Your B2B buyers have decided before they call. What that means for business development

Most sales teams still behave as if the deal starts when a prospect gets in touch. The research says otherwise. By the time a B2B buyer contacts you, they have usually made up their mind.

6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report, based on more than 4,000 buyers across North America, EMEA and APAC, found that 94% of buying groups had ranked their preferred vendors before first contact. The vendor they favoured at that point went on to win around 80% of deals. Buying cycles also got shorter, from roughly 11 months to 10.

AI is accelerating this. The same research found the vast majority of buyers now use large language models to summarise reviews and compare options, which means much of the shortlisting happens without you in the room.

Most of your market isn’t buying right now

There’s a second piece of the puzzle. The LinkedIn B2B Institute and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s 95-5 rule suggests that at any given time only around 5% of potential buyers are actively in market. The other 95% will buy eventually, and the brands they remember when that moment comes are the ones most likely to make the shortlist.

What good business development looks like now

• Be known before you’re needed. Consistent, useful content, visible founders and a clear point of view keep you in the memory of the 95% who aren’t buying yet.

• Make your expertise easy to find and easy to summarise. Clear service pages, transparent pricing and specific case studies are what buyers (and the AI tools they use) pick up during research.

• Use partnerships to borrow trust. Being recommended by a partner, featured at an event or mentioned by a respected name puts you on shortlists you’d never reach through cold outreach.

• Make outreach genuinely relevant. Cold outreach still works when it’s specific, timely and useful, and much less when it’s volume for volume’s sake.

• Treat the first call as confirmation, not persuasion. If most buyers arrive with a favourite in mind, your job is to be that favourite before the call, and then make the decision easy.

This is why we think business development and marketing belong together. The work that gets you remembered and the work that gets you hired are now the same work, just at different moments in the buyer’s journey.

Here’s how we run business development for clients: researched target lists, outreach written for each person, introductions and a monthly pipeline report, with nothing sent until you approve it.