Here is a two-minute test that will either relieve you or ruin your afternoon: open ChatGPT and ask it the exact question your best customer asks right before they find you. Best tool for this. Best agency for that. Whatever the real buying question is. Then read the answer and check whether you are in it.
For most companies the honest answer is no, or buried near the bottom under three competitors. That is not a comfortable thing to see, which is exactly why so few teams have actually looked. It is easier to buy a tool that promises to tell you later than to type the question and face the answer now.
Do not stop at one prompt. Ask it three or four ways, because your buyers do. Ask for the best option for their specific situation, their company size, their industry. Ask for alternatives to your biggest competitor. Ask it to compare the top choices. Each phrasing pulls a slightly different answer, and the pattern across them is your real standing.
Then repeat the whole thing in Claude and Perplexity. Buyers do not all open the same assistant, and the answers differ more than you would expect. You are not looking for one result. You are looking for how often, across engines and phrasings, a machine hands your buyer a shortlist without your name on it.
Why does this matter more than a dashboard?
Because that list is the new shelf. It is the search result, the sales rep, and the shortlist collapsed into one answer. When a buyer asks and reads, the model has already narrowed the field. If you are not on the list, you were cut before the buyer knew you existed, and no amount of later outreach undoes a comparison you were never in.
You do not need to buy anything to learn this. The proof is on your own screen in under two minutes. A tool can track the number over time, but the first, most useful data point is free. It also tells you the same thing a dashboard would about whether the AI even names your brand, without the subscription.
Go type the question today. Did you make the list, yes or no?
Alex Mureșan does go-to-market distribution for founders who'd rather be right early than safe and late. Get in touch →