2026 B2B Demand Research Shows Buyers Want Less Sales Messaging And More Evidence

The latest B2B buyer research makes one thing clear: buyers want less sales messaging, more evidence, and marketing that helps prove the case. The core thesis is simple: B2B marketing must help buyers build conviction before they speak with sales.

Gartner reported in March that 67% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free experience. By May, Gartner reported that 70% preferred a completely digital, self-service buying experience. Buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase, while 45% used generative AI as part of the process. Together, these changes show buyers are doing more of the evaluation themselves, so marketing must do more of the selling.

For much of B2B history, marketing created interest, and sales provided information. Now buyers can gather extraordinary amounts of information before sales knows the opportunity exists. As a result, marketing has to do far more of the selling than ever before.

Buyers Are Building Their Case Before They Talk To You

6sense has spent several years studying how B2B buying groups actually move through purchasing decisions. Its 2026 research describes an average buying journey lasting more than ten months, with roughly six months spent in a largely anonymous selection phase. Buying groups average close to ten people, which reinforces how much of the decision happens before sellers are involved.

During that first phase, buyers research the market, establish requirements, identify vendors, and develop a shortlist before engaging sellers directly. Additional 6sense research says buyers wait until roughly 61% of the buying journey has passed before speaking with sellers. Four out of five vendors on the eventual shortlist were there from the beginning.

So the buyer reading your technical page at 11:30 p.m. may be doing work that once happened during a discovery call. While the executive downloading your report may be deciding whether you deserve to make the shortlist. On top of that, the engineer comparing specifications may be building the internal recommendation your sales team will never see.

Marketing content is no longer simply nurturing somebody toward a sales conversation. It is part of the decision itself, and that is the role it now plays in the buying process.

Buyers Still Want Salespeople

The interesting part of Gartner's research is that buyers have not rejected sellers. Gartner found that 69% of buyers prefer to validate AI-generated information with a sales representative. Buyers still want people when the conversation requires context, judgment, or help applying information to their particular situation.

Thus, a salesperson should no longer spend a call reciting information a buyer could have found on the website. They should help the buyer interpret it, and marketing needs to make that possible by handling the information layer well.

Evidence Is Becoming A Competitive Advantage

The more research buyers conduct independently, the more evidence companies need to make publicly accessible, including:

• Case studies

• Customer outcomes

• Performance data

• Product demonstrations

• Technical documentation

• Implementation requirements

• ROI models

• Security documentation

• Compliance information

• Competitive comparisons

• Methodology

• Pricing context

• Relevant customer references

Notice what is missing from that list:

• "Industry-leading."

• "Innovative."

• “Best-in-class.”

• "Full-service."

Those phrases tell a buyer almost nothing. Buyers need evidence to reduce uncertainty; generic claims add more of it, not less.

The same principle applies to thought leadership. Edelman and LinkedIn found that 73% of B2B buyers considered thought leadership a more trustworthy basis for assessing a company's capabilities than traditional marketing materials. Seventy-five percent said a piece of thought leadership prompted them to research a product or service they weren't previously considering. Strong thought leadership lets buyers evaluate how your company thinks before they have to trust how your company sells.

Your Buyer Is Also Selling Internally

One of the most important marketing audiences is often someone you never meet. 2025 Edelman and LinkedIn research found that more than 40% of B2B deals stall because of misalignment within buying groups. Hidden buyers can include finance, legal, operations, IT, procurement, compliance, senior leadership, and other stakeholders who influence a purchase even though they may never use the product. So marketing now has to help your buyer sell your solution internally and:

1. Give finance the economic case.

2. Give IT the technical documentation.

3. Give legal the compliance information.

4. Give executives the business case.

5. Give the implementation team the timeline.

6. Give the primary buyer enough evidence that advocating for you does not feel professionally risky.

A beautiful piece of content that cannot survive outside the marketing funnel may be less valuable than a fairly boring PDF that gets forwarded to six decision-makers.

Being On The Shortlist Matters More Than Closing Harder

6sense reported in August that more than 60% of the buyer journey is completed before a company engages a vendor and that 95% of deals go to a vendor included on the buyer's Day One shortlist. These figures should concern any company whose demand strategy begins with lead capture, because the competitive decision may already exist by then.

By the time someone becomes an obvious lead, the competitive decision may already be set. So category visibility, reputation, search visibility, educational content, peer validation, executive thought leadership, communities, review platforms, and consistent market presence matter much more. In turn, sales cannot close an opportunity marketing never helped shape.

More Content Is Not The Answer

There is an obvious temptation here. If buyers conduct more research, produce more content. I would resist that conclusion, because Demand Gen Report's 2026 research argues that static, one-dimensional assets are becoming less effective and describes a shift from high-volume production toward higher-value content experiences.

B2B companies already produce mountains of content that say very little. So the goal is to answer the questions buyers actually need answered. Look at your website from the perspective of someone trying to justify a six-figure purchase without talking to you:

• Can they understand exactly what you do?

• Can they tell who the product is for?

• Can they see evidence that it works?

• Can they understand implementation?

• Can they compare alternatives?

• Can they estimate the economic impact?

• Can they find technical information?

• Can they send credible material to another executive?

If the answer is no, the problem is not that your sales team needs more leads. Your buyers need more help.

The New Standard Is Usefulness

We are entering a B2B environment where buyers can generate vendor lists, summarize product pages, compare claims, search reviews, interrogate documentation, and assemble preliminary business cases before your company knows they exist. That makes generic promotional language easier to ignore than ever, and it makes genuine expertise more valuable because buyers now need proof more than promotion. That is the core shift this research points to.

Genuine expertise is more valuable. Companies that publish useful evidence give buyers something machines and competitors can't easily manufacture: credible proof of what the company knows, has done, and can deliver. So the buying journey ends more strongly and gives buyers a clearer reason to choose your company.

The best B2B marketing has always done that. Buyers now have enough control over the purchasing process to demand it. Borrowed Pen helps B2B companies build messaging, market research, thought leadership, content systems, demand generation, and sales enablement around how buyers actually make decisions. Learn more about our B2B Marketing Services.