Buyers are engaging with vendors sooner, but not for the reasons you may think. Here’s what’s really driving it

The 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report was released at 6sense’s Breakthrough customer conference, and there are some important findings vendors should know as they look to generative AI to help them get on the radar of prospective buyers.

The report provides an annual overview of how the buyer journey is evolving and the factors that may be driving change. 

The decision-making process hasn’t changed - mostly

In the past two reports (here’s a summary of the 2023 report), it was found that there are two main phases of the buyer journey: the selection phase, where buyers spend the bulk of their time researching and building their shortlist, and the validation phase, where buyers validate the shortlist and select a winner. The entire process took about eleven months.

A year later, what’s changed? Well, the buyer journey is now about a month shorter, but more importantly, buyers are engaging with vendors sooner in the process. The selection phase now accounts for approximately 61% of the time, down from the typical 70%, while validation accounts for 39%.

It’s an important change, and at first, Cunningham said they were initially shocked because they had been saying that 70% was a constant. But once they started digging deeper into the data (and conducting follow-up studies), the reasons boiled down to two things: genAI and economic uncertainty. 

But before you think ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Co-pilot, and all are taking over the bulk of the research and making the entire process faster, there are a few things you need to know.

Two factors driving a shorter selection phase

As to why the selection phase is shorter, 6sense isolates two factors. First, buyers now have to evaluate AI capabilities in the technology, something they weren’t doing before. 62% of buying groups were mandated or strongly encouraged to include AI features in the tools they purchased (e.g., automation, personalization, predictive analytics). And 89% of the purchased solutions did have AI capabilities.

Because they needed to evaluate for AI, 44% engaged earlier because they needed information, and the vendor websites did not provide it to the degree they needed. Cunningham said they conducted a research project using ChatGPT that examined the AI capabilities of 100 vendors, and the information gathered was very vague.

All this raises a highly-uncomfortable question - buyers even knew what to evaluate?. 

Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense, sees the critical factors here as being what AI capabilities are in the tool, how much they cost, and how do those capabilities compare with competitors? Other, more specific questions focused on data, privacy, and security, as well as how models are trained and data is stored. 

Another factor is the continuing economic uncertainty. Everyone wants to make a decision faster, fearing they will lose their budget, or wanting to get to the results that the new product is supposed to bring. The study asked buyers if they skipped steps in the buying process if they felt like they had the right vendor, and 40% said yes

According to Cunningham : 

They're making quicker decisions, but they're, by nature, more conservative decisions. They're probably less concerned about the best solution and more concerned about one that's not going to get them in trouble afterward if it doesn't go well.

Cunningham argues that while buyers may be in a hurry,vthey also know they can’t mess the decision up. Which is why the decision is still determined in the selection phase.

When buyers shortlist, they are selecting vendors they already know, and 94% put the shortlist in order of preference. Last year, Cunningham said buyers were asked if they had personal experiences with vendors on the shortlist, and 95% said yes. This year, they went deeper.

Seventy-five percent of buyers know shortlisted vendors from previous experience, meaning they have either evaluated and bought or evaluated and not bought the vendor’s tool before. The decision has become much more conservative as the economy gets worse.

Buyers were also asked how many times they had been involved in buying decisions for a tool in the same category before (specifically, the one they talked about in this study). The median answer was eight times. The average age of buyers is around 40, and they have been in their careers for almost twenty years, which means they’ve been involved in a buying process every other year in their careers. Cunningham says: 

That's one of the things everybody has to keep in mind. People go out and market all the time. Hey, you know, let's get a new one of these. Let's do that. And they look around for three months or six months or something. And then leadership changes, budget goes away, something happens, and they don't [buy]. They revisit the next year and they revisit the next year. 6sense has an average of eight opportunities that are open for an account before we close it. So this is where companies are tracking that. I think that's roughly what they're going to see is that anytime they get a sale, it's not their first attempt to get it, and that's because buyers are going out and starting and stopping buying journeys all the time. But what that means is your buyer has been down this road a whole bunch of times.

How are buyers using LLMs?

If buyers aren’t using LLMs to find prospective vendors, what are they using them for? According to the study, it is more commonly used in the middle of the buyer journey, leading to a decrease in the use of analysts and consultants.

Over half of buyers (51%) said they would augment analysts and consultants with LLMs, and 28% said they would replace them with LLMs at some point in the future. However, this year, buyers are relying on them more, likely due to the AI component.

The most common use cases for LLMs fall into two categories: synthesizing and summarizing information, and generating new information. For example, buyers use LLMs to compare vendor offerings, analyze reviews and testimonials, create RFP documents, and simulate total cost of ownership.

Get shortlisted today, if you want to get shortlisted next time

There’s an important point here: buyers put vendors they know on the shortlist on day one. Cunningham explained that they aren’t relying on Google or ChatGPT to create that shortlist, so the idea that vendors are losing out because buyers aren’t visiting their websites is inaccurate. That’s not how the buyer journey works. They go to a vendor’s website because they already know who the vendor is.

The website will remain a valuable asset for B2B brands for some time, Cunningham said, but they will need to evolve. “How can you simulate what it’s like to be a customer? How can you provide an enriched experience that they’re not going to go somewhere else?”

If a buyer isn’t in-market for a solution, they aren’t visiting your website. However, part of their job is to stay up-to-date with vendors and technologies related to their work. To do that, they are using LLMs, and that’s why it's so important to get listed in them. If your brand and products aren’t being mentioned by LLMs, you may never be considered for a shortlist in the future.

But if you are a new vendor or it’s a new market, you have an uphill battle and a different set of considerations, warns Cunningham: 

If you're a brand new brand, you should be looking at intent signals to understand whether an account is in market. They're probably not engaging with you, and you're going to have to go beat on their door like crazy to get some attention anyway. And you know it's a low success rate activity, but everybody in B2B who's in a new company knows that's what's happening. And if you've got some really better mousetrap trap, then you'll win some of those deals.

For both new and incumbent vendors, there’s a clear message: do everything you can to get on the consideration set now, even though you have a slim chance of winning, because that’s how you will get on it next time.

My take

There is a lot of confusion and noise about the role GenAI and LLMs are playing in the buying process. For B2B brands that think they need to get found in LLMs to get on a buyer’s shortlist, they may want to think again. LLMs do play a role, but it’s a supporting role partway through the buyer journey.

The shift to earlier engagement with vendors means buyers are under pressure and need answers faster - answers they aren’t getting from vendor websites. If a vendor wants to get to the top of that shortlist, they need to design a website experience that engages the buyer and clearly explains why they are the best choice.

But the real takeaway is that getting on a shortlist is impossible if the buyer doesn’t know you. Vendors need to get on a buyer’s radar long before the buying journey begins, and that requires not just getting found in LLMs but becoming a trusted resource for buyers all the time, so that when they are ready, maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll add you to their list.