Buyers increasingly ask an AI for recommendations. If your firm's expertise is locked in formats it cannot read, you are invisible in that answer. Here is what to do.
By Will Nash
3 August 2026
More of your buyers are starting with a question to an AI assistant rather than a search box, and asking it who to trust or what to do. When they do, the assistant answers from what it can read and make sense of. If your firm's real expertise is locked in formats those systems handle poorly, you are simply absent from the answer, however good the underlying thinking is.
The fix is not a trick or a new channel. It is making your expertise legible to machines as well as people: clear, well-structured, text-backed, and unambiguous about what you know and who it is for. A lot of firm knowledge currently sits where these systems cannot see it. Getting it into a readable form is increasingly what decides whether you show up when a buyer asks an AI for a recommendation.
How buyers actually find firms now
Alongside the usual referrals and search, a growing number of buyers open by asking an assistant to shortlist options or explain a problem. The assistant does not browse the way a person does. It draws on text it can parse and reason over, and it favours sources that state things plainly and are structured clearly. If your expertise only exists as a PDF brochure, a slide deck, or a video with no transcript, much of it is effectively invisible to that process.
Why a lot of firm expertise is unreadable
Professional-services knowledge tends to live in exactly the formats machines struggle with. Dense documents where the useful point is buried. Gated files behind a form. Recorded talks and webinars with no text version. Even good web pages that hint at expertise without ever stating it plainly. A human might dig it out. An AI assembling an answer in seconds will pass over it for a source that simply says the thing clearly.
What machine-readable actually means
It is less technical than it sounds. Put the substance in text, not only in images, video, or slides. Say what you know directly rather than hinting at it. Structure it so the point of each piece is obvious, with clear headings and plain answers to real questions. And make it accessible rather than gated, so it can be read in the first place. The aim is that a machine reading your content can tell, quickly and correctly, what you are expert in and who you help.
Where audio and transcripts fit
This is one reason audio, done properly, helps rather than hurts here. A podcast on its own is not machine-readable; it is sound. But a podcast published with a clean, accurate transcript turns a partner's spoken expertise into exactly the kind of clear, structured text these systems can read. You get the human trust of a real voice for people, and a rich, readable record for the machines. The transcript is not an afterthought; for discoverability it may be the most valuable part.
What not to do about it
A few cautions. This is not a reason to stuff your site with keyword-laden, machine-pleasing text that reads badly for humans; that is the old SEO mistake in new clothes, and these systems are built to see through it. It is also early, and anyone promising a precise formula for getting cited by AI is overstating what is known. And it does not replace genuine expertise or reputation; making thin content readable just makes thin content easier to find. Write clearly for people first, and let being readable by machines follow from that.
In short
When buyers ask an AI for a recommendation, it answers from what it can read. Much of a firm's expertise sits in formats it cannot, which quietly leaves you out of the conversation. The response is not gimmicks but clarity: put your knowledge in plain, structured, accessible text, and pair spoken content with good transcripts. Be legible to people first, and to the machines they increasingly ask, as a result.
If you are thinking about how your firm shows up when buyers ask an AI, turning expertise into clear audio and accurate transcripts is part of what we do. Get in touch and we are happy to talk it through.
