand. It interprets it.
Therefore:
So, what does this all mean? I am going to focus on the implications for the role marketing can play as the sales cycle shifts.
B2B marketing must rethink its key channels to adapt to the changing role and step up to being the function that shapes the room before anyone enters it. If the relationship-manager is no longer the primary intelligence layer, marketing must become it. Deliberately and structurally, before the first conversation happens.
Marketing in B2B banking must stop acting like a support function for sales and start acting like the pre-sales intelligence layer. Its role in shaping the client's AI-curated worldview — before they even write the RFP — will become the difference between being considered and being invisible.
Content is no longer collateral. It is the thing that determines whether your brand exists in the client's considered set before the conversation even begins.
But the nature of that content has to change fundamentally. Generic thought-leadership won't make it through the AI filters. Neither will product advertising, or anything that doesn't offer specific insight into specific problems. AI is a demanding curator — it trusts sources that are structurally useful, not ones that are merely present.
That means marketing teams have to start differently. Not with a content calendar. With a diagnosis — of what clients are actually asking, what problems they are trying to solve, and what questions they are putting to AI before they put them to a banker.
Events will need to be more than broadcast moments. They should provide clients an opportunity to network with others, and crucially as validation forums for decisions already in motion. Therefore, the value of events may lie not just in who attends, but in whether they help clients build conviction—through comparison, peer signals, and real-world validation.
A word of caution:
An important question sits underneath all of this that many are asking. Is this just another wave that institutions will absorb and ride out, the way they did with the internet? Perhaps. The history of banking is also a history of adaptation. And there is no shortage of AI-generated noise (or slop) that would give even the most enthusiastic observer pause.
But the direction of travel feels different this time. Not because AI is infallible. It most definitely is not. But because the quality of reasoning it offers is improving faster than any previous technology, and because it is already changing behaviour at the edges where buying decisions begin. The signal is getting stronger, even if the noise hasn't gone away.
Now what:
But the information gravity has indeed shifted. And when gravity shifts, there are two ways to lose your footing. You become too heavy to move with it and get stuck. Or you become so weightless you drift away from it entirely.
Bain research captures the common lament among CMOs and sales head at B2B firms plainly when they quote "Our customers have gotten way ahead of our sales efforts. Too often, we're not even getting invited to the dance." And yet, Gartner's research shows that fully digital, rep-free buying journeys frequently end in purchase regret. Buyers increasingly have AI provided independence, but they still need a moment of human conviction before they commit.
And therein lies the opportunity for the relationship manager’s new role.
The antidote is not more technology. It is the right human, in the right moment. The RM doesn't disappear. In fact, their job description intensifies in one area.
"They're no longer the carrier of insight. They are the closer of a journey that started without them."
References
•
ResearchGate: Nineteenth-century information networks and the Rothschild communication system
• Edelman: The battle for B2B influence and decision shaping
• McKinsey: The rise of AI search as the new front door to the internet
• Kantar: Marketing to machines and the emergence of generative engine optimisation (GEO)
• WSJ: How AI is reshaping search behaviour and SEO strategies
• Forbes: The evolution of B2B buying behaviour and experience design
• Gartner: Understanding the modern B2B buying journey
• Highspot: Sales enablement perspectives on B2B buyer journeys
• The Asian Banker: Banking sector adoption of emerging technologies in Asia
• Accenture: Top trends shaping banking and financial services
• Content Marketing Institute: B2B content marketing trends and research benchmarks
• Edelman: The battle for B2B influence and decision shaping
• McKinsey: The rise of AI search as the new front door to the internet
• Kantar: Marketing to machines and the emergence of generative engine optimisation (GEO)
• WSJ: How AI is reshaping search behaviour and SEO strategies
• Forbes: The evolution of B2B buying behaviour and experience design
• Gartner: Understanding the modern B2B buying journey
• Highspot: Sales enablement perspectives on B2B buyer journeys
• The Asian Banker: Banking sector adoption of emerging technologies in Asia
• Accenture: Top trends shaping banking and financial services
• Content Marketing Institute: B2B content marketing trends and research benchmarks