Your buyers ask AI who to pick. Make sure it’s you.
Gets you selected acrossChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexity
RocMode shows you whether AI picks you or your rival, finds the work that changes it, builds that work, and sends it to you to approve. Then it proves what moved.
We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, and show where they pick you and who they pick instead. Free, no login. What’s the Score? Or sign up free and try everything for 14 days.
RocMode · Live read · Monday by Nine (example)
Asking ChatGPTBefore
The AI marketing and sales platform
Marketing and sales, rebuilt for the age of AI.
Your website in. A whole marketing and sales team’s work out. RocMode learns your brand from your site, then does the work: strategy, website, ads, social, PR, partners, email, design, and the deck that wins the deal. You approve every piece.
Other tools do one job. This does all of them, as one story.
Other AI guesses. This works from your facts and proof.
Other tools stop at the post. This follows it to the signed deal, and learns what won.
How it works
KnowWhere you really standActWhat to fix firstCreateWe build the work. You approve itProveDid it move?
Know · Step 1 of 10
It gets you. It gets your customers. It connects the dots.
Everything about your brand, your buyers and your rivals, sorted and connected.
Then it works out what to say, where, when and why. It’s the brain behind every step.
Builds: Customers · Offerings · Rivals · Proof
RocMode · BrandGraph · sample data
Following one momentCISO · Comparing · “Who’s the best managed security provider for a hospital group?”Moment found
Brand core3 found
Voice3 found
Visual identity3 found
Products and services3 found
Pricing3 found
Personas and markets3 found
Pains, gains, jobs3 found
Journeys and objections3 found
Proof and trust3 found
Content3 found
Competitors and partners3 found
Team2 found
Halvard Security35 facts
Two hospital case studies/partners
FactClaimProofAI-suggestedExample: Halvard Security, an invented managed security provider.
Reading halvardsecurity.com.au, socials, reviews and listings…
Halvard SecurityBrandGraph
12areas, all connected
3personas
15moments
6rivals
Sample data
Your customers
Customers
›
Personas
›
Journeys
›
Pains, jobs, objections
›
Moments
What you sell
Products and services
›
Offerings
›
Value proposition
›
Differentiation
Your rivals
Competitors
›
Industry
›
Expectations
›
Gaps to exploit
Moments + offerings
Opportunities
›
Campaigns
›
Ads
›
Sales
Content gaps
›
Content
›
Website
So it knows
What to say.Where. When. Why.
Moment foundCISO · Comparing · “Who’s the best managed security provider for a hospital group?”
Know · Step 2 of 10
Your strategy, from everything it knows.
Positioning built from your offerings and the gaps your rivals leave.
Claims you can’t back get cut before anyone sees them.
Seen isn’t selected. AI picks the brands it can tell apart.
Every era of marketing had its visibility number, and AI mentions are just the newest. Most AI tools still sell you visibility. But being mentioned isn’t being chosen, and for the first time you can measure the pick itself.
BroadcastAwareness
Media buyingReach
SearchRankings
SocialFollowers
AIMentions
What countsSelected
What AI made cheap
Making things.
Posts, pages, ads and reports in minutes
Anyone with a login can do it
Your competitors have the same tools
Sell on volume and you compete on price.
What AI made measurable
Being chosen.
Brand ABrand BYouBrand CBrand D
Buyers ask AI who to pick, and it names a few brands
You can ask the same questions and see who’s named
So you can see, moment by moment, where you win and lose
Compete on this and you compete on results.
See it on your brand
See how often AI picks you. Free.
We ask the AI assistants your buyers use the questions they really ask, many times each, at every step of their journey. Then we show where you’re picked, where you’re passed over, and who wins instead.
Your free Selectability Score asks the AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, without your name in them. You see who gets picked, at which moment, and the three gaps to fix first.
People buy in five recognisably different ways. The mode decides what marketing should do, and how much AI matters.
Three questions that sort every purchase
Three questions separate one purchase from another, each studied for more than fifty years.
Question
The range
Where the idea comes from
How much is at stake?
A snack, up to a six-figure contract
Howard and Sheth, 1969
Is it a first purchase or a repeat?
Something new, through to the usual re-order
Robinson, Faris and Wind, 1967
How many people decide?
One person, up to a committee
Webster and Wind, 1972
Robinson, Faris and Wind's straight rebuy is what this book calls habitual buying. Their modified rebuy is the renew-or-switch moment, which cuts across every mode.
The five modes
Together, the three questions give five modes.
Mode
Looks like
Who decides
What wins it
Habitual
Groceries, fuel, the usual re-order
One person, on autopilot, across a few familiar brands
Coming to mind and being within reach
Quick choice
Something cheap you have not bought before
One person, in minutes
Being the name in front of them at that moment
Considered personal
A car, a home loan, a holiday
One or two people, over days or weeks
Answering their questions and being believed
Owner-led business
A bookkeeper, a CRM, an agency
One to four people, over weeks
Being believed by the owner, plus a business case a second voice can check
Committee
Enterprise software, a major contract
A group, over months
Winning each person, and surviving scrutiny
Habitual doesn't mean loyal to one brand. Ehrenberg-Bass researchers find buyers are loyal "to a repertoire of brands, not to a single brand" (Ehrenberg-Bass). The habit is a short list, and the job is to stay on it.
From mid-2017 to mid-2019 I was Head of Digital at CUA, the bank now called Great Southern Bank. Most weeks there, I bought in three completely different ways.
The coffee was habit. Every morning, sometimes twice a day, I went next door to the same café, to the same barista, and ordered the same thing with coconut milk. Once you've found your coffee, you don't switch. I didn't compare and I didn't think about it, and I liked it that way. It felt comfortable and reassuring, a bit like home.
Lunch was the opposite. I'd walk out into the city with no plan and duck into the first place that caught my eye. It felt exciting, and I came back to my desk with more energy than I left with.
And then there were the committees. Sigh. I hated them. Slow, drawn out, over-complicated and over-justified. The one I remember most is the company CRM. That process ran for more than a year, and it was still going when I left. It was a big, important decision, and procurement really did matter. But my gosh, the frustration was real. I'd walk out of those meetings tired and confused, and often not much caring which way it went.
Same person, same week, three completely different buyers.
To find your mode, picture your typical sale and follow the tree.
Not every purchase needs all seven
In all five modes, Known and Found are gates: if the buyer can't recall you or find you, nothing else you do is seen. What differs is what carries the weight once a buyer is through.
My reading of the evidence, not a measured result.
So there's no universal weakest link. A chocolate bar needs to be remembered, then within reach. A software contract has to win all seven, several times over. Knowing your mode, and which stages carry it, is the first act of strategy. Chapter 30 turns these weights into numbers in the Selectability Score.
Where the small business fits
An owner-led business doesn't buy like an enterprise. In G2's 2025 study, about 76% of businesses with up to 250 staff made software decisions with four or fewer people (G2). Among firms of 1,000 to 5,000 staff, about 37% did. Small firms turned first to Google (47%), ahead of review sites (38%) and AI search (35%).
In a 2026 Capterra study, about half of whose respondents were small businesses, successful software buyers shortlisted three suppliers and decided within three months (Capterra).
So an owner choosing a bookkeeper decides more like someone buying a car than like a committee. That's my reading, not a tested finding. The difference is business risk, and often a second voice: a partner, an accountant, a finance lead. So the owner needs proof from a business like theirs, and numbers the second voice can check.
What AI changes in each mode
Mode
What the evidence says AI changes
How strong
Habitual
Little sign that it changes brand choice yet. My read is that it will reinforce habit before it disrupts it.
Thin
Quick choice
AI summaries cut the clicking, so the brand named in the answer probably gains. No purchase data yet.
Thin
Considered personal
The clearest effect. Complex categories draw the most AI referrals, and there those visitors convert better than most channels.
Moderate to strong
Owner-led business
Google still leads, with AI close behind. It behaves like a considered personal purchase with a business case.
Moderate, by inference
Committee
AI shapes and speeds the shortlist. The day-one list still wins, and evaluation takes longer.
Moderate
AI's hand is strongest where the buyer has the most to work out. In the two low-effort modes, nobody yet knows.
In committee buying, AI has made suppliers easier to find and harder to buy from. In G2's 2026 survey, 40% of buyers named evaluation as the longest stage. And 49% had seen a finance chief veto a purchase already approved (G2).
What is established and what is mine
The three questions are established research. The five modes are my own synthesis of them, tested against the evidence on AI from 2025 and 2026. I found no accepted buying typology for the AI era. Renewal isn't a sixth mode: every mode has one, and the customer can decide differently.
In every mode, somebody advises the buyer. Increasingly, the first adviser isn't a person.
Whose evidence this is. G2 runs a software review marketplace. Capterra is a software review site. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute sells research to sponsor brands. The three questions come from academic work by Howard and Sheth, Robinson, Faris and Wind, and Webster and Wind.
Try this
Take your three biggest products or services through the decision tree, and write each one's mode beside its name.
