New research found 77% of B2B marketers say the scrutiny of AI in RFPs is inadequate, with the industry conflating what is measurable with what is meaningful. As more partners claim AI capability, buyers need harder questions. The fix is to interrogate the actual benefit, not the buzzword.
Everyone in the room will tell you they use AI. The question that matters is what it changes for you, and most RFPs never ask it.
Every agency and vendor now claims AI capability. New research says buyers are not checking it properly. The study found 77% of B2B marketers believe the scrutiny of AI in RFPs is inadequate, and it names the deeper problem plainly. The industry has been conflating what is measurable with what is meaningful, and that mindset runs straight through how RFPs are written and how partners are picked.
The call to action from the research is for fully integrated partners, transparency about AI's real benefits and simplified unified measurement. In plain terms, stop accepting AI as a tick-box and start asking what it actually does.
Why it matters
When everyone claims the same capability, the claim stops meaning anything. The job moves to the buyer to separate the partners doing real work from the ones who have wrapped a chatbot in a slide deck. A weak RFP rewards the best storyteller, not the best operator.
Share of B2B marketers who say AI scrutiny in RFPs is inadequate, even as nearly every partner now claims AI capability
For Australian businesses choosing an agency or a martech vendor, this is the warning. The attractors will all say they are doing a great job with AI. They are incentivised to say that. The only protection is harder questions and a clear definition of what good looks like before the pitches start.
What to do about it
Ask what the AI changes, not whether they use it. Make every partner show the before and after. If they cannot point to a number that moved, the AI is decoration.
Demand transparency on what is automated and what is human. You are paying for outcomes. You deserve to know which part of the work a machine did and whether you are being charged senior rates for it.
Write the RFP around your commercial goal, not the technology. Does it make volume, does it make margin, or does it keep the regulators happy. If a capability does not serve one of those, it does not belong in the brief.
Check for integration, not features. A pile of AI tools that do not talk to each other is worse than one that fits your stack. Ask how it connects to what you already run.
The pitch process is where most of the value is won or lost, long before any work starts. Sharpen the questions and you filter out the partners selling the buzzword from the ones who can actually move your numbers. Nobody gives a discount for asking, so ask everything.