Here’s a thought experiment: Think about the last time you used ChatGPT, Claude, or any other LLM. Did you ask it one question, accept whatever it told you as gospel, and immediately act on that information? Or did you use it as one input among many, cross-referencing what it said against your own experience, other sources, and trusted colleagues?
If you’re like most people, it was the latter. You used the LLM as a tool in your process, not as a replacement for your process.
Now here’s the uncomfortable question: Why do we assume B2B buyers are doing something completely different?
The gap between fear and reality
Over the past year, there’s been no shortage of hot takes about how LLMs are fundamentally transforming B2B buying behavior. Declining web traffic has fueled speculation that buyers are bypassing vendor websites entirely, getting all their answers from AI, and making decisions without ever engaging with sellers. The implication? Traditional go-to-market strategies are becoming obsolete.
Our 2025 Buyer Experience Report reveals a different story, one that’s simultaneously more nuanced and more reassuring than the prevailing narrative suggests.
What the data actually shows
Yes, B2B buyers are using LLMs. In fact, 94% of buyers in our study reported using them during their buying journey. That number alone might seem to validate the panic. But here’s what matters more: those same buyers are still having an average of 16 interactions with the winning vendor throughout their buying process. That’s statistically identical to 2023 and just one interaction fewer than 2024.
In other words, LLM adoption hasn’t displaced vendor engagement. It hasn’t eliminated the need for human conversation, relationship building, or the validation that comes from direct interaction with sellers.
The buyers in our study were evaluating solutions with an average annual value of approximately $250,000. These aren’t impulse purchases. They’re significant investments that carry meaningful risk for the individuals making vendor selections. Even if LLMs were completely trustworthy sources of information (and most users recognize they’re not there yet), buyers would still want to verify critical details themselves.
LLMs as a tool, not a replacement
When we dug deeper into how buyers actually use LLMs, the pattern became clear. They’re not turning to AI at the beginning of their journey to discover vendors or learn about solution categories.
That makes sense when you consider that buyers bring substantial experience to the table: the average buyer in our study had been involved in roughly 8 to 9 purchase journeys within their solution category.
Instead, buyers are using LLMs primarily in the middle of their journey.
The top use cases?
- Comparing vendor offerings,
- Evaluating proposals,
- Analyzing internal stakeholder input,
- Creating shortlists, and
- Summarizing third-party content.
These are research and synthesis activities, not discovery or final decision-making.
Buyers aren’t using LLMs to replace the work of understanding their needs, evaluating vendors, or making final purchasing decisions. They’re using them to make their existing process more efficient. To help them organize information, spot patterns, and pressure-test their thinking.
Sound familiar? It’s probably similar to how you use LLMs in your own work.
Why this matters for go-to-market teams
The temptation when faced with disruptive technology is to assume everything changes overnight. But human behavior, especially in high-stakes professional contexts, evolves more gradually than technology does.
The buyers in our study aren’t fundamentally different from the buyers of previous years. They’re still conducting extensive independent research before engaging vendors. They’re still relying heavily on prior experience with solutions and vendors. They’re still having multiple touchpoints throughout their journey. What’s changed is that they have a new tool that makes certain parts of their process faster.
For revenue and marketing teams, this should be clarifying rather than alarming. The fundamentals still matter:
- Your digital presence still matters. The web traffic that’s declining to LLM usage likely isn’t coming from in-market buyers. It’s from the professionally curious and future buyers doing early exploration. Your current pipeline production probably isn’t taking a hit.
- Your content still matters. Buyers are using LLMs to summarize and compare the information that’s out there. If your positioning, messaging, and proof points aren’t clearly articulated in accessible formats, you’re making it harder for buyers to evaluate you, whether they’re using AI or not.
- Your relationships still matter. Sixteen interactions per buyer with the winning vendor. That hasn’t changed. Buyers still need to validate information, assess cultural fit, understand implementation details, and build confidence in their decision. AI doesn’t replace that.
Stop imagining, start observing
The bottom line: The imaginary buyer in your head who trusts everything an LLM says and never talks to vendors? That buyer doesn’t exist in meaningful numbers.
The real buyers in our study are experienced professionals who use LLMs as one tool among many. They’re applying the same skepticism and verification instincts to AI-generated content that they apply to any other source of information. And they’re still engaging with vendors in fundamentally similar ways to how they always have.
That’s not to say AI won’t continue to evolve or that buyer behavior won’t shift further over time. But right now, the data suggests the transformation is more incremental than revolutionary. Understanding that difference matters. It means you can adapt your strategy thoughtfully rather than reactively, focusing on the changes that are actually happening rather than the ones we imagine might be.
Want to dive deeper into how B2B buyers are navigating AI and economic uncertainty? Download the full 2025 Buyer Experience Report for comprehensive insights into buying behavior, the 60/40 journey, and what it all means for your go-to-market strategy.
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