Rachel Truair is the Chief Marketing Officer of Demandbase, the pipeline engine for AI go-to-market trusted by some of the world's leading B2B enterprise brands. Rachel joined Demandbase in January 2026 after more than two decades in B2B marketing leadership, including CMO roles at Simpro Group and Cart.com and senior roles at Adobe, Confluent, Oracle, and 3M.
In this episode, Rachel chats with Sydney Sloan to look at AI disruption from the customer's side of the table. She shares what Labs by Demandbase is seeing in ChatGPT-referred traffic to B2B websites, why the real opportunity sits with the 95% of buyers who aren't in market yet, and why she may be the first Demandbase CMO to actually run her team on Demandbase. Rachel also makes the case that software should prove its own ROI, and explains how thinking like an investor helps CMOs split their AI bets into separate efficiency and growth stories for the board.
This episode is part of a partnership between The B2B CMO Project and Demandbase, the pipeline engine for AI go-to-market.
Episode Takeaways
- Assume your buyers are researching somewhere you can't see. Labs by Demandbase found a roughly 300% increase in ChatGPT-referred traffic to B2B websites over the last year, which means a big share of discovery now happens before a prospect ever lands on your owned properties.
- Get the data foundation right before you scale anything with AI. Rachel's version: you avoid running off a cliff by standing on a flat surface. If your data isn't unified and you don't know which signals actually matter, AI just helps you scale the wrong things faster.
- Market to the 95%, not just the 5%. When everyone has access to the same in-market data, the advantage goes to the teams that use signals, buying groups, and context to reach buyers before they start an evaluation.
- Point AI at the spreadsheets, not the storytelling. Rachel saw AI-generated creative fall flat, and believes the better use is taking reporting, attribution debates, and campaign friction off marketing's plate so teams have more time for creative work.
- Bring AI to the board as an investor would. Rachel splits her AI initiatives into an efficiency story (time savings, headcount savings, program spend) and a growth story (pipeline and revenue), measures each on its own terms, and reinvests savings from one into the other.
Standout Quote
- "The work that marketing does that's really valuable is the creative, it is the content, it is the storytelling. It's the reason we all got into this to begin with." — Rachel Truair
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/racheltruair/
Demandbase Website: https://www.demandbase.com/
Mentioned in this Episode
Mojo by Demandbase: https://trymojo.ai
Labs by Demandbase: https://www.demandbase.com/resources/labs/
The Prompt, Rachel Truair's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-prompt/id1372690438
Kelvin Gee, Forrester: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelvingee
Forrester: https://www.forrester.com/
More from The B2B CMO Project
Website: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2bcmoproject/
Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2/
Sydney Sloan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydsloan/
More Episodes: https://www.b2bcmoproject.com/podcasts
