I had the great fortune to work with Rishi Dave when he was Executive Director, Digital Marketing at Dell and again when he was CMO at Dun & Bradstreet through our agency here at TopRank Marketing. Rishi is incredibly smart, insightful and passionate about marketing.
Since those early days, Rishi’s career has taken him to additional CMO roles at Vonage and MongoDB. Today, his is in a Partner role at Bain & Company where as part of their Commercial Excellence practice, he partners with CMOs and management teams to drive marketing transformations and build modern marketing capabilities, including the implementation and scaling of GenAI.
In this episode of the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast, Rishi and I talked about how B2B marketing is shifting from disconnected campaigns to scalable, always-on growth systems powered by AI. And at the same time, why the real differentiators are still human insight, original research, and creative storytelling.
We also talked about the concept of buyability, how hidden buyers, peer validation, and the Day-One List now shape B2B decisions and why building category fame matters more than brand familiarity alone. These concepts actually align quite well with TopRank’s Best Answer Marketing framework. Rishi talked about how leading organizations are rethinking their content operations, redesigning processes, and implementing AI to accelerate their time-to-marke. We also covered the growing importance of strong product marketers, how to keep creativity and emotion at the center of AI-enabled content, and what AI-native B2B marketing will look like in the next few years.
Listen to the full conversation with Rishi here:
As a preview, here are 10 questions about the transformation of B2B marketing answered during our interview:
- How can B2B marketing teams transition from disconnected campaigns to scalable, always-on growth systems powered by AI?
- What does it take to successfully implement AI across a marketing organization-not just for micro-productivity gains, but for enterprise-level impact?
- How should B2B companies rethink their content creation process in the age of AI to reduce time-to-market and increase personalization?
- Why is high-quality original research essential for training AI models and differentiating B2B messaging?
- What is ‘Buyability,’ and how can marketers increase their chances of making the Day-One List for B2B buying groups?
- How can B2B brands build “category fame” and ensure they’re known for the category they want to win-especially against fast-moving startups?
- How should marketing, sales, and customer success teams coordinate go-to-market motions using AI, data, and automation?
- How do you maintain human creativity, emotion, and storytelling in an AI-heavy marketing environment?
- What skills and roles are becoming most critical in AI-enabled B2B marketing organizations?
- How will AI-native B2B marketing evolve over the next 2-3 years-and what should teams do now to prepare?
Watch the full interview with Rishi Dave here:
If you’d prefer a text summary of our discussion about the increasing importance of buyability, brand fame and AI transformation in B2B marketing, here you go:
“Buyability gives B2B marketers a playbook and messaging strategies to maximize the probability that they’ll win over the buying group that they’re targeting.”
Rishi talked about buyability as a practical framework for increasing a brand’s chances of being chosen by complex B2B buying groups. He explained that traditional brand vs. demand models miss the reality of how decisions are made, by groups trying to avoid risk, supported by hidden influencers like procurement and finance. Buyability provides a structured approach to shaping peer validation, mental availability, and category relevance so that a company becomes the safest, most credible choice on the buyer’s Day-One List.
“Quality content is more important than ever. Less is more.”
While some may advocate that AI will eliminate the need for strong content, Rishi argues that AI actually amplifies it. He explained that modern B2B organizations should focus on producing fewer, higher-quality pieces rooted in real insight, and then use AI to scale variations, personalization, and format adaptations. The competitive advantage comes from the strength of the original ideas, not the volume of AI-generated output.
“Automating a bad process doesn’t make that bad process good.”
Rishi highlighted that many B2B marketers are experimenting with AI at the task level-writing faster, creating assets more quickly-without addressing the underlying workflows that slow teams down. He emphasized that meaningful impact comes only when leaders redesign processes from the ground up, remove unnecessary steps, and establish a top-down mandate for change. Without that strategic reset, AI will simply accelerate outdated processes instead of improving speed, quality, and business outcomes. This need for a shift in thinking (or mindshift) before implementing transformational AI is exactly what Brian Solis and I talked about in a previous episode.
“Not enough people who are strong at writing great messaging, doing great original research, driving something that’s differentiated and really understanding their users… those people are more critical than ever in the age of AI.”
Rishi explained that while AI can speed production and scale execution, it cannot replace the strategic human skills that give marketing its edge. He mentioned that a growing shortage of talent who can craft differentiated messaging, conduct original research, and deeply understand customer needs, are all capabilities that now serve as the foundation for training AI systems and shaping trustworthy, insight-driven content. In AI-enabled organizations, these roles become even more valuable, because the quality of AI outputs depends entirely on the strength of the humans guiding it. Again, this highly resonates with concepts we’ve shared about AI in that GenAI only makes you more of what you are. Mediocrity inputs mean mediocrity outputs.
Thanks Rishi!
Be sure to follow Rishi on LinkedIn or you can find him on the Bain & Company website where you can see his latest insights.
You can find Beyond B2B Marketing wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts (links below). Of course you won’t want to miss the next conversation with a B2B marketing pro, so be sure to subscribe. And remember, there’s no better time than now to break free of boring B2B!
If you’d like to access our latest research on B2B Thought Leadership which touches on the Best Answer Marketing framework, there’s an ungated version of the report here.
About the author
Lee Odden has been recognized as a top B2B Marketing professional by Forbes, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. For over 20 years he’s worked with his team at TopRank Marketing to help elevate the B2B marketing industry through creative marketing programs that deliver more authentic, experiential and inclusive content for brands like LinkedIn, Dell and Adobe. Lee is the author of Optimize and has published over 1.4 million words on his agency’s B2B marketing blog. As a trusted marketing thought leader, he has given nearly 300 presentations in 20 different countries on B2B content, search and influencer marketing. When not marketing, Lee is probably running, cooking or traveling.
