What it takes to be seen, now your customers are starting to ask ChatGPT as well as Google

If an AV reseller gave me one brief tomorrow, it’d be simple: “Get my brand in front of more of the right end users.”

Let’s be honest, no reseller wakes up wanting to be “the most cited brand in AI.” What you actually want is simpler: your brand found by more of the right end users.

What’s changed is where those end users look. Ask most professionals which piece of technology they couldn’t work without, and a striking number now name an AI assistant rather than a device. These are the same people signing off your quotes. Before they call anyone, more of them are asking things like “what’s the best way to kit out our meeting rooms?” or “what screens work in a bright school hall?” The businesses whose answers show up are the ones remembered when it’s time to buy.

Here’s the gap most resellers are missing. When someone asks AI one of those questions, it often can’t find a clear, direct answer, so it stitches one together from whatever’s closest, sometimes a random forum post that isn’t even about the same thing.

That gap is your way in. If you’re the business that has actually answered that question properly on your own site, you become the source it reaches for.

And doing this well makes you easier to find on Google too, so you’re not betting the shop on AI, you’re future-proofing either way.

If your reaction is “we can barely get a LinkedIn post out, let alone this” – that’s the point. This isn’t ten new jobs. It’s one habit that pulls your website, your search visibility and your social into a single thread: answer the questions your customers are actually asking.

Here’s how I’d go about it.

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Can a small AV reseller compete with the big players online?

No AI is going to hand a small reseller the generic “best AV company” crown; the big names have that sewn up. But that’s not what your customers type. They ask about their actual problem: “what screens work in a bright primary school classroom?”, “why do our meeting-room video calls keep dropping?”, “what are the best screens for street-facing shop windows?” Those you can genuinely own, because you solve them every week.

Ask anyone running a technology business where the market is heading and you’ll get a version of the same answer: the generalists are the ones who struggle. Pick the handful of topics you know inside out, the sectors and the kit, and set out to have the clearest answer on the internet to the questions that come with them. It’s far easier to be the obvious answer to a narrow question than a forgettable option on a broad one.

Who in the business should own this?

The mistake is handing it to whoever looks after the website and forgetting about it. Getting found this way pulls in bits of everyone.

Your engineers know which kit actually fails on site on install day.
Your salespeople hear the same worries from customers every week.
Whoever runs your social knows your best jobs never get filmed.

Really, this is just getting all of that out of people’s heads and onto the internet where it can be found, and one person can’t do that alone.

The resellers who win at this won’t have the biggest marketing team, they’ll have the one that talks to each other.

What are the best screens for street-facing shop windows? — the kind of question your customers are already asking AI.

What should an AV reseller write about?

Every quote, every site visit, every “one quick question before we sign” is a list of exactly what people want to know before they buy. Get your sales team to jot down the questions they answer over and over. What are people nervous about? What do they always compare? What goes wrong on jobs that they wish they’d asked about first?

Then answer those questions plainly, in public, on your website, one clear question and one clear answer per page. That collection of answers is your knowledge base, and it’s the single most useful thing you can build.

A quick way to find the gaps worth owning: type one of those questions into ChatGPT yourself. If the answer comes back thin, generic or plain wrong, that’s a gap. It means there’s no good source out there, and the first business to answer it properly tends to become the one the AI leans on.

One more, and it’s the strongest of all: publish your own numbers. You’re the only person who has your install data, your failure rates, your project stats, and AI leans hardest on the source of the figures in a category, because that’s the one thing nobody else can copy. Even a simple “what we learned from 200 installs last year” makes you the name others end up quoting.

A free head start, and it takes ten minutes: type your company name and your main product lines into Google and look at the “People also ask” box. Answer every question in it. That alone is weeks of the right work.

How should we write it?

The one slightly technical thing worth knowing: AI grabs short, clear chunks of text, and it looks at the top of a page first. So put the answer in the first line, not after three paragraphs of scene-setting. Keep each page about one thing. Cut the waffle.

Two habits make the biggest difference:

• ✓Don’t hide your best guides behind a form. If a person has to hand over their email to read it, the AI can’t read it at all, so it’ll never get recommended.
• ✓Stop writing the encyclopaedia stuff. “What is a video wall?” – the AI just answers that itself. What it can’t get anywhere else is your real experience: “we’ve fitted 40 boardrooms this year, here’s what always goes wrong.” That’s the stuff that gets you found.

Where do we need to show up?

Here’s the bit most people get wrong: they pour everything into their own site and stop there. But AI decides who to trust largely by who else is talking about you. Being mentioned on other people’s platforms usually moves the needle more than anything on your own pages. So once your website basics are sorted, this is where the real effort should go.

A few places punch well above their weight for a reseller:

• ✓Reviews. The trust layer. Get into the habit of asking every happy customer for a public review the moment a job lands well.
• ✓LinkedIn and the trade press. Real posts from real, named people at your company, plus the odd mention in an industry title, all add up. Being talked about matters more than any clever link.
• ✓Video you already have. You don’t need to become a film studio. But if you’re already shooting finished jobs, the quick win is simple: transcribe them. A transcript is the part Google and AI actually read, and most resellers never bother, so it’s easy ground to take.

One quick test first: ask ChatGPT a straight question about something you sell and see whether it finds you or a competitor. If your prices and spec sheets are buried or hidden, that’s usually why it can’t. The resellers who are open about pricing and detail, the very things we all tend to hold back, are the ones it can actually recommend. That doesn’t mean publishing your margins. It means the indicative ranges and spec detail a buyer needs to shortlist you at all.

How do we know it’s working?

People often don’t click any more; they read the answer, then go straight to your site or pick up the phone. The simplest, most honest measure is one line on your enquiry form: “How did you hear about us?” Then watch how often “ChatGPT” or “AI” starts showing up. A year ago that answer barely appeared anywhere. It’s worth knowing whether it’s appearing for you.

And a straight word, because plenty of people will over-promise you on this: nobody controls what an AI says. You can’t guarantee a spot in the answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is overselling. What you can do is steadily show up more often than you do today, in the categories that matter to you. That’s the honest goal, and for a lean reseller who knows their niche, it’s very achievable.

If you want to read more widely on this, you’ll find it called answer engine optimisation. The label matters far less than the habit.