The CMO Guide to Forrester’s B2B Summit North America 2026

According to Forrester’s State of Business Buying, 2026, the average B2B purchase now involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, with generative AI becoming the most frequently cited tool buyers use to research purchases. And yet 19% of buyers using AI tools feel less confident because of unreliable AI-generated information. They compensate by expanding their buying networks and leaning on analyst reports, subject matter experts, and peer communities to validate what they find with AI search.

The result is a buying environment where visibility is necessary but it’s not enough. At TopRank Marketing, we call this the age of Best Answer Brands: companies that earn their position as the most credible, relevant answer where buyers are looking – in search, AI summaries, communities, through influencers, and through analyst reports.

Forrester calls the force behind these changes and more in the B2B marketing space, the GTM Singularity: AI-driven buyer autonomy is collapsing traditional go-to-market models across marketing, sales, product, and customer success. It’s the theme of B2B Summit North America, which is taking place April 26-29 in Phoenix, and the organizing theme for four days of research-backed sessions built around the decisions CMOs are facing right now:

Brand and demand convergence
Measurement accountability
AI governance
Organization design for a hybrid human-AI workforce

I will be heading to Phoenix to attend B2B Summit for the first time. To prepare myself and to share with our community of B2B marketing execs, I asked four senior Forrester analysts that are presenting at the event, Kelvin Gee, Karen Tran, Lisa Gately, and Laura Ramos, what CMO-level marketers need to know to get the most from this event. Here is what they shared along with information on their presentations.

Note: I’ll be sitting down with Dave Frankland, VP Research Director at Forrester and GTM Singularity keynote speaker, on the next episode of the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast so be sure to watch for that interview.

B2B Summit recommendations for CMOs from Forrester Analysts

Kelvin Gee: Make Brand + Demand Your Preference Multiplier
Kelvin Gee, Principal Analyst for Demand and ABM at Forrester, is co-presenting one of the event’s keynotes: Make Brand + Demand Your Preference Multiplier, with Forrester VP, Principal Analyst, Ian Bruce. The core argument: brand and demand have operated in silos, but self-guided buyers form preferences before engaging with sellers, so every interaction must build trust and activate demand simultaneously. The brands that connect these disciplines create what Kelvin calls a “preference multiplier”, a compounding pipeline advantage that siloed programs can’t replicate.