80 B2B Buyer Statistics for 2026: 94% Use AI

Key Takeaways

• Buyers reach sellers 61% of the way through the journey, and 94% of them used LLMs somewhere in the process (6sense, 2025).
• The first vendor buyers spoke with went on to win 77.0% of the time in the initial study (6sense, 2025).
• On average, 13 people inside a company are involved in a B2B buying decision (Forrester, 2024).
• 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process, and 81% of buyers are dissatisfied with the provider they chose (Forrester, 2024).
• Generative AI chatbots were the top influence on software shortlists at 17.1%, against 8.8% for vendor salespeople (G2, 2025).
• 74% of B2B buying teams show unhealthy conflict during the decision (Gartner, 2025).
• 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, up from 61% a year earlier (Gartner, 2026).

B2B Buying Journey Statistics Before Sales Gets a Call

Most of the B2B buying journey still happens before contacting sales, which is the stretch content can reach. My content marketing statistics roundup covers the other side of that work.

How Far Buyers Get Before First Contact

Buyers and sellers now meet earlier than they did, but buyers still arrive with most of the thinking done.

• The point of first contact moved from 69% of the journey to 61% between the 2024 and 2025 studies, so buyers now engage sellers earlier in the journey (6sense, 2025).
• In 6sense’s 2024 global B2B study of 2,509 buyers, 69% of the purchase process happened before buyers engaged sellers, and 85% had set their purchase requirements first (6sense, 2024).
• European buyers were 67.7% through the process at first contact, and 88.8% had largely or completely set requirements before reaching out (6sense, 2024).
• Most buyers want each phase to be all or mostly self-service: 83% for discovery, 81% for research and 76% for evaluation (G2, 2024).

Buyers Pick a Favorite Before the First Call

The order of the shortlist usually predicts the winner. I’d treat the first sales call as a confirmation meeting, not a pitch.

• 94% of buyers ranked their shortlist by preference before talking to sellers, and 79% said they, not the vendor, started the first conversation (6sense, 2025).
• The first vendor buyers spoke with was the winner 77.0% of the time in the initial study and 81% in a supplemental one, but only 57% when the shortlist wasn’t ranked first (6sense, 2025).
• In Europe, the vendor ranked first at first contact won 78.5% of the time, and buyers started first contact 83% of the time (6sense, 2024).
• 81% of buyers chose a preferred vendor before speaking with sales (6sense, 2024), and 71% of tech buyers went with their first choice while 12% switched (TrustRadius, 2024).

Shortlists Are Getting Shorter

Fewer slots means B2B brands have to get onto the list early. That matters more than the final pitch.

• 46% of software buyers had one to three products on their shortlist in 2025, up from 32% in 2023: 8% had a single product and 38% had two or three (G2, 2025).
• Shortlists of four to seven products fell from 45% of software buyers in 2023 to 31% in 2025 (G2, 2025).
• Buyers fill 3.6 shortlist spots on day one, evaluate 5.1 vendors on average, and choose a winner from that day-one list 95% of the time (6sense, 2025).
• 83% of tech buyers shortlisted three or fewer products (TrustRadius, 2026).

How Long B2B Buying Cycles Take

B2B sales cycles got shorter in 2025, though length depends on the measure: 6sense tracks the full cycle, Google asked how long journeys took.

• The average B2B buying cycle fell from 11.3 months in 2024 to 10.1 months in 2025, and 49% of buyers said economic uncertainty shortened their cycle (6sense, 2025).
• 87% of tech buyers completed their purchase within six months, falling to 65% for enterprise buyers, who reached 87% by 12 months (TrustRadius, 2024).
• Vendors saw it slower: they reported 70% of purchases completed within six months and 89% by ten months (TrustRadius, 2024).
• 77% of US B2B buyers said their buying journey took 12 weeks or less, in a study of 2,063 senior leaders (Google and National Research Group, 2025).
• New-business sales cycles ran 9% shorter in 2025 while average deal values rose 54%, across 655,000 opportunities and a survey of more than 2,000 sales leaders (Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025).

Why B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Buying Experience

B2B buyers prefer digital, self-service buying, yet they still pull a rep in when the stakes rise. The sales team has to plan for both.

How Many Buyers Want to Skip the Sales Rep

The rep-free share rose six points in a year, and irrelevant outreach is now a reason to drop a vendor.

• 67% of B2B buyers say they prefer a rep-free experience and 70% prefer a completely digital, self-service one, in Gartner’s survey of 646 buyers run in August and September 2025 (Gartner, 2026; Gartner, 2026). A year earlier, 61% of 632 buyers preferred to go rep-free (Gartner, 2025).
• 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach (Gartner, 2025).

Buyers Still Want a Rep to Check AI

Most B2B sales interactions still feel transactional to buyers. The sales process that wins shows up as an advisor when buyers want a second opinion.

• 69% of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with sales reps, and buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase (Gartner, 2026).
• 86% of business buyers are more likely to buy if companies understand their goals and 84% expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors, yet 73% say most sales interactions feel transactional and 59% say most reps don’t take the time to understand them (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, 2023).

How Many People Sit on a B2B Buying Committee

Forrester finds larger buying groups on complex B2B purchases, which is why content has to work for several readers at once. The count depends on the purchase.

Average Buying Group Size by Source

Buying group size depends on who is counting and on the B2B purchase itself.

• 13 people inside an organization are involved in the average buying decision, and 89% of purchases involve two or more departments (Forrester, 2024).
• The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers (Forrester, 2026), and the group doubles in size when the product includes generative AI features (Forrester via Digital Commerce 360, 2026).
• Gartner says buying groups range from 5 to 16 people across as many as four functions (Gartner, 2025).
• European buying groups average 9 to 10 internal stakeholders (6sense, 2024), while 96% of tech buying groups have five or fewer members and 53% include someone from the C-suite (TrustRadius, 2024).

Who Makes the Final Purchase Decision

Procurement now joins from the start in half of B2B buying cycles, and finance often holds the final say.

• 79% of software buyers say the CFO always or frequently holds final decision-making power, 61% say legal slows or blocks purchases, and 41% name a C-suite leader or the CFO as the person ultimately responsible for sign-off (G2, 2024).
• 68% of respondents named C-suite leaders as decision-makers (Forrester via Digital Commerce 360, 2026), and procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles, engaging from the start (Forrester, 2026).

Who Are B2B Buyers by Age and Role

Millennials and Gen Z now make most B2B purchases, including the biggest ones, and they are harder to please than older buyers.

• Millennials and Gen Z make up 64% of business buyers, and Millennials alone are more than half (Forrester, 2023).
• 90% of younger buyers report dissatisfaction with their vendor in at least one area, against 71% of older buyers (Forrester, 2023).
• Over two-thirds of buyers involved in transactions worth more than $1 million are Millennials or Gen Z, and almost one-third of younger buyers bring 10 or more people from outside their organization into the decision (Forrester, 2024).

Conflict and Consensus Inside Buying Groups

Most buying teams hit conflict, and many deals die without a winner. I’d write content for the procurement and finance readers who never take a sales call.

• 74% of B2B buyer teams showed unhealthy conflict during the decision, in a survey of 632 buyers run in August and September 2024 (Gartner, 2025).
• Buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal, and buyers who get messaging relevant to the whole group are 3 times more likely (Gartner, 2025).
• 94% of buyers in groups of six or more report clear benefits, such as easier budget approval (Forrester, 2026), and fewer than half cited slower decisions as a significant drawback (Forrester via Digital Commerce 360, 2026).
• More than 40% of B2B deals are abandoned before completion, up to 60% in some industries, because the buying group fails to reach consensus, and hidden buyers in procurement, finance, legal and operations vetoed around half the vendors on the shortlist (LinkedIn B2B Institute, 2025).

How B2B Buyers Use Generative AI in Purchasing

AI is now part of nearly every buying journey and is changing buying habits, but the headline adoption numbers hide how shallow some use still is. The search side of this shift is in my zero-click search statistics.

How Many B2B Buyers Use AI to Research

Adoption looks near universal when “use” means any AI at any point. Direct chatbot research is far lower, and buyers check what AI tells them.

• 94% of buyers used LLMs in their buying process, more toward the middle of the journey than the start (6sense, 2025), while almost 95% said in 2024 that they expected to use generative AI within 12 months (Forrester, 2024).
• 72% of tech buyers ran into Google’s AI Overviews while researching, from 59% in EMEA to 73% in the US and 84% in APAC, but only 7% used LLMs like ChatGPT as part of their buying process (TrustRadius, 2025).
• 63% of tech buyers used AI during their purchase journey in a January 2026 survey of 1,862 buyers, and 94% of them check its answers at least some of the time (TrustRadius, 2026).

Where AI Shows Up in the Buying Journey

AI does most of its work in the middle of the journey, when buyers compare options. That is where I’d put comparison pages and pricing detail.

• 60% of B2B buyers use AI tools in their purchase journey, and US buyers used them most during consideration: 35% in discovery, 43% in consideration, 31% at purchase and 17% after purchase (Google and National Research Group, 2025).
• 45% of B2B buyers used GenAI during a recent purchase, mainly to gather information on vendors and products (Gartner, 2026).
• Occasional AI use among tech buyers rose from 17% in 2024 to 30% in 2025, and frequent use from 4% to 8% (TrustRadius, 2025).

AI Chatbots Now Shape the Shortlist

This is the number I’d put in front of B2B marketing teams: chatbots already outrank salespeople as a shortlist influence.

• Generative AI chatbots were the most cited influence on software shortlists at 17.1%, ahead of software review sites at 15.1% and vendor salespeople at 8.8% (G2, 2025).
• 30% of buyers saw generative AI tools as a meaningful interaction at the final commit stage, against 17% for product experts, and 61% of purchase influencers say their organization has or will use a private generative AI engine to support purchasing (Forrester, 2025).
• 90% of tech buyers who saw AI Overviews clicked through to the sources they cited (TrustRadius, 2025).

Trust in AI Answers Is Still Shaky

Buyers use AI for speed and then check its work, which is why cited sources matter.

• 36% of buyers said generative AI made them more confident in their decision, while 20% felt less confident after hitting unreliable or inaccurate information (Forrester via Digital Commerce 360, 2026).
• Forrester predicts that ungoverned genAI use in B2B go-to-market tools will cost more than $10 billion in enterprise value in 2026 through stock declines, settlements and fines (Forrester, 2025).
• 80% of tech buyers trust AI-generated content at least some of the time, and 62% of frequent AI users always or very often double-check it (TrustRadius, 2025).
• 63% of B2B buyers who used AI tools used Google Search to validate or cross-check what those tools told them (Google and National Research Group, 2025).

AI Features Send Buyers Back to Sellers

AI inside the product raises questions buyers take to the vendor, and that pulls them into sales conversations sooner.

• Nearly 90% of buyers said AI features were part of the solution they bought, with software highest at 93% (6sense, 2025).
• 62% brought AI questions or concerns to vendors, including which capabilities were included (55%) and what they would cost (46%), and 58% engaged sellers earlier to evaluate AI (6sense, 2025).
• Over two-thirds of software buyers would pay a premium for AI if the vendor proves its value, rising to 88% of power users (G2, 2025).

What Content and Channels Influence B2B Buyers

For B2B content marketing, search, peers and reviews still do more work than analyst reports or outbound sales outreach. My online review statistics go deeper on review data.

Where B2B Buyers Research Vendors

Google is still the first stop for B2B research, and video and review sites come next.

• Tech buyers researched products on Google (78%), YouTube (31%), TrustRadius (24%), G2 (16%) and LinkedIn (16%) (TrustRadius, 2024).
• Public review websites were the most consulted source for 31% of software buyers in 2024, up from 23% in 2023, 18% in 2022 and 13% in 2021 (G2, 2024).
• 74% of tech buyers used reviews to inform their purchase decisions in 2026 (TrustRadius, 2026).
• Buyer use of analyst reports fell to 16%, the lowest in seven years (TrustRadius, 2024), and to 13% of buyers in 2026, a 63% decrease since 2022 (TrustRadius, 2026).
• More than 50% of younger buyers were expected to rely on external sources, including social media, to make buying decisions in 2025 (Forrester, 2024).

Do 75% of B2B Buyers Use Social Media?

Yes, in 2014. The current figure is lower, but B2B marketers still reach the buying group through LinkedIn and email.

• 75% of B2B buyers had used social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook to assist with purchasing decisions, and 84% of C-level and VP buyers had, in a February 2014 survey of 760 buyers (IDC, 2014).
• 59% of US B2B buyers used social media during the research stage of their purchase journey (Google and National Research Group, 2025).
• LinkedIn (84%) and email (78%) are the top channels buyers are likely to share content on, ahead of internal collaboration platforms (60%), so email marketing still reaches the rest of the buying group (Demand Gen Report, 2024).

Peer Conversations Vendors Underestimate

Buyers trust people who already use the product. Vendors keep guessing that number too low.

• 56% of tech buyers had a conversation with a product user before buying, 71% for enterprise purchases, while vendors estimated 34% (TrustRadius, 2024).
• 54% of tech buyers used at least one demo, 67% for enterprise purchases, and 71% of demo users called it the most influential resource (TrustRadius, 2024).
• 76% of buyers brought in at least one outside resource such as an analyst, consultant, investor, distributor or reseller; a year earlier, 71% used analysts or consultants, a narrower category (6sense, 2025).

What B2B Buyers Want From Vendor Content

Generic content is the loudest complaint, and it got worse in a single year.

• 51% of buyers said content was too generic and irrelevant to their needs in 2024, up from 38% in 2023, and another 51% said access took too many steps, up from 30% (Demand Gen Report, 2024).
• 89% of respondents downloaded and read assets they found themselves, 72% shared content with their team, and 57% of colleagues who got it read it (Demand Gen Report, 2024).
• Short-form content (67%) and webinars or digital events (65%) were the formats buyers found most valuable in decision-making (Demand Gen Report, 2024).

Why B2B Vendors Win or Lose Deals

Familiarity wins more B2B deals than persuasion. That is the most useful finding for B2B marketers here, yet vendors still spend more on demand generation than brand.

Prior Experience Beats Cold Outreach

Buyers go back to vendors and sellers they already know, so brand work pays off at decision time.

• In 85% of successful purchases, buyers had direct experience with the winning vendor and prior experience with 3.8 of the vendors they evaluated; 75% personally know sellers at the vendors they evaluate, and 68% already knew a seller at the eventual winner (6sense, 2025).
• 78% of tech buyers shortlisted products they had heard of before starting research, 86% for enterprise buyers (TrustRadius, 2024), and 82% of buyers who looked beyond their day-one list still bought a product that had been on their mind at the start (Google and National Research Group, 2025).
• Vendors still put an average of 38% of discretionary marketing spend into brand awareness against 53% into demand generation (TrustRadius, 2024).
• Buyers had 16 interactions per person with the winning vendor, one fewer than in 2024 (6sense, 2025).

Stalled Purchases and Dissatisfied Buyers

Most B2B purchases stall, and most buyers end up unhappy with the vendor they picked.

• 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process, and 81% of buyers are dissatisfied with their chosen provider (Forrester, 2024).
• 57% of software buyers expect a positive return within three months of purchase, and 11% expect it immediately (G2, 2024).
• 47% of enterprise tech buyers wish ROI were easier to calculate for budget approval, and 51% wish every vendor had transparent pricing (TrustRadius, 2024).

What B2B Selling Will Look Like in 2026

Buyers want proof before they commit, and Forrester expects AI agents to start negotiating on their behalf. That reshapes B2B sales strategy. The tooling side of that shift is in my martech statistics.

Trials Now Decide the Vendor

Buyers use trials to compare vendors, and a good share plan to buy elsewhere afterwards.

• More than 60% of buyers ran some form of trial before committing to a full purchase, rising to 78% for purchases of $10 million or more (Forrester, 2026).
• After a trial, 36% plan to convert with the same provider, 35% plan to buy from a different provider, and 10% plan a new trial of the same solution with a different vendor (Forrester via Digital Commerce 360, 2026).
• Forrester predicted that more than half of large B2B purchases of $1 million or more would go through digital self-serve channels in 2025 (Forrester, 2024).

Budgets, Deal Sizes and Buyer Agents

B2B tech budgets are rising, and sellers should expect to negotiate with software on the buyer’s side.

• 57% of software buyers expect their organization to spend more on technology over the next 12 months, 8 points more than in 2024 (G2, 2025).
• The median purchase in 6sense’s survey cost between $200,000 and $300,000 (6sense, 2025), and 12% of software buyers worked on a purchase over $1 million (G2, 2024).
• Forrester expects at least one in five B2B sellers in 2026 to respond to AI buyer agents with counteroffers from their own agents (Forrester, 2025).

How B2B Sales Teams Are Changing

B2B sales teams are adding AI agents because reps spend most of the week not selling, and sellers now miss quota more often than not.

• Sellers say measurable ROI (69%) and personalization (67%) matter more to customers than a year ago, and 57% say customers take longer to decide than they used to (Salesforce, State of Sales, 2026).
• Reps spend 60% of their time on non-selling work such as data entry and prospecting, and 54% of sales teams already use AI agents, with another 34% expecting to within two years (Salesforce, State of Sales, 2026).
• The share of sellers missing quota climbed to 78% from 69% and win rates on new business fell 10% in relative terms, but win rates rose 55% when a decision-maker joined in the first two stages of the sales process (Ebsta x Pavilion, 2025).

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it true that 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions?

It was in 2014. IDC found 75% of 760 buyers had used social media to assist with purchasing decisions, and 84% of C-level and VP buyers had (IDC, 2014). The current figure is lower: 59% of US B2B buyers used social media during the research stage (Google and National Research Group, 2025).

What is the rule of 7 in B2B?

It’s marketing folklore that a prospect needs about seven touches before acting, and no buyer research backs a specific number. Real B2B journeys run longer: buyers had 16 interactions per person with the winning vendor and evaluated 5.1 vendors on average (6sense, 2025).

What is the average purchase size from a B2B vendor?

For considered purchases it’s large. The median purchase in 6sense’s 2025 survey cost between $200,000 and $300,000 (6sense, 2025), and 12% of software buyers worked on a deal over $1 million (G2, 2024).

What will B2B selling look like in 2026?

More self-serve, more AI on both sides. Forrester expects at least one in five sellers to respond to AI buyer agents with counteroffers from their own agents in 2026 (Forrester, 2025). 54% of sales teams already use AI agents (Salesforce, State of Sales, 2026), and more than 60% of buyers trial before buying (Forrester, 2026).

How many stakeholders are involved in B2B purchasing decisions?

Forrester counts 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers in the typical buying decision (Forrester, 2026). Gartner puts the range at 5 to 16 people across up to four functions (Gartner, 2025). Tech buying groups are leaner: 96% have five or fewer members (TrustRadius, 2024).

Who are the typical B2B buyers and decision-makers?

Younger than most sales teams assume, with finance watching. Millennials and Gen Z make up 64% of business buyers (Forrester, 2023). Procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of buying cycles (Forrester, 2026), and 79% of software buyers say the CFO always or frequently holds final decision-making power (G2, 2024).

What content types and channels influence B2B buyers?

Search first, then peers and short content. Google is a research site for 78% of tech buyers (TrustRadius, 2024), while buyers rate short-form content (67%) and webinars (65%) as the most valuable formats and share content with colleagues on LinkedIn (84%) and email (78%) (Demand Gen Report, 2024).

How has the B2B buying journey changed with AI?

Buyers now reach sellers earlier, at 61% of the journey instead of 69%, and 94% use LLMs along the way (6sense, 2025). 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience (Gartner, 2026), and AI chatbots are the top shortlist influence at 17.1% (G2, 2025). The vendor-side view is in my generative engine optimization statistics.