For much of B2B history, sellers played a major role in establishing both trust and vendor preference, because buyers depended on Sales for product information, expertise, comparisons and answers they could not easily obtain elsewhere. Digital self-service changed that relationship, and AI-assisted research is accelerating the change further.
Buyers can now investigate categories, compare potential suppliers, examine experts, read customer evidence, consult peers and analysts, and use AI to organise what they learn, all without becoming visible to the vendor. The first meaningful sales conversation therefore increasingly happens after the buyer has already formed an initial view of the market and the vendors within it.
The evidence is substantial. In the 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, 94% of buyers said they had ordered their shortlist by preference before engaging with sellers, and the vendor ranked first at the end of that pre-contact selection phase went on to win 77% of the time.
Direct Answer
Sales is not becoming unimportant. Its role is changing because a growing share of discovery, interpretation, shortlist formation and initial preference now happens before a seller is involved.
Buyers arrive at the first conversation with assumptions already in place about the category, the vendor, its experts, its evidence, its likely value and its potential risks. AI-assisted research influences the information buyers use to form those assumptions, although preference itself remains a buyer and buying-group outcome.
For Marketing, this expands the job beyond generating awareness and capturing leads: the company needs to become a vendor that buyers can discover, understand, seriously consider and ideally favour before their intent becomes visible at all. For Sales, the challenge shifts toward validating, contextualising and strengthening a preference that may already exist, or changing one that currently favours somebody else.
Key takeaways
- Buyers often develop shortlists and vendor preferences before engaging directly with sellers.
- Observable engagement can reveal an existing preference rather than create it.
- Earlier seller contact does not necessarily mean Sales influenced the buyer earlier.
- AI-assisted research gives buyers another way to investigate and compare suppliers before direct engagement.
- Marketing increasingly carries responsibility for shortlist inclusion and early preference, not only lead generation.
Buyers are not arriving at Sales as blank slates
The traditional demand-generation model creates a misleading picture of when competition begins. In CRM, a buying process becomes meaningful only when the company can see it: someone submits a form, requests a demo, sends a direct message, contacts a salesperson, or makes an account identifiable.
From the buyer’s perspective, that moment can occur much later. Before making themselves visible, buyers may already have defined the problem, researched alternative approaches, investigated vendors, compared evidence, discussed options internally and developed a preliminary ranking.
This is not only a 6sense interpretation. Forrester’s 2026 Buyers’ Journey research found that 68% of B2B buyers enter a formal buying process with a preferred vendor already in mind, and that 80% of those buyers ultimately choose that vendor. Forrester estimates that roughly 55% of purchases in its research are effectively won before vendors get a conventional opportunity to compete.
That changes how Marketing should interpret visible intent. A website visit, a comparison-page session or a meeting request is certainly an opportunity to influence a buyer, but it may equally be evidence of an influence process that has already been running for months. Intent, in other words, can be the consequence of preference rather than its beginning.
The first sales meeting is no longer the beginning of the buying journey
The distinction becomes particularly visible in 6sense’s research. Its 2025 study, based on nearly 4,000 buyers across North America, EMEA and APAC, found that buyers contacted sellers an average of 61% of the way through the buying journey – earlier than in previous years, when first contact occurred at roughly 69% of the journey, which represents about six to seven weeks of earlier engagement.
The point is not that 61% of every B2B journey happens without Sales. It is that in this specific large-sample study, meaningful seller engagement still followed a substantial period of buyer-led activity. Earlier contact also did not eliminate prior preference: the same research found that 94% of buyers ranked their shortlist before engaging with sellers.
That gives us a strategic distinction worth holding onto. Earlier engagement does not necessarily mean earlier influence, because a buyer can contact Sales sooner while still arriving with a shortlist and a preliminary preference already formed. One factor behind the earlier contact was uncertainty around AI implementation: 58% of buyers in a supplemental 6sense study said that uncertainty caused them to engage vendor representatives sooner than they otherwise would have.
Day One can matter more than the day the lead appears
The most striking 6sense finding concerns the shortlist itself. In its 2025 study, buyers evaluated an average of 5.1 vendors and already had 3.6 of them on their shortlist on Day One of the buying journey. More significantly, buyers ultimately chose a supplier from that Day-One shortlist 95% of the time.
None of this means vendor selection is predetermined from the first day, but it does mean early consideration carries enormous commercial value. A company absent from the initial mental set of credible options faces a harder problem than persuading the buyer to prefer it, because it first has to become considered at all.
For CMOs, that shifts the question away from how to generate more opportunities and toward something more uncomfortable: when buyers begin investigating our category, are we already one of the organisations they consider credible enough to investigate further? That question comes before lead generation.
The old and emerging preference model
| Dimension | Sales-created trust and preference model | Preference built before Sales |
| Beginning of commercial influence | First campaign response or seller engagement | Often before the vendor can observe the buying process |
| Marketing’s primary role | Awareness, demand and lead generation | Discovery, consideration, shortlist inclusion, preference and demand |
| Buyer at first meeting | Relatively open to vendor education | May already have extensive research and a preliminary ranking |
| Shortlist formation | Significantly shaped during seller engagement | Often substantially developed beforehand |
| Role of AI | Limited | Additional research, comparison and synthesis layer |
| Website role | Educate and convert | Help buyers independently evaluate fit before contact |
| Expert content | Supporting marketing asset | Potential input into early trust and preference |
| Customer evidence | Primarily later-stage validation | Can influence consideration and preference earlier |
| Seller role | Educate and persuade | Contextualise, challenge, validate and reduce uncertainty |
| Key Marketing signal | Lead / MQL / opportunity | Consideration, preference and high-intent engagement |
The shift does not invalidate pipeline measurement. It shows why pipeline alone cannot tell Marketing when the competitive advantage was created.
Engagement can reveal preference rather than create it
This is perhaps the most important distinction in the whole transformation. 6sense examined whether speaking with a vendor first might itself be the reason that vendor won, and its research suggests otherwise.
In 2025, 94% of buyers said they had already ranked their shortlist before engaging with sellers, and the Selection Phase favourite became the ultimate winner 77% of the time. Among the small minority who had not ranked their shortlist before seller contact, the first vendor contacted won only 57% of the time.
6sense’s conclusion is especially relevant for CMOs: being contacted first looks more like an indicator of prior preference than the cause of it. Visible intent may therefore reflect market influence that has already happened, rather than marking the point at which influence begins.
How Marketing and Sales responsibilities change
A marketing organisation can generate strong pipeline while entering important opportunities from a weak competitive position. Another company can generate fewer visible enquiries but enter more of those conversations as the supplier buyers already favour. Lead volume measures how much observable demand arrives; it says nothing about the company’s competitive position at the moment that demand becomes observable.
This is why Marketing needs to think beyond demand capture. Before a buyer talks to Sales, they should be able to determine what problems the company is genuinely qualified to solve, which categories or approaches it represents, what makes its approach relevant or different, which experts stand behind its expertise, what evidence supports its important claims, which customers demonstrate relevant experience, what implementation involves, what risks should be considered, and where the company may not be a fit at all.
The objective is not to conduct the entire sale without Sales. It is to ensure that the information environment before Sales does enough work to earn serious consideration and preference.
Sales adds least when it repeats information, and most when it resolves uncertainty
The shift toward self-directed research does not make Sales obsolete, and current Gartner research suggests something more nuanced. In May 2026, Gartner reported that 67% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free buying experience, and that 45% had used AI during a recent purchase. Two months later, Gartner reported that 69% of B2B buyers preferred to validate AI-generated insights with a salesperson, with buyers in that study using an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase.
Gartner itself describes the seller’s role as shifting away from being the primary information source toward providing validation and confidence at important moments. That does not reduce Sales to a fact-checking function. Strong sellers still change the buyer’s thinking: they diagnose problems differently, challenge assumptions, introduce new evidence, navigate risk, involve missing stakeholders and help the buying group make sense of trade-offs. What a seller adds is limited mainly when the meeting repeats information the buyer could have obtained independently.
The higher-value questions sound different. Can this actually work in our environment? Which assumptions sit behind the ROI? What changes when this is deployed at our scale? What risks have other customers encountered? How would this integrate with our architecture? Why does your methodology differ from the alternative we are considering? What evidence should our CFO, Security team or board see? Those are validation and judgment questions rather than basic information questions.
Pre-contact preference is also not permanent. Sales can still strengthen or weaken the position inherited from the market, which is why the first conversation should validate and deepen the interpretation buyers already hold, or improve it with insight that was never available publicly.
Why early preference is a board issue
Early preference affects more than Marketing attribution; it affects the competitive position of the entire revenue engine. When buyers contact the company as their preferred supplier, Sales enters with one type of challenge – validate the choice and help the buying group move forward. When buyers contact the company as a second or third option, Sales enters with a much harder one: reverse an existing preference.
Forrester’s research makes the economic significance clear, with 68% of buyers entering the formal buying process with a preferred vendor in mind and 80% of those buyers eventually selecting that vendor.
Boards should therefore ask Marketing more than how much pipeline was generated. They should also ask whether the company is entering the right buyers’ initial consideration sets, whether buyers understand what it is good at before they make contact, which competitors are routinely preferred before opportunities appear, whether high-intent conversations begin with strong prior understanding or force Sales to re-explain the value, which market signals appear to create preference before intent becomes visible, and where that preference disappears during validation. Those questions connect market position with pipeline quality.
What should CMOs do before intent becomes visible?
Predicting every hidden buying process is unrealistic. A better objective is to improve the conditions under which future buyers form their preferences.
Start with a strategically important problem or offer and examine the buyer’s pre-engagement environment. Can buyers find the company when researching the problem rather than the brand? Do they come away knowing what expertise the organisation genuinely possesses, and which credible experts stand behind it? Is there specific customer evidence within reach? And can they understand how the company approaches the problem well enough to compare it with alternatives? Are the same capabilities visible across search, AI-assisted research, company content, experts and independent sources? And when the buyer eventually contacts Sales, does the conversation deliver something more valuable than what was already publicly available?
That is where Marketing and Sales increasingly connect. Marketing helps establish the conditions for preference; Sales helps determine whether that preference survives serious evaluation.
FAQ
Does this mean buyers no longer want to talk to Sales?
No.
Gartner’s research shows strong demand for self-directed buying, but also strong demand for seller involvement when buyers need contextual guidance and validation. In its 2026 study, 67% preferred a rep-free experience, while 69% preferred to validate AI-generated insights with a salesperson.
The implication is not “remove Sales.” It is to make seller interactions more valuable.
If preference forms before Sales, can Sales still change the outcome?
Yes.
In 6sense’s 2025 study, the vendor preferred before engagement ultimately won 77% of the time — a major advantage, but not a guarantee.
Pricing, risk, implementation, expertise, internal alignment and the quality of seller interaction can all affect the final decision.
Are buyers really engaging Sales later?
Not necessarily.
6sense actually found that buyers engaged sellers earlier in 2025 than in previous years, with average first contact shifting from roughly 69% to 61% of the buying journey.
The critical finding is that buyers still tended to rank vendors before that earlier contact.
Earlier engagement is therefore not the same as earlier influence.
Does AI create vendor preference?
Not by itself.
AI systems can help buyers discover suppliers, compare options, summarise evidence and structure research. But preference is ultimately formed by people and buying groups using many sources of information, experience and judgment.
The relevant Marketing question is how AI-assisted research changes the information buyers encounter while they are forming those views.
What matters now
The practical shift is from treating lead generation as the beginning of commercial influence to recognising that vendor preference can exist well before observable demand. The first seller conversation still matters; it simply tends to happen after the buyer has already made the first competitive judgment.
By that point buyers may already know the category, have formed a view of the likely vendors, assembled a shortlist and settled on a favourite – and AI-assisted research gives them another mechanism for gathering and comparing the information that shapes those decisions.
This is why the most important question for Marketing is no longer only how to capture buyers once they are in market, but how to become a credible and preferred option before anyone can see that they are in market.
HiFuture describes this first competitive challenge as Win Early Preference: becoming understood, seriously considered, shortlisted and preferred while much of the buying process remains self-directed and largely invisible to the vendor. Buyer-initiated engagement then becomes an important milestone rather than the beginning of influence, and the second challenge starts there, as Sales and Marketing help the buying group validate, strengthen and ultimately defend the choice.
The strategic implication for CMOs is straightforward. Marketing’s job is no longer complete when the buyer raises a hand, because by then the buyer may already have fought one of the most important competitive battles.
Next transformation: if preference often forms before Sales, the next question is what evidence makes one vendor credible. Continue with “From Brand Trust to Company, Expert and Third-Party Trust.”
Sources
Source note: Percentages are presented in the context of the cited studies. Study populations, definitions and methodologies differ and should not be combined into universal B2B benchmarks.
- 6sense, B2B Buyer Experience Report 2025
- Forrester, Get in pole position: how preference marketing builds a B2B competitive edge
- Forrester, Preference matters more than in-market intent alone in modern B2B buying
- Gartner, 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience
- Gartner, 69% of B2B buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights
