Sarah Threet

By Sarah Threet, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing Picture a VP of demand generation on a Tuesday night, about 40 minutes into evaluating new software. She has asked an AI assistant to help frame a shortlist and read 3 vendor sites without telling any of them who she is. When the fourth site asks for her phone number, she closes the tab, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and leaves no trace in anyone’s funnel report.

Summary Budgets are flat, AI ambition is high, and the org isn't ready. Most marketing leaders reach for the org chart first. There's a faster answer, and it doesn't require moving a single person on your team. By Sarah Threet, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that 70% of CMOs consider becoming an AI leader a critical goal for this year. Only 30% report mature AI readiness capabilities.

Summary Everyone's selling B2B CMOs urgency on agentic AI in B2B marketing. Here's the math the demos skip, and why selective restraint is the smart 2026 move. by Sarah Threet, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing If you lead marketing at a B2B company, you have read this email. The subject line is some variation of “the agentic AI revolution won’t wait,” the body explains that your competitors are already pulling ahead, and the call to action is a 30-minute demo that will fix all of it.