Adam Schoenfeld put a number on something every founder already felt. A B2B buyer now spends about 17 percent of the total purchase journey with any single vendor. 67 percent say they would rather never talk to a rep. 45 percent used AI to research their last purchase. About 52 percent of newly published web articles are AI-generated. The gated middle, the ebook behind a form, the SEO post that reads like every other SEO post, no longer separates you from anyone. What still works sits at the two ends of a barbell. Genuinely human at one end, genuinely 1:1 at the other. You cannot buy the US version of either end on a European budget. You can buy the small version, and the small version is the one that compounds.
Read time: about 5 minutes. First step runnable Monday morning.
Export every line of GTM spend from the last 2 quarters and sort each one into 3 buckets. Human end: anything where a named buyer sat in a room or a small group with you. 1:1 end: anything built from data only you hold and sent to one named account. Middle: everything else. Add up the middle in EUR and in hours. That total is the budget for the two ends. You are not asking the board for more money. You are moving money you already spend.
Start here: export 2 quarters of GTM spend and sort every line into human end, 1:1 end, or middle.
Ignore this week: the new content agency, the intent-data trial, and the website rebuild. All three sit in the middle until the two ends exist.