Buyers pick a supplier before they speak to one.

Gartner asked 750 B2B buyers in 2017 how they spent their time on a recent purchase. Meetings with potential suppliers took 17% of it. Independent research online took 27%, meetings inside the buying group 22%, research offline 18%, and other work the remaining 16%. When a buyer compares several suppliers, Gartner estimates that any one sales team gets 5 to 6% of the buyer's time.

Seven years later, 6sense surveyed 2,509 recent B2B buyers. On average they were 69% of the way through the purchase before they spoke to any seller. When they did, 81% already had a preferred vendor and 85% had largely set their requirements. The buyer made the first contact in more than 80% of purchases.

What it means for a company that grew on referrals

A referral reaches the buyer before the shortlist exists, which is why referrals convert so well. Every other buyer builds the shortlist alone, from search results, AI answers, directories, trade press and colleagues. A supplier that doesn't appear in those places isn't on the list, and is rarely told that a purchase took place.

Because most of the deciding happens before the first call, sales effort after the first call can't reach it. A company can influence what the buyer finds in the first 69%: whether its capabilities are described in the terms buyers search for, whether its name appears where engineers and procurement teams look, and whether someone contacts the account during the months it is choosing a supplier.

Limits

Both surveys come from companies that sell to sales and marketing teams, and both lean toward technology purchases. Industrial buying has longer qualification cycles and more repeat purchasing. We use the figures for the direction they show, which is the same in both surveys, more than for the exact percentages.