Most B2B marketing is built around a fiction. The fiction is this: a prospect becomes aware of a problem, searches for solutions, engages with your content, requests a demo, and then buys. The reality is considerably messier - and considerably more alarming for vendors who haven't adapted.
According to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report, which surveyed nearly 4,000 B2B buyers globally, the typical buying committee completes 61% of its journey before making first contact with a vendor. In the UK specifically, that figure is 57% - still well past the halfway mark before any sales conversation begins. They've already formed a shortlist. They've already identified a preferred vendor. They're not exploring - they're validating a decision they've already made.
This changes everything about how effective B2B marketing must work.
The numbers that should change how you market
The 6sense data isn't an outlier. It's the latest in a consistent body of research that has been pointing in the same direction for a decade. What's new in 2026 is the degree of shift, the role of AI in buyer research, and the compression of sales cycles that accompanies it.
Consider what that means in practice. If your brand isn't in a buyer's consideration set before they start formally evaluating vendors, you almost always won't win that deal - regardless of how good your product is or how skilled your sales team. The game is won in the 61% of the journey that happens before you're even aware the buyer exists.
Other data points reinforce this picture:
- Buyers consult an average of 11 pieces of content before reaching out to a vendor, and 72% begin their search online (Sopro, 2025)
- 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their buying process - AI tools are now a standard part of vendor research (6sense, 2025)
- 80% of buyer-seller conversations are buyer-initiated - buyers reach out when they're ready, not when sellers want them to (6sense, 2025)
- Only 17% of a buyer's total purchase journey is spent talking to sales reps - across all vendors combined, your individual share is less than 5% (Gartner)
- The average B2B sales cycle is now 10.1 months, down from 11.3 months in 2024 as economic pressures push buyers to move faster (6sense, 2025)
The B2B buyer journey is the process a buying committee undertakes from first recognising a business problem to selecting and purchasing a solution. In 2026, it consists of a largely invisible Selection Phase (where buyers research independently and build their shortlist) followed by a Validation Phase (where they confirm a decision already made).
The two phases of the modern buying journey
6sense's research describes the buying journey in terms of two distinct phases. Understanding the distinction is critical for allocating marketing investment correctly.
- Define the problem internally
- Research categories and solutions anonymously
- Consume content, reviews, peer recommendations
- Use AI tools (LLMs, AI search) to research vendors
- Build a shortlist of 4-5 vendors
- Identify a "Day One favourite"
- Set internal requirements and budget parameters
- Reach out to shortlisted vendors (buyer-initiated)
- Request demos and proposals
- Test assumptions built in Phase 1
- Manage internal stakeholder alignment
- Negotiate terms and commercial details
- Seek final confirmation of their pre-existing preference
- Obtain procurement and legal sign-off
The implication is stark: the vast majority of marketing investment must be allocated to Phase 1, the period before vendor contact. This is when mindshare is built, shortlists are formed, and preferences are established. Yet most B2B marketing functions are disproportionately optimised for Phase 2 - demos, lead capture, sales enablement - activities that only matter once a buyer has already chosen to engage.
"You are not losing deals in the negotiation. You are losing them six months earlier, in the research phase you never knew was happening."
Why buyers contact vendors earlier - but still on their own terms
One notable shift in 6sense's 2025 data: the point of first contact moved from 69% of the journey in 2024 to 61% in 2025 - buyers are reaching out roughly six to seven weeks sooner than the previous year. Economic uncertainty and AI-accelerated research appear to be compressing the timeline.
But this shouldn't be misread as an opportunity for more aggressive outbound. Buyers are moving faster through their independent research, not becoming more receptive to cold outreach. The vendor who wins is still almost always the one the buyer had already identified as their favourite - earlier contact simply means there's marginally more opportunity to influence the shortlist if you're already visible in the places buyers research.
Who is actually in the buying committee
The "buyer" in B2B is almost never a single person. For complex purchases - the kind that involve six-figure contracts, multi-year commitments, or significant operational change - the buying committee typically spans multiple functions, seniority levels, and often competing priorities.
According to 6sense (2025), the average buying committee for complex B2B solutions involves approximately 10 people. Demandbase data (2025) reports that 72% of B2B purchases involve high-complexity buying groups across IT, operations, finance, and end users. And 79% of purchases require CFO approval (TrustRadius, 2024).
These are the archetypal roles you need to understand and market to:
The critical strategic implication: each of these roles has different information needs, different concerns, and different preferred content formats. A whitepaper that resonates with the technical evaluator will almost always fail to engage the CFO. Effective B2B marketing produces content specifically mapped to each role - and platforms like LinkedIn allow you to target by job function, seniority, and company to reach each stakeholder type directly.
The generational shift in buying committees
The composition of buying committees is also changing generationally in ways that affect how you must show up. Millennials now account for 73% of all B2B buyers and 44% of final purchasing decision-makers (LinkedIn, 2025). Millennials and Gen Z combined represent over 70% of B2B buyers - a cohort that grew up researching everything online, trusts peer reviews over vendor claims, and has little patience for relationship-led sales processes that don't deliver information efficiently.
Younger decision-makers also involve nearly twice as many stakeholders (6.8) as older executives (3.5), meaning buying committees are growing larger and more complex even as the buyers within them become more digital-native. Millennial B2B decision-makers make purchasing decisions 41% faster than their Baby Boomer counterparts (Sopro, 2025) - speed and self-service are increasingly expected.
The dark funnel: where buying decisions are really made
The dark funnel refers to all the buyer activity that happens before a prospect is identifiable in your CRM - the research, conversations, and content consumption that leave no trackable footprint in your marketing analytics. This is where shortlists are formed and preferences are established.
Dark funnel activity includes private Slack communities and industry forums, peer conversations at conferences and events, anonymous Google searches, AI-powered research using tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, G2 and Trustpilot review reads, and LinkedIn posts consumed without any engagement. None of this is captured in your attribution models. All of it influences the outcome.
The practical response to the dark funnel isn't to try to track everything - it's to be consistently present in the channels where research happens, so that when a buying committee forms and starts shortlisting, your brand is already in their frame of reference. This means consistent LinkedIn presence, active participation in industry communities, strong G2 and review site profiles, and content that earns citations from AI tools when buyers ask questions about your category.
Intent data platforms like 6sense, Bombora, and Demandbase have emerged specifically to address this challenge - they aggregate anonymous research signals across the web to identify accounts showing in-market behaviour even before those accounts have raised their hand. For B2B marketers serious about engaging buyers in Phase 1, intent data is increasingly essential infrastructure rather than an optional enhancement.
What this means for your marketing strategy
Understanding how buying committees actually buy leads to specific, actionable changes in how B2B marketing should be structured and resourced.
1. Invest heavily in Phase 1 visibility
The majority of your marketing budget should be directed at building brand presence and authority before buyers are in-market. This means always-on content, thought leadership, SEO and answer engine optimisation, and consistent paid social to ensure your brand is in the frame when a buying committee starts forming its shortlist. Campaigns that only activate when a lead appears in your CRM are already too late for most deals.
2. Create content for every role in the committee
Map your content to each buying committee role, not just to funnel stages. The technical evaluator needs implementation guides and integration documentation. The CFO needs ROI frameworks and risk analysis. The end user needs product walkthroughs and customer stories. Each role will encounter your content at different points in their research - and content that speaks to the wrong person will simply be ignored.
3. Make your brand easy to find in AI search
With 94% of B2B buyers now using LLMs during their research, appearing in AI-generated answers is no longer optional for brands serious about Phase 1 visibility. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) are the emerging disciplines that determine whether your brand gets cited when a buyer asks an AI tool about solutions in your category.
4. Don't waste budget chasing buyers who haven't entered Phase 1
Not every account in your total addressable market is in-market right now. Intent data lets you identify the accounts showing active research signals - and concentrate your most expensive marketing activities (direct outreach, field events, 1:1 ABM) on the accounts most likely to be in a buying cycle. Treating all accounts equally is one of the most common sources of wasted B2B marketing spend.
5. Equip buyers to sell internally on your behalf
Even when your champion is convinced, deals die in committee. Finance pushes back. IT raises integration concerns. A director who wasn't involved in the evaluation process objects to the price. Buyer enablement content - ROI calculators, business case templates, procurement FAQs, security documentation - gives your champion the tools they need to manage internal objections without requiring a sales rep in every conversation.
Which channels reach buyers at which stage
The most common channel planning mistake in B2B is applying the same channels to the full buyer journey. Different channels reach buyers at different stages — and investing heavily in conversion channels while underinvesting in awareness channels produces a programme that harvests existing demand without creating new demand.
(dark funnel)
(partially visible)
(increasingly visible)
(visible)
Content that moves buyers at each stage
Most B2B content programmes produce a large volume of content that is vaguely useful to someone at some stage, and a small volume of genuinely high-impact content that moves specific buyers through specific stages. The distinction matters enormously for resource allocation.
Content that names the problem your ICP has before they know they have it. "How B2B Marketing Has Changed" is better than "Why You Need a Demand Gen Agency." Point of view content from your founders or leadership that signals a distinctive way of thinking about the category. LinkedIn posts that get shared because they articulate something buyers feel but haven't said out loud.
The guides, frameworks, and explainer content that answers the questions buyers are actively searching — and asking AI tools. "What is ABM and is it right for my business?" "How do I choose an attribution model?" This content needs to be ungated, structured for AI citation (FAQPage schema, clear H2 questions, concise answers), and comprehensive enough to be genuinely useful.
Case studies with specific outcomes from recognisable company types. Not "a fintech company saw 40% improvement" — "a Series B UK fintech with 120 employees targeting CFOs saw a 41% reduction in cost per SQL from integrating Bombora intent data with LinkedIn targeting." Specificity is credibility. ROI calculators, comparison guides, and reference customer programmes belong here.
Implementation guides that reduce fear of disruption. CFO and board-level briefing content that makes the business case. Procurement-friendly commercial information. Reference call facilitation. The content that the champion uses to sell internally — which is where most B2B deals are actually won or lost, in the internal meeting you're not in.
What the buying committee means for your marketing programme
If an average B2B buying committee has 7-10 members across different functions, and each member has a different set of concerns, then a programme that produces one type of content for one type of stakeholder is leaving most of the committee unaddressed. These are the implications for programme design.
The CISO (technical buyer) needs technical validation and security architecture detail. The CFO needs ROI modelling and payback period. The Head of IT needs implementation timelines and resource requirements. The CEO or MD needs strategic rationale and peer company examples. Most B2B content programmes produce excellent technical content and weak commercial buyer content. The CFO is blocking more deals than the technical buyer.
The champion knows about you. The CFO, legal, and procurement team often don't — until they're already in the deal and evaluating risk. LinkedIn always-on advertising to buying committee role types at your target accounts ensures the full committee has at least seen your brand before the internal evaluation begins. This shortens the evaluation phase and reduces the chance of a late-stage stakeholder derailing a deal they weren't prepared for.
The single most predictive factor in deal progression is the number of engaged contacts across different functions at the account. An opportunity with 4+ engaged contacts from different departments closes at 3-4× the rate of a single-threaded deal. Marketing's job is to create pre-engagement across committee roles before the sales cycle begins, and to enable sales with role-specific content during it.
Want to build a programme designed around the modern buying journey? Our demand generation and ABM programmes are structured around the reality of how committees actually buy — not the simplified funnel model.
Explore Demand Generation →- B2B buyers complete 61% of their journey before first contacting a vendor - and the vendor they contact first almost always wins the deal (6sense, 2025)
- The buying journey has two phases: a largely invisible Selection Phase where shortlists form, and a Validation Phase where buyers confirm a decision already made
- Typical B2B buying committees involve ~10 people across multiple functions - each with different information needs, priorities, and content preferences
- The dark funnel - peer conversations, AI research, anonymous browsing - is where most buying decisions are shaped, and none of it appears in your marketing analytics
- Millennials now make up 73% of B2B buyers and make decisions 41% faster than Boomers, raising expectations for digital self-service and content quality
- The strategic response is to invest in Phase 1 brand-building, create role-specific content, optimise for AI search, and use intent data to identify in-market accounts early
Our Account-Based Marketing programmes are designed specifically for the Phase 1 buyer journey - building brand presence and intent signals in your target accounts before they're ready to talk to sales.
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