The Evolving Buyer Journey: From Seller Reliance to Buyer Independence
Buying a car once meant visiting dealerships, hearing sales pitches, checking window-sticker prices, and getting car details and offers you could only get from a salesperson. Though buyers might have had an idea of what they wanted, their decisions depended almost entirely on information that was exclusive to sellers.
The internet changed everything.
Now, buyers can research every detail — from pricing to performance — before stepping foot on a lot, if they ever do. This shift has empowered consumers to take control of the buying process, entering negotiations armed with knowledge that was once inaccessible.
The same transformation has reshaped B2B buying. Armed with a wealth of online information from vendors, third-party reviews, and industry sources, today’s B2B buyers feel empowered to assess their options and make decisions with minimal seller involvement. But many B2B providers have been slow to adapt, sticking to traditional, seller-led approaches that does not match how their buyers buy (See B2B Buyers Are Not Blank Slates).
In this report, we introduce Empowered Buyer Syndrome — a condition in which B2B buying groups believe they can choose complex business solutions solely through their own research, prior to engaging vendor representatives.
Evidence of Empowerment: How Buyers Take Control Before Engaging Sellers
Just two decades ago, B2B buyers relied heavily on sellers for information about solutions. Until the late 2000s, it was rare to find vendors with robust product details on their websites, and third-party resources were scarce. Buyers could turn to consultants and analysts for additional insights, but they often relied on historical data or information from the recent past. For the latest information, a direct conversation with a seller was still necessary.
Of course, that is not the case today. B2B providers now make comprehensive information about their solutions readily accessible online, and the internet is brimming with third-party resources. Review sites have multiplied, platforms like YouTube host product demos and tutorials, and social media is flooded with customer reviews. Our research shows that the average buying group member engages in around 17 interactions per vendor, with most of those interactions involving content rather than direct sales engagement. In total, buying groups of around 11 people evaluating more than four vendors, have upwards of 850 interactions across a single buying journey.
Even then, this might account for just a fraction of their total research effort (Gartner). When you factor in vendor content, third-party reviews, internal meetings, and consultations with advisors, buyers navigate thousands of touchpoints before ever speaking to a seller.
Buyers Know the Field
The first piece of evidence that B2B buyers are now firmly in the driver’s seat is their familiarity with the field. Nearly 93% of buying teams have prior experience with at least one vendor on their shortlist, leaving only 7% starting from scratch.
Moreover, a survey by Bain and Google found that 80% to 90% of B2B buyers already have a set of vendors in mind before starting their research. Even more striking, 90% of those buyers end up choosing a vendor from that initial list. B2B buyers know the field, and much like those shopping for their next vehicle, they no longer enter the process without a clear sense of their options.
Buyers Spend Most of Their Journey Rep-Free
For years, sources like Gartner, Forrester, and McKinsey & Company have said, “the buying journey is two-thirds over before anyone talks to sales,” and “two-thirds of the buying process is done digitally.” The past two years of our own research have confirmed this: buyers prefer to spend most of their journey on their own. For nearly all B2B purchases, buyers report that they don’t engage with sellers until they’re about 70%, or roughly two-thirds, through their buying journeys.
This ratio (70% pre-seller contact, 30% post-seller contact) holds regardless of the length of the buying cycle, the type of solution, or even if the buyer is considering new or existing vendors. This strongly suggests that there’s a process buyers need to complete before reaching out to sellers, followed by a different, process once engagement begins.
The Point of First Contact
Two Phases of the B2B Buying Journey: Selection & Validation
It is clear that before contacting vendors, buyers take advantage of the mountains of resources now available to them – gathering information, reviewing third-party insights, and discussing options internally. But our research shows they aren’t just researching solutions; they’re choosing a preferred vendor.
In 81% of cases, buyers contact the vendor at the top of their shortlist first and stick with that vendor as their final choice (see a complete discussion here). What’s more, 85% of buyers report having their purchase requirements mostly or fully defined before they ever reach out to sellers. The fact that buyers rarely change their minds about both the solution and provider suggest that the pre-contact phase is where both research and decisions happen, while the process that takes place after engaging with sellers is about validating that selection.
Since the pre-contact phase takes up a very consistent two-thirds of the journey, buyers spend roughly twice as much time researching and building consensus as they do validating through demos and other vendor discussions. By the time sellers are involved, buyers feel confident that their independent research has identified the best solution and provider.
Crucially, once a buying group has generated consensus among its members, they are loath to disrupt that consensus.
The Role of Content
During the first 70% of their buying journey, most buyers establish their requirements and choose a preferred vendor. To do this, they consume vast amounts of content, both from vendors and third-party sources.
These content interactions range from reading white papers and case studies to watching webinars and product demos on platforms like YouTube. Importantly, most of these interactions are asynchronous – buyers access the content at their own pace and in whatever order they choose.
Buyers Rely on Analysts and Consultants to Form Early Opinions
Although buyers spend over two-thirds of their journey without sellers, they aren’t entirely on their own. More than 70% call on the expertise of third-party analysts and consultants for guidance. These experts help buyers establish requirements and offer independent perspectives on the relative merits of provider solutions and brand experiences. These outside perspectives further bolster the buyer’s sense that they can make informed choices prior to talking to sellers.
Buyers Thrive on Independence
Gartner found that 75% of B2B buyers prefer to go through their buying journey without a salesperson, and our data echo this. Our data show that the longer buyers stay in the pre-seller phase, the more satisfied they are with the process. As shown in the chart below, buyers who waited until after the two-thirds mark to engage with sellers — the “late engagers” — consistently rated their experience higher. Buyers aren’t just empowered to handle things on their own — they prefer to.
Both a Challenge and an Opportunity for Providers
The Empowered Buyer presents both a challenge and an opportunity for vendors. The challenge is that buyers are making up their minds long before direct interaction occurs. The opportunity is that buyers’ pre-contact shopping leaves a digital trail that can be used to identify in-market buyers before they hit the 70% mark.
How Vendors Can Seize the Opportunity
Selling organizations must capitalize on the wealth of signals that buying groups leave behind as they roam the internet in packs of 10 or more for nearly a year, researching solutions. When combined and analyzed by statistical models, third-party intent data, de-anonymized web traffic, and similar sources serve as a reliable barometer of a company’s interests and readiness to buy. Since only 5% to 10% of target accounts are in-market at any given time, even a reasonable estimate allows organizations to focus demand generation efforts on serious buyers, while using lower-cost branding and awareness tactics for those not ready to purchase.
Journey and Content Mapping
Mapping the buying journey into stages allows organizations to track how buyers’ information needs change. By analyzing patterns in keyword usage and content consumption, they can identify which questions arise early and which come later. This lets revenue teams assess existing content and fill any gaps to better support buyers throughout their journey.
As our research has shown, buying processes are complex. Buying group members may come and go from buying groups, and often start journeys with differing levels of experience with the relevant vendors. As such, providers are well-advised to create compelling content to address all the key questions buying group members have throughout their journeys, and to make that content available in the most convenient, consumable ways possible. Providers that tailor their content to buyers’ needs at each stage make the process easier — establishing themselves as trusted, value-adding partners and creating brand preference along the way.
Ungating
Finally, with B2B form-fill rates under 5%, and fewer than half of active buying group members filling out forms with the vendors they ultimately buy from, companies that offer open, un-gated access to valuable content make their buyers’ jobs easier and gain a significant advantage (see our complete discussion of un-gating here). Gating content not only restricts access but also undermines the buyer’s autonomy, while pushing them toward competitors who allow them to self-educate without barriers.
Embracing the Empowered Buyer
B2B is firmly in the era of the Empowered (and Defensive) Buyer. Providers that resist Defensive and Empowered buyers risk alienating buyers and throttling their own growth. Providers that commit to mapping buying journeys and empowering buyers across the entire journey will have a competitive advantage.
