Your Buyers Have Decided Before They Write to You

In 2011, the advisory firm CEB (Corporate Executive Board) surveyed more than 1,500 people who had just taken part in a major purchase for their company. They were customers of 22 large suppliers spread across ten industries. The survey looked for the point in their buying journey at which their first serious engagement with a sales rep had taken place. The average came out at 57% of the way (opens in a new tab). The figure became one of the most repeated statistics about the B2B buying journey, the journey of business-to-business purchases, in a form that changed with each retelling, 57% then 67% then 70%.

This percentage is the most fragile of all the numbers these surveys produce. It lost eight points between 2024 and 2025. The same surveys contain a result that varies far less. Before the first contact, the buying group has already ranked the vendors and the one it places first wins the contract about four times out of five. These surveys cover high-value business purchases and rest on what buyers report. The mechanism they describe nevertheless puts the website at the centre. Vendor websites are the most cited way of keeping that ranking up to date, at a time when no form is being filled in. A company website therefore does a large part of its commercial work with visitors who are not yet making themselves known and who will have to remember it on the day they buy.

The original document, published in 2012 by CEB with Google under the title "The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing", speaks of the "first serious engagement with sales". It does not speak of the first contact with the supplier. The wording leaves out whatever may have come before, such as a downloaded brochure, a demonstration attended or an email exchanged. The report also states that the average differs from one supplier to another and that it ran as high as 70% for some of the 22.

The same year, Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon and Nicholas Toman, all three from CEB, summarised the survey in Harvard Business Review. Their article, "The End of Solution Sales", states that more than 1,400 customers had completed nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision (opens in a new tab) "before even having a conversation with a supplier". Between the two texts, the sample size changed and the serious engagement with a sales rep became a conversation with a supplier.

The second figure comes from the research firm SiriusDecisions, for which 67% of the buyer's journey is done digitally. It measures the digital share of the journey and not the moment of contact. On 3 July 2013, the analyst Megan Heuer published a post on the firm's blog entitled "Three Myths of the 67 Percent Statistic". She writes that the statistic "in no way says that no one talks to a salesperson before getting halfway through the buying cycle" (opens in a new tab) and that sales is involved at all stages of the journey, including the early ones. The post gives neither the sample size nor the method. It can now only be read in the web archives.

Since 2023, the software vendor 6sense has published a yearly survey of B2B buyers. The 2024 edition places the first exchange with a seller at nearly 70% of the buying journey (opens in a new tab). The global average is 69% according to the detail published by Kerry Cunningham (opens in a new tab), its head of research, with a range from 67.4% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to 72.4% in Asia-Pacific. The buyer initiates that first exchange more than eight times out of ten.

The 2025 edition, based on about 4,000 buyers, sees the balance between independent research and seller engagement shift from 70/30 to 60/40 (opens in a new tab). A partner of the study gives the precise figure, 61% against 69% a year earlier (opens in a new tab). The press release offers two explanations. Nearly nine purchases in ten involved products that include artificial intelligence. Most vendor websites did not explain those features clearly, whether the data used, security, pricing or performance. 58% of buyers contacted sellers earlier to obtain those details. In addition, 49% said that financial pressure had shortened their buying cycles.

The first contact moved forward by eight points in one year. According to the release, buyers called earlier because the information was missing from the websites. An early first contact can therefore signal a question left unanswered on the site rather than keener interest. The same edition notes that this lack of clarity did not stop buyers from picking their favourite before the first call.

The website remains the reference once the conversations have started. In a Gartner survey of 632 buyers conducted in August and September 2024, 69% reported inconsistencies between the supplier's website and what its sellers said (opens in a new tab). These two results point to what buyers expect from a site before they write. They look for a description of the offer precise enough to avoid having to call and consistent with what the person they speak to will say afterwards.

In France, Infopro Digital Media published a study with 6sense in 2026, based on 205 decision-makers who had taken part in a purchase of more than 25,000 euros. According to the results reported by The Media Leader (opens in a new tab), the journey lasts 17 months on average, 12 of them before the first sales conversation. The American and British benchmark in the same study gives 11 months, 7 of them before that conversation. The French sample is small. Both partners have a commercial interest in the subject, since one sells advertising space in the trade press and the other sells marketing software. All these surveys also rest on what buyers report about their own process.

The same indicator from one survey to the next, 2011 to 2026

The most consistent result in these surveys is not about duration. In 2024, 81% of the buyers surveyed by 6sense already had a preferred vendor at the time of first contact and 85% had largely set their requirements. In 2025, 94% of buying groups had ranked the vendors before that contact. They ended up buying from the top of the ranking 77% of the time. The 2026 edition (opens in a new tab), based on 4,611 buyers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, gives 82%.

The same edition looks at the starting list. When a buying group forms, at least two vendors are already preferred in 73% of cases. The eventual winner is on that initial list 92 times out of 100. Kerry Cunningham concludes that a vendor missing from the list has less than a one in ten chance of winning.

A survey run without 6sense reaches the same finding. In 2022, Bain and Google surveyed 1,208 people at American companies who take part in buying software, hardware, telecommunications, logistics, marketing or industrial equipment. According to the Bain consultants, 80 to 90% of respondents had a set of vendors in mind before doing any research (opens in a new tab). The study calls this shortlist the day one list. Of those respondents, 90% ended up choosing from it. The version published by Google (opens in a new tab) adds that most buyers do more research and add at least one supplier along the way.

The favourite therefore loses about one time in five. In France, the Infopro Digital Media study finds that 33% of the committees that had drawn up a ranking before the first contact changed their preferred vendor after the sales conversations. The decision is largely under way before contact and the sales conversations overturn it in a minority of cases.

Where does that list come from? John Dawes, a professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, proposed in 2021 a line of reasoning known as the 95-5 rule (opens in a new tab). A company changes its principal bank or its law firm about once every five years. Over a whole year, only 20% of potential clients are therefore in the market, which is about 5% in a quarter. The remaining 95% are not buying at that moment. Dawes specifies that the figure is a heuristic and not a precise rule. For a category renewed every two years, the share of buyers in the market in a quarter rises to 13%. The report was written for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, which sells advertising to businesses.

The 2026 edition of the 6sense survey describes what buyers do during those periods. Nearly all of them, 96%, say they stay up to date on vendors and solutions between purchases. Vendor websites are the most cited way of doing it, named by 36% of respondents. 71% say their view of vendors changed from one buying cycle to the next. Respondents had already taken part in six to eight evaluations in the category concerned. Before contacting a seller, buyers cite their own existing knowledge as the first influence (34%), ahead of internal discussions (32%) and artificial intelligence assistants (21%).

The other surveys also place the website among the leading sources. The 2026 barometer from Infopro Digital Media (opens in a new tab) ranks word of mouth first among the channels through which French buyers form a view before the sales phase (53%), ahead of the provider's website (46%), the trade press (44%), professional events (43%) and social networks (34%). Forrester, which surveyed more than 16,000 buyers worldwide for its 2024 state of business buying (opens in a new tab), places vendor websites third among self-guided interactions, behind generative AI and internet search. Gartner notes for its part that buyers interact more with a supplier's website (opens in a new tab) than with any other digital channel of that supplier.

Getting onto the list therefore requires being remembered, since the first influence cited is what the buyer already knows. A site visited outside a buying period is only useful if the visitor can connect it to the company several months later. That attribution is rare. According to a study by JKR and Ipsos, only 15% of the brand assets tested are distinctive enough to be recognised as belonging to their owner. The article on why websites look the same (opens in a new tab) recalls that the average distance between layouts fell by 44% between 2010 and 2019. None of the surveys cited here measures the effect of design on being on the list. The mechanism they describe nevertheless rests on memory. A site whose typography, rhythm and interactions belong to it alone gives the visitor something to recognise it by on the day the list is drawn up.

A CRM, the software in which a company records its prospects and its sales conversations, starts counting on the day a person identifies themselves. Yet a business purchase involves on average 11 people according to the 2024 6sense survey, 12 in the French study and 13 according to Forrester (opens in a new tab), with at least two departments involved in 89% of purchases. The contact form records the person who fills it in and the date on which they do it. The visits of their colleagues and those of the preceding months remain anonymous in the site's analytics. The article on search beyond Google (opens in a new tab) explains why a large share of those visits ends up in direct traffic. The number of forms received thus measures the last step of the journey. It says nothing about the visits that put the company on a list.

The preference for autonomy does not cover the whole journey. In the 2024 Gartner survey already cited, 61% prefer a rep-free buying experience (opens in a new tab). The same respondents nevertheless prefer a seller's input for tasks that require knowing their situation, such as determining whether a product or service fits their company. Forrester observes for its part that buyers want a near-even split between personal and self-guided interactions, stable over several years.

Completing a purchase with no conversation at all has a cost that Gartner has measured. According to its 2022 survey, 43% of buyers who completed their purchase through online self-service report high purchase regret (opens in a new tab), against 26% of those who went through a sales rep. The firm reads this as a sign that buyers are not finding online the information needed to evaluate an offer. Each buyer also has on average 16 interactions with the vendor finally chosen according to the 2025 edition of 6sense. The sales conversation mostly serves to check a preference already formed.

The percentage of the journey completed before contact is the least reliable figure in the series. Its definition changed between 2011 and 2013, it moved by eight points in a single year and it depends on what websites explain. The ranking of vendors before contact is the most constant result. Two separate sources measure it and the favourite wins between 77 and 82% of the time in the last two editions of the largest survey. That ranking is built outside buying periods, among people who do not identify themselves.

These surveys cover high-value business purchases, more than 25,000 euros in the French study and 320,000 pounds on average according to the British partner of 6sense. They are self-reported and several are published by companies that sell tools or advertising space to marketing teams. None measures the more modest purchases of a small business or an individual. Dawes's reasoning nevertheless applies to them unchanged, since it rests only on the interval between two purchases. For a service renewed every five years, most of the potential clients who visit a site will not buy this quarter. The surveys indicate that they will approach their next purchase with a list already formed. The website is one of the few media a company fully controls during that interval.