About this episode

Tony Larks discusses a new metric for B2B growth that focuses on a vendor's shortlist position rather than NPS.

NPS has survived more obituaries than almost any other metric in B2B marketing — and it's still standing. Bain & Co.'s newest research doesn't try to kill it off again; it argues the real predictor of B2B growth is something else entirely: whether a vendor makes a buyer's 'day one' shortlist, the mental list formed before anyone picks up the phone. Tony Larks, a B2B marketing leader with over 20 years of experience spanning sales, enterprise technology and zero-to-one startup builds, read that research and asked the obvious next question — could you estimate your shortlist position without ever surveying a buyer? ➡️ Tony walks Joel through the AI prompt he built to do exactly that — scoring companies against Bain’s five-part framework using nothing but public signals: analyst coverage from the likes of Gartner and Forrester, peer review sites such as G2, forums including Reddit, and even employee sentiment on Glassdoor. He shares the story of an NPS score skewed by SMB customers who’d rather pay a compliance fine than do the hard work of getting compliant, unpacks why ‘shortlist share’ risks becoming exactly the kind of vanity metric NPS became if marketers try to game it…

People in this episode

Host: Joel Harrison

Guest: Tony Larks

Topics covered

• B2B marketing
• NPS
• shortlist score
• AI in marketing
• vendor selection
• customer sentiment

Keywords

• NPS
• shortlist score
• B2B growth
• AI prompt
• public signals
• customer sentiment
• marketing metrics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bain & Co., Gartner, Forrester, G2, Reddit, Glassdoor

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