What the research shows

6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report asked nearly 4,000 B2B buyers about purchases they had already completed. The headline figures:

  • 94% of buying groups ranked their shortlist before contacting a vendor.
  • Buyers chose from their day-one shortlist 95% of the time.
  • First contact came about 61% of the way through the buying journey.
  • The vendor contacted first won about 8 deals in 10.
  • The average buying cycle ran 10.1 months, with 5.1 vendors evaluated.
  • Buyers started 79% of their conversations with vendors themselves.

Forrester's 2024 Buyers' Journey Survey points the same way: 92% of B2B buyers start with at least one vendor in mind, and 41% already have a single preferred vendor before formal evaluation begins.

Gartner adds the attitude behind those numbers. In a survey of 646 B2B buyers, fielded in August and September 2025, 67% said they prefer a buying experience free of sales reps.

Consumers shortlist too

Considered consumer purchases follow the same pattern. Insurance, a renovation, a private clinic, a course: people compare and narrow the field long before they call anyone.

In an April 2026 survey of 1,009 US consumers by Exploding Topics, 77.6% had used AI to shop in the past six months, and 68.5% of them used it mainly for product research. The shortlist now gets built in a chat window as often as in a search bar.

What happens during the private stretch

Research rarely follows a tidy funnel. A buyer notices a problem, opens a dozen tabs, asks two former colleagues, reads a forum thread and puts three names in a document.

In B2B the circle is wide. Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026 puts a typical decision at 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers. You will meet one or two of them. The rest form an opinion from whatever they find.

So the stretch that decides the outcome is the one your analytics shows as silence. Every form fill you can measure arrives after it.

What this changes

Presence beats persuasion

Persuasion needs a conversation, and the shortlist stretch happens before any conversation starts. What works during it is memory: whether your name comes to mind when somebody starts thinking about the problem.

Findability decides the list

Buyers gather names from search, peers, communities and AI assistants. 6sense found 94% of buyers using large language models somewhere in the process. Whatever is missing from those places is missing from the list.

Late spend arrives after the decision

Budget aimed only at buyers who are already in market competes for a list that is usually written. The same budget spent earlier shapes which names get written down.

What to do about it

  1. Answer the questions buyers ask in month one, more clearly than anyone else. Give each answer its own page.
  2. Publish enough about price, timelines and fit for a buyer to rule you in. Buyers filter on cost either way, so give them the facts.
  3. Write for the whole buying group. The person who found you has to sell you internally on their own, and the security reviewer, the finance approver and the person who runs the rollout each need a page that answers their question.
  4. Show up where peers talk: the communities, newsletters and podcasts your buyers finish.
  5. Make your pages easy for AI assistants to quote: clean definitions, direct answers, numbers with named sources.
  6. Ask every new enquiry what they read or heard before getting in touch, and log the answer word for word.

Fix the product before you draw attention

Being memorable speeds up a bad outcome as efficiently as a good one. When a message promises more than the onboarding delivers, demo requests can rise while win rate falls, because more people look closely and decline faster. Make sure what buyers find holds up, then turn up the volume.

How to measure the private stretch

Last-click attribution misses most of this, so watch the places where private research leaks into your data.

  • Branded search volume. People who remember you look you up by name.
  • Direct traffic to deep pages such as pricing or comparisons.
  • Self-reported source: the answer to "what did you read before you contacted us?"
  • The share of new enquiries that name something you published.

Where the pattern is weaker

  • Very small, known markets. When you can name every buyer, direct relationships do the work.
  • Brand new categories. Buyers have to learn the problem exists before they can research it.
  • Quick, low-cost purchases decided on the spot, such as most walk-in retail and restaurants.