B2B sales
How B2B Buying Has Changed, and What That Means for Getting In Front of Decision-Makers
Buyers now complete most of their journey without a sales rep. Understanding what changed, and why, reveals where the real opportunity still exists.
The number that reframes everything
Gartner’s research on the B2B purchase journey surfaces a figure that should change how any sales or go-to-market team thinks about reaching buyers: B2B buyers spend just 17% of their total purchase journey meeting with potential suppliers. When a buyer is comparing multiple suppliers, which is most of the time, each individual vendor gets roughly 5 to 6% of total buying time.
The rest of the journey, the other 83%, happens without you. Buyers research independently online, consult peers, build their own internal case, and evaluate shortlisted options in internal meetings you are not part of. By the time they contact you, they have already formed an impression. Often, a shortlist.
This is not a temporary shift. Gartner’s annual surveys show the trend accelerating year over year: in 2025, 67% of B2B buyers told Gartner they preferred to complete a purchase without involving a sales rep at all, up from 61% the year before.
What drove this change
Three forces converged. First, information became freely available. For most of the history of B2B sales, buyers needed sales reps to understand what a product could do, what it cost, and how it compared to alternatives. That information asymmetry is largely gone. Product documentation, pricing guides, third-party reviews, comparison sites, and peer communities cover most of what a buyer wants to know before they ever talk to a vendor. The sales call used to be the only place to get the information. Now it is one of the last places buyers go to get it.
Second, buyers became more sophisticated. The professionals making or influencing B2B purchasing decisions today grew up in an environment of always-available information. They expect to research independently, form their own views, and control the pace of the decision. Being contacted by a sales rep who wants to run a discovery call before the buyer is ready feels like friction, not help.
Third, outreach volume increased to the point where avoidance became rational. As inboxes filled with cold sequences and LinkedIn became a prospecting channel, buyers developed strong filters. Blocking, ignoring, and deleting unsolicited vendor contact is no longer cynicism; it is a reasonable response to the volume. The signal-to-noise ratio of cold outreach has declined so far that treating all of it as noise is often the sensible default.
The committee problem
The second structural change is who makes the decision. Gartner’s research finds that a typical B2B buying group involves 6 to 10 stakeholders, and for complex enterprise solutions the average has reached 11. Each of those stakeholders brings their own research (typically 4 to 5 pieces of independent material gathered before the group even converges) and their own priorities.
The consequence is that reaching the right single person is no longer sufficient. Even if you earn a meeting with the most receptive stakeholder, they still have to persuade the rest of the group. Gartner finds that 74% of buying teams experience significant internal conflict during the decision process, and that each additional stakeholder reduces the probability of a completed purchase by roughly 10 percentage points. More people involved means harder consensus, slower decisions, and more ways for a deal to stall or die.
For sellers, this means the work of a warm introduction now involves more than getting in front of one person. It means reaching the right person, ideally the economic buyer or a well-positioned internal champion, in a way that gives them enough credibility to advocate for you with the rest of the committee.
What still earns face time
In this environment, the fundamental question for any seller is: how do you get in front of a decision-maker who is actively avoiding unsolicited contact, doing most of their research independently, and will ultimately share the decision with 6 to 10 colleagues?
The answer is not more outreach. More volume into a shrinking receptivity window produces declining returns, exactly what the data shows. The answer is trust at the point of first contact.
A trusted introduction does something cold outreach structurally cannot: it borrows credibility from a relationship the buyer already values. When someone the buyer trusts (a former colleague, a respected peer, an advisor they have worked with) says "you should meet this person," the introduction arrives in the 17% of buying time the buyer has agreed to spend with suppliers. It has already passed the filter that keeps everything else out.
The introductions that land best are human and specific: they explain why this connection matters, why the timing is right, and what the buyer stands to learn from the conversation. They do not pitch. They connect. The selling comes after the introduction; the introduction is what earns the conversation.
The scarcity the shift creates
The same shift that makes cold outreach less effective makes trusted introductions more valuable. When buyers are doing 83% of their journey alone, the moments when they do agree to meet a supplier are scarce and deliberately chosen. A business that can reliably earn those meetings, not by being louder, but by arriving through a trusted channel, has a structural advantage over competitors who are still competing on outreach volume.
For the people who can make introductions, the connectors sitting between the two parties, the same dynamic creates real value. Every network contains hidden paths between people who need to meet and decision-makers who would benefit from the conversation. Finding those paths, and making the introduction thoughtfully, is worth something precisely because the alternative is so much harder for everyone.
What this means in practice
For businesses trying to reach decision-makers, the strategic implication is to invest in channels that arrive with trust rather than channels that fight for attention. Referral programs, connector networks, and warm introduction workflows are not a soft alternative to "real" sales; they are increasingly the only channel that reaches a self-directed buyer before the shortlist closes.
For sales teams, it means mapping the connector network around key accounts: who in your existing relationships knows the people you need to meet? Who has enough credibility with the buyer to make an introduction the buyer would actually take? That mapping, done before the outreach rather than after it fails, is what distinguishes the teams that keep earning meetings as the environment gets harder.
The shift in B2B buying is not a problem to be solved with a new outreach tool or a higher volume cadence. It is a structural change in buyer behaviour that rewards a different kind of sales motion: one built on relationships and trust rather than reach and persistence.
The LetsBridge connection
LetsBridge is built for this environment. When a business specifies the decision-makers it wants to reach, LetsBridge identifies the real-world connectors who have genuine relationships with those people, and who are willing to make a credible introduction. The result is access through the 17% window that buyers have kept open, arrived through a channel buyers have not closed.
For connectors, the same platform surfaces the situations where an introduction from their network is genuinely useful, and compensates them for making it well. The introduction stays human and specific; the matching is what becomes systematic.
As buyers become more self-directed, the value of the right introduction only increases. LetsBridge is designed to make that introduction findable, at scale, for both sides.
FAQ
B2B buying changes: FAQs
How has B2B buying changed in recent years?
Three shifts define the change. First, buyers do far more of the journey on their own: Gartner research finds that B2B buyers spend only 17% of their total purchase time meeting with potential suppliers; the rest is independent research, internal discussion, and evaluation with colleagues. Second, the committee has grown: a typical buying group now involves 6 to 10 stakeholders, and in complex enterprise deals the group can reach 11 or more. Third, buyers actively avoid sales reps: a Gartner survey of 646 B2B buyers in 2025 found that 67% say they prefer a rep-free purchasing experience. Taken together, these shifts mean traditional outreach-heavy selling reaches fewer people at lower receptivity than it once did.
What does "rep-free buying" mean?
Rep-free buying means completing a purchase (or getting close to a purchase decision) without involving a vendor’s sales representative. Buyers do this by researching independently online, reading case studies and peer reviews, attending vendor webinars on their own schedule, and comparing options internally before ever picking up the phone. Gartner’s 2025 survey found 67% of B2B buyers prefer this experience. The implication is that by the time many buyers do contact a supplier, they have already formed a shortlist, and unsolicited cold outreach from suppliers who are not on that list tends to arrive too late, at the wrong moment, to people who did not ask for it.
Why do buying groups make B2B sales harder?
A buying group means that no single person controls the decision. When 6 to 10 stakeholders, or more, each bring independent research and different priorities, consensus is genuinely difficult: Gartner finds that 74% of buying teams experience unhealthy internal conflict, and each additional stakeholder reduces the probability of a completed purchase by roughly 10 percentage points. For sellers, this means reaching one receptive contact is rarely enough. The contact still has to persuade the rest of the group. A warm introduction to the right person (ideally the economic buyer or the internal champion) changes this equation, because it starts the relationship with a credibility transfer that cold outreach cannot replicate.
If buyers are doing their own research, why does a warm introduction still matter?
Because research does not require a meeting, but a meeting still has to be earned. Buyers are doing more of their evaluation independently, which means when they do agree to meet a supplier, that time is valuable and deliberately chosen. A trusted introduction from someone the buyer already knows is one of the few reliable ways to earn that meeting at an early stage, before the buyer has already decided. It bypasses the filter that keeps cold outreach out, not by being louder, but by arriving through a channel the buyer has already decided to trust.
What is a buying group in B2B?
A buying group (or buying committee) is the set of people inside an organisation who are involved in a significant purchasing decision. Gartner research puts the typical size at 6 to 10 for most complex B2B solutions, rising to an average of 11 for the largest enterprise deals. The group usually includes the economic buyer (budget authority), technical evaluators, end users, procurement, legal, and one or more internal champions who drive the process forward. Knowing which member of the group is most influential, and reaching that person through a trusted connection, is often more efficient than trying to work through the entire committee from a cold start.
Reach decision-makers through trust, not noise
LetsBridge connects businesses with the decision-makers they want to meet, through connectors who have genuine relationships with them. Whether you need an introduction or are positioned to make one, the platform finds the path.