What did ZoomInfo say about AI and agentic confusion?
ZoomInfo said confusion about AI led its customers to pause purchasing decisions. On the company's first-quarter 2026 earnings call on 11 May 2026, founder and CEO Henry Schuck said that in the closing days of March and into April, "we saw a trend of AI and agentic confusion in our customer conversations" (call transcript, The Motley Fool).
Schuck named the questions buyers were stuck on: what can be built versus bought, which vendor or internal team delivers what, and where the differentiation really lives. Schuck said this led to a pause in purchasing decisions, with software customers particularly affected. The CEO also said macro conditions worsened at the end of the quarter, so AI confusion was not the only reason given.
ZoomInfo's filings from May to August 2026:
| Date | What ZoomInfo reported | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5 May 2026 | Board approved a restructuring program to reduce operating costs, anticipated to entail a reduction of approximately 600 employees, about 20% of headcount at the end of the first quarter. About a quarter of the affected roles were to be moved to, or offset by hiring in, other locations. | Form 8-K, Item 2.05, filed 11 May 2026 |
| 11 May 2026 | Full-year 2026 revenue guidance cut from $1.247 to $1.267 billion to $1.185 to $1.205 billion. | First-quarter 2026 results release |
| 11 May 2026 | Schuck told staff ZoomInfo intended to close its Israel site by year-end and had notified approximately 340 people in the US, India and the UK that their roles were being eliminated. | CEO email to employees, filed as an exhibit |
| 5 Aug 2026 | Second-quarter goodwill impairment loss of $650.5 million, included in a GAAP operating loss of $622.0 million. | Second-quarter 2026 results release |
| 5 Aug 2026 | Reasons given for the impairment: a sustained decrease in share price, industry considerations, and a decline in planned revenues and earnings from key changes in strategy. | Form 10-Q for the quarter to 30 June 2026 |
A goodwill impairment is an accounting write-down, recorded when the business is judged to be worth less than its books say. It is not cash leaving the company, and the 10-Q does not blame it on buyer confusion. We list it for the timeline only. It tells you nothing about what caused the stall in buying.
Why should a small B2B team care about buyer confusion?
Because the three questions Schuck described are ones your own buyers are likely to bring to your homepage, and a small team gets fewer chances to answer them. ZoomInfo is a large public company with a known brand. If its customers stalled on build-or-buy and who-does-what questions, a team of five with an unknown name has less room for a vague first line.
Turn each question into a check you can run on your own site:
| Buyer question from the call | What your first screen needs to say | Illustrative answer (made-up invoice tool) |
|---|---|---|
| What can be built versus bought? | What the buyer would do without you, and what you take off their plate | Replaces the weekly spreadsheet match of invoices to purchase orders |
| Which vendor or internal team delivers what? | Which job is yours, and which stays with the buyer's team or other tools | We flag mismatches; your accounts team approves payments in your existing finance system |
| Where does the differentiation really live? | One specific thing you do that a general AI assistant or a rival does not, stated as a fact you can show | Reads scanned paper invoices as well as PDFs |
If your homepage answers none of the three in the first screen, a buyer who is already unsure about AI tools has no reason to keep reading.
B2B positioning examples: five homepage lines, rewritten
We read the homepage headline of four well-known B2B sales software companies on 20 October 2026, added our own, and rewrote each one in plainer words. Treat this as a writing exercise. These companies sell to sales and revenue operations teams who know terms like GTM (go-to-market), and every page explains more below the headline. Big companies with many products also need one line that covers all of them. Each rewrite is our suggestion, built only from what that homepage itself says the product does.
| Company | Homepage headline (exact, checked 20 Oct 2026) | What the page goes on to describe (our summary) | Our suggested rewrite |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZoomInfo | The AI platform for go-to-market teams | Contact and company data (ZoomInfo cites 500M+ contacts and 100M+ companies), records enriched and synced to your CRM, leads routed to reps | Find the companies and people to sell to, with contact data that stays current in your CRM. |
| Outreach | Agentic AI Platform for Revenue Teams | AI agents that surface prospects, do research, flag deals at risk and prepare meeting briefings, plus forecasting and coaching | AI agents that research prospects, flag deals at risk and brief your reps before every meeting. |
| Apollo | Grow revenue with one connected GTM system | A contact database (Apollo cites 240M+ contacts), agents that build lists, write outreach, follow up and book meetings, and access from your CRM, Gmail or ChatGPT | Find B2B contacts, then write, send and follow up on outreach in one place, or from the CRM and inbox you already use. |
| Clay | Build systems to grow revenue | Data bought from 200+ providers in one place, AI research on companies and people, a sequencer, and ad audiences synced to LinkedIn, Meta and Google | Pull company and contact data from 200+ providers into one place, research each lead with AI, then send it to your outreach and ad tools. |
| Siela AI (ours) | Siela finds your next customers and reaches out for you. | An AI SDR that looks for people with a fresh reason to buy and starts conversations on LinkedIn, X and email | For small B2B teams: finds people with a reason to buy now and messages them on LinkedIn, X and email. |
All four of the other companies use AI or agentic wording in the headline or the line directly under it. Two patterns repeat in the rewrites. The buyer or the job moves into the first line. And category words such as platform, system and agentic give way to the verbs a buyer would use to describe the task: find, research, write, send, flag. Our own headline names the job, and the small label above it names who it is for (founders and small B2B teams); the rewrite moves the buyer into the line itself.
What makes a positioning line plain?
A plain positioning line lets a stranger repeat what you do after one read. Use this checklist on any headline, ad or LinkedIn bio:
- It names the buyer. A role or a company type: founders, accounts teams, clinic owners.
- It names the job in the buyer's own verb. Find, book, match, send, check. Avoid enable, empower and transform.
- It answers build or buy. It says what the buyer does today without you: a spreadsheet, a contractor, an hour a day by hand.
- It uses AI words only to say what the AI does. Drafts replies, scores leads, flags risky deals.
- It claims a result only if you can show it. A number on the homepage gets checked; leave it out if you can't back it up.
When you catch a category word, swap it for something a buyer can picture:
| Category word | Ask yourself | Plainer direction |
|---|---|---|
| Platform, system, OS | Which two or three jobs does it do? | Name those jobs |
| Agentic, AI-native | What does it do without being asked? | Describe that action |
| GTM, revenue teams | Who opens it every day? | Sales reps, marketers, founders |
| All-in-one, unified, connected | Which tools does it replace? | Name the tools or the tabs |
| Grow revenue, drive pipeline | What happens first, before revenue? | The meeting, the reply, the matched invoice |
How do you explain what your company does in one sentence?
Fill in one sentence: [Product] helps [who] [do what job] [instead of what they do now], so [result you can show]. Then cut every word a stranger would need explained, and aim for under 20 words.
Three before-and-after examples. The companies and lines are made up for illustration:
- Before: AI-powered revenue intelligence for modern teams. After: We flag which open deals have gone quiet, so sales managers know who to call this week.
- Before: The agentic platform for finance operations. After: We match supplier invoices to purchase orders and flag the mismatches for your accounts team.
- Before: Your AI-native growth engine. After: We write and schedule LinkedIn posts for founders, in their own voice, three times a week.
Each after-line answers at least two of the three buyer questions from ZoomInfo's call. The invoice line covers build or buy (no more manual matching) and who does what (you flag, the accounts team decides). None of them needs the word AI to make sense, though each could add it next to the action it describes.
Use the same sentence everywhere a buyer meets you first: the homepage headline, your LinkedIn headline (see these LinkedIn headline examples) and the first line of a cold email (see these cold email opening lines). If the three say different things, buyers have three versions to reconcile.
How to test your homepage line this week
Run the three-question check
Write your current headline at the top of a page. Under it, answer: who is it for, what job does it do, and what does the buyer do today without you. If you can't point to the words in the headline that answer each one, mark it.
Do a five-second test
Show the homepage to five people outside your industry for five seconds, then ask them to say what the company does. Write down their exact words. If fewer than three get the job right, the line needs work.
Read your own sales calls for the same questions
Go through notes from your last ten sales conversations and count how often a prospect asked some version of what exactly you do, or how you differ from what they already have. Those are Schuck's questions, asked in your own pipeline.
Put your line next to three competitors
Copy three competitors' homepage headlines into a table with yours. If you could swap the company names and nobody would notice, the line describes the whole category. Rewrite it until only your company could have written it.
Ship the rewrite and reuse it
Publish the new line, then use the same words in your LinkedIn headline, your email signature and your outreach opener. If you are the founder doing the selling, our 30-minute daily routine for founder-led sales is a good place to put the new line to work.
Frequently asked questions
What did ZoomInfo mean by AI and agentic confusion?
On ZoomInfo's earnings call on 11 May 2026, CEO Henry Schuck used the phrase for what customers were stuck on from late March into April: what can be built versus bought, which vendor or internal team delivers what, and where the differentiation really lives. Schuck said it led to a pause in purchasing decisions, with software customers particularly affected, and also cited worsening macro conditions.
How many employees did ZoomInfo lay off in 2026?
ZoomInfo's board approved a restructuring program on 5 May 2026 with an anticipated reduction of approximately 600 employees, about 20% of headcount at the end of the first quarter. Its filing says about a quarter of the affected roles would be moved to, or offset by hiring in, other locations. The CEO also told staff the company intended to close its Israel site by year-end.
What is a good example of B2B positioning?
A good B2B positioning line names the buyer, the job and what the buyer does today without you, in words a stranger could repeat. A made-up example for an invoice tool: we match supplier invoices to purchase orders and flag the mismatches for your accounts team. It says who it is for, what it does and what manual work it replaces.
Should you put AI in your homepage headline?
Only if it tells the buyer something. All four sales software homepages we checked on 20 October 2026 used AI or agentic wording in the headline or the line under it, so the word alone does not set you apart. Say what the AI does, such as drafting replies or flagging risky deals, and for whom. If the line still works without the word, consider cutting it.
How do you test whether your positioning is clear?
Show your homepage to five people outside your industry for five seconds and ask them what the company does. If fewer than three describe the job correctly, rewrite the headline. Then check your recent sales call notes for questions like how is this different from what we have, which point to the same gap.
Sources
- The Motley Fool: ZoomInfo (GTM) Q1 2026 earnings call transcript (call held and transcript published 11 May 2026)
- ZoomInfo Form 8-K, Item 2.05 (2026 Restructuring Program) (filed 11 May 2026)
- ZoomInfo Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1: CEO email to employees (dated 11 May 2026)
- ZoomInfo first-quarter 2026 results (Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1) (published 11 May 2026)
- ZoomInfo second-quarter 2026 results (Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1) (published 5 Aug 2026)
- ZoomInfo Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 (filed 5 Aug 2026)
- ZoomInfo homepage (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Outreach homepage (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Apollo homepage (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Clay homepage (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Siela AI homepage (checked 20 Oct 2026)