Over the past year three large studies have looked at how businesses actually buy: Gartner surveyed 632 B2B buyers, 6sense collected close to 4,000 responses across North America, Europe, the UK and Ireland and Asia-Pacific, and Forrester published its State of Business Buying for 2026. They were run by different firms with different methods, yet they point in the same direction. Buyers are doing more of the work alone, deciding earlier, involving more people, and losing patience with outreach that isn't relevant to them.
Below is what the research found, followed by what we think it means for anyone running lead generation programmes.
1. Most of the decision is made before a seller is involved
6sense found that buyers make first contact with a vendor at roughly 61% of the way through their buying journey. That is earlier than the 69% the company reported in previous editions, but it still means well over half the journey happens without any seller in the room.1
The more striking findings are about the shortlist. Buyers evaluated around five vendors on average, and four of those five places were filled on the first day of the process. Almost all respondents (94%) ranked their shortlist before speaking to any vendor, usually contacted their first choice first, and went on to buy from that first choice 77% of the time.1
The practical consequence is uncomfortable: if your company isn't known to a buying group before it starts, the odds of winning are low, however good the later sales conversation is.
2. Buyers want less selling, and punish irrelevant outreach
Gartner's survey, carried out in late 2024 and published in June 2025, found that 61% of B2B buyers would prefer a buying experience with no sales rep at all. Nearly three-quarters (73%) said they actively avoid suppliers that send them irrelevant outreach, and 69% had noticed that what a supplier's website said didn't match what its salespeople told them.2
Gartner's own reading is not that sellers are obsolete. Buyers still value a seller's input when judging whether a product genuinely fits their situation; they just don't want to be walked through information they can find themselves.2
3. More people, more checking, and less trust in AI answers
Forrester reports that a typical purchase now involves 13 people inside the buying organisation and 9 influencers outside it. Procurement acts as a decision-maker in 53% of buying cycles, more than 60% of buyers run a trial before purchase, and that rises to 78% for purchases of $10 million or more.3
Forrester also found that buyers often start their research with generative AI tools, but that those tools can return incomplete or unreliable answers, which pushes buyers back towards people they trust for validation.3 In other words, AI has made the first step of research faster without removing the need for credible, human sources.
4. Buying cycles are getting a little shorter
6sense measured an average buying cycle of 10.1 months in 2025, down from 11.3 months the year before, with 49% of buyers saying economic conditions had shortened their process.1 Shorter cycles leave less time to get onto a shortlist once a buyer is active.
What this means for lead generation
Taken together, the research argues against the traditional model of buying a large volume of names and hoping a few convert. Here is how we would adjust a programme in response.
- Relevance over volume. With 73% of buyers avoiding suppliers that send irrelevant messages, a tight ICP and strict lead criteria are protection for your brand, not just for your budget.
- Be known before the buying starts. LinkedIn's B2B Institute and Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute estimate that only about 5% of B2B buyers are in-market at any moment.4 Content syndication and consistent presence with the other 95% is how you end up on a Day 1 shortlist.
- Reach the buying group, not one contact. If a decision involves 13 internal stakeholders, a single-contact lead is a thin thread. Programmes should aim for several relevant contacts per target account.
- Give buyers something worth a conversation. Calls and emails should offer a perspective the buyer can't get from a search engine or an AI summary, and should match what your website says.
- Ask where the buyer is. Custom qualifying questions about evaluation stage, shortlist and timeline tell your sales team whether they are early or arriving to compete for second place.
A note on the evidence
Each study has limits. The 6sense research comes from a company that sells buyer-intelligence software, and its respondents lean towards technology and services firms with $10 million to $500 million in revenue. Gartner's fieldwork predates the current year. Forrester's press summary does not state its sample size. The findings are consistent with each other, which is encouraging, but they describe averages, and your market may behave differently.