B2B buyers increasingly know a lot about you before your salesperson ever gets involved.
That changes the job.
The salesperson's value can no longer come primarily from explaining the category, reciting company statistics, walking through a feature list, or holding information hostage until a prospect agrees to a meeting.
AI is rapidly making that information easier to find.
According to G2's April 2026 research report, “The Answer Economy: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying,” 51% of B2B software buyers now start their research with an AI chatbot more often than Google, and 71% use AI chatbots somewhere in the software research process. The research was based on a survey of more than 1,000 B2B software buyers and decision-makers.
Source: G2, “The Answer Economy: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying,” April 15, 2026.
https://learn.g2.com/g2-2026-ai-search-insight-report
The opportunity for Sales is moving further downstream: understanding the buyer's specific environment, correcting what their research missed, creating confidence in the decision, and helping them actually get the purchase done.
AI isn't eliminating the salesperson. It's eliminating their permission to waste the buyer's time.
The buyer may know more than you think
The change isn't simply that buyers have another research tool.
They're using AI to do work that used to happen much later in the buying process.
In the same G2 report, buyers said they were using AI chatbots to compare vendors, identify options, validate fit, work through pricing and packaging, and even draft requests for proposals. Forty-one percent said they regularly use Deep Research tools when researching software.
That's well beyond asking ChatGPT, "What is a SIEM?"
These buyers can arrive at the first meeting having already researched the category, compared you with competitors, developed questions, read reviews, and formed opinions about your strengths and weaknesses.
And AI is influencing which companies even get that meeting.
G2 also found that AI chatbots were the number one source buyers said influenced which vendors made their shortlist, at 54%. Software review sites followed at 43%, market research firms and vendor sites at 36%, peers and colleagues at 33%, independent forums at 30%, thought leadership at 28%, and vendor salespeople at just 19%.
Even more interesting, 69% of software buyers said an AI chatbot surfaced information that led them to choose a different software vendor than they initially planned. Thirty-three percent purchased from a vendor they had never heard of before AI surfaced it.
That tells me something important.
These buyers aren't necessarily married to a brand.
They're looking for the best answer to their problem.
If nearly seven out of ten can be moved away from the vendor they originally expected to choose, there is a tremendous opportunity for companies that can explain their value well.
Sometimes the company with the biggest marketing machine doesn't win.
Sometimes the company with the best answer does.
Stop over-educating informed buyers
If someone has already spent hours with ChatGPT, review sites, your website, competitors' websites, Reddit, analysts, and whoever else they trust, spending the first half hour telling them what your category is probably isn't adding much value.
Match their effort.
If they researched you, you should have researched them.
Get quickly to questions like:
What are they actually trying to accomplish?
How does their environment work today?
Where does your product fit into that workflow?
What changes if they deploy it?
What doesn't change?
Where are the organizational, technical, financial, or political risks?
The seller should increasingly be translating the product into the buyer's world, not translating the category into English.
There's also a marketing implication here.
If buyers increasingly begin their research by asking an AI system for an answer, technical companies need to start thinking about AEO alongside SEO.
You still want to rank in search.
But increasingly, you also want to appear when someone asks:
What are the best ways to solve this problem?
Which products should I evaluate?
What's the difference between these approaches?
Which vendor is strongest for my particular use case?
G2 describes this shift as moving from competing for a search result to competing to be part of the answer an AI system returns.
You can't wait until the prospect reaches your website to begin influencing the deal.
The shortlist may already be ranked before you arrive
This gets more uncomfortable.
6sense's “2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report” drew just under 4,000 respondents in its main study and found that 94% of buying groups ranked their shortlist in order of preference before engaging with sellers. Even more important, the vendor buyers ranked first before seller engagement ultimately won 77% of deals.
Source: 6sense, “2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report,” 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025
6sense also summarized the findings in its article, “The Timeline for Influencing B2B Buyers Is Shrinking: Insights From 6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report.”
That's a brutal statistic if you're the second company getting called.
But it doesn't mean the deal is over.
It means you don't have much time to prove that the buyer's original analysis missed something important.
If I'm coming into the conversation second, I want to know:
What can I tell this buyer that fundamentally changes their analysis?
Maybe there's a technical capability they misunderstood.
Maybe there's a recent development that changes the competitive landscape.
Maybe their comparison is based on the wrong architectural assumption.
Maybe the apparent weakness they found is actually a strength when viewed through their specific requirements.
Simply repeating the same information they already used to rank you second isn't going to move you into first.
6sense found something else that reinforces this point. In cases where buyers had not ranked their shortlist before talking with sellers, the first vendor contacted won only 57% of the time.
Source: 6sense, “How European B2B Buying Journeys Differ (and Don’t) From the Rest,” November 11, 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/how-european-b2b-buying-journeys-differ-and-dont-from-the-rest
That suggests the first conversation often reflects an existing preference more than it creates one.
If you're not the preferred vendor when the conversation starts, you need to add something new.
FUD can be technically true and still be completely misleading
I've seen this play out many times in technical sales.
Competitive FUD often works because there's enough truth in it to sound credible.
The trick is framing.
When I was at Panzura, prospects would sometimes arrive concerned about the product's locking mechanism.
They had heard versions of a story suggesting that the locks were complicated, vulnerable to network problems, or that locks somehow needed to be swapped all over the world in real time to keep globally distributed users from colliding with each other.
There were technical facts buried inside those objections.
But the framing was wrong.
Once we explained why the locking system existed, how it handled conflict resolution, what it protected, and what that architecture meant for data integrity and security, something interesting happened.
The scary technical detail sometimes became one of the reasons the customer bought us.
In several deals, it became a deciding factor.
AI introduces a new version of this problem.
An AI-generated explanation can be factually defensible while still creating the wrong human interpretation.
That's where the seller can add enormous value.
Not by saying:
"The AI is wrong."
But by saying:
"That's a fair description. Let me give you the context that changes what it means."
Buyers still want humans when confidence matters
This is where I think the "AI will eliminate B2B salespeople" argument gets too simplistic.
In May 2026, Gartner published research from a survey of 645 B2B buyers conducted between August and September 2025. Sixty-nine percent said they prefer to validate AI-generated insights with sales representatives.
Yet those same buyers also showed a strong preference for independence. Sixty-seven percent preferred a sales-rep-free experience, while 70% preferred a completely digital, self-service buying experience.
Source: Gartner, “Gartner Survey Finds 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights,” May 20, 2026.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-20-gartner-survey-finds-sixty-nine-percent-of-b-two-b-buyers-turn-to-sales-reps-to-validate-ai-generated-insights
Those numbers aren't contradictory.
People want information without being harassed.
For a long time, sellers could use access to information as leverage.
Want the pricing? Talk to Sales.
Want to see the product? Book a demo.
Want to understand how it compares? Give us your email address.
That equation is breaking down.
Buyers want to research on their own terms.
But when the stakes get higher, they still want someone who can help them determine whether they're about to make a good decision.
A second Gartner analysis of the same survey helps explain where humans still have an advantage. Compared with GenAI, buyers were:
- 39 percentage points more likely to say a sales representative understood their needs
- 32 percentage points more likely to say a representative made them feel confident in the purchase decision
- 28 percentage points more likely to say a representative helped them advance to the next step
- 21 percentage points more likely to say a representative helped quantify the benefits for their organization
Source: Gartner, “Gartner Survey Finds Sales Organizations That Provide AI-Enabled Next Best Actions Are 2.6x More Likely to Achieve Commercial Growth,” May 20, 2026.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-20-gartner-survey-finds-sales-organizations-that-provide-ai-enabled-next-best-actions-are-two-point-six-times-more-likely-to-achieve-commercial-growth
Of those, I think confidence may be the most important.
The biggest competitor in a lot of enterprise deals isn't another vendor.
It's the status quo.
Doing nothing feels safe.
Buying something expensive means taking responsibility for being wrong.
A technically correct ROI model doesn't fully capture what it's like to walk into a CFO's office and ask for a large budget.
An AI can understand organizational structures and regulations.
It doesn't necessarily understand that implementing your product might make one department look brilliant while making another feel threatened.
That's human context.
Discovery should start with what the buyer already believes
All of this should change discovery.
If the buyer has already done serious research, don't pretend they're starting from zero.
Acknowledge the work.
I might open with something like:
"It sounds like you've already put a fair amount of work into understanding this space. I'd like to respect that rather than make you sit through things you already know. What have you learned so far, and where would it be useful for me to validate, clarify, or add context?"
That's subtle flattery, but it's also practical.
Now I want to understand:
What do they currently believe?
What do they believe about us?
What are they uncertain about?
What information couldn't they find?
What concerns did their research introduce?
Were there questions they tried to answer but couldn't?
And most importantly:
What are they actually trying to accomplish?
Now I can take the research they've already done and apply it to their particular environment.
The goal isn't to redo their homework.
It's to make their homework more useful.
Your demo should validate, not educate
The same logic applies to demos.
If the buyer already understands broadly what the product does, they probably don't need the grand tour.
They need proof.
If they're evaluating whether your architecture can handle a particular workflow, show that workflow.
If they're worried about a limitation, address it.
If they're comparing you against a competitor on three specific capabilities, demonstrate those capabilities in the context that matters to them.
The demo becomes less:
"Here's our product."
And more:
"Here's the evidence that what you currently believe about solving this problem is true."
That's a very different demo.
It's also much harder to do well because it requires the presenter to understand the customer, not simply memorize the product.
Make the ROI almost insultingly conservative
One place where companies are still surprisingly bad is quantifying value.
As Gartner found in the same research above, buyers were 21 percentage points more likely to say a human seller helped quantify organizational benefits than to say the same of GenAI.
That matters because economic justification is one of the best tools we have for fighting the fear of change.
But I don't like ROI models that need twelve tabs and seventeen heroic assumptions to work.
Let's say I calculate every possible benefit of a product and arrive at a 1,200% ROI.
I may technically be right.
I may also have created an argument.
Instead, give me two benefits we can defend aggressively.
Maybe those alone produce a 280% return.
Great.
Now I can say:
"If we only count these two impacts, we're at roughly 280%. We could extend the model to several other areas and the math gets a little silly, but I think 280% is probably enough to determine whether this is worth doing. Is that fair?"
Now we're no longer debating whether the cost of napkins in Madagascar saves 0.003% on pens.
We're establishing that the purchase works under assumptions conservative enough that arguing about the fringes doesn't change the decision.
That's what a good ROI conversation should accomplish.
Not maximum theoretical value.
Decision confidence.
The biggest value may come after the buyer picks you
There's another important shift happening.
G2's 2026 “Evaluation Maze” Buyer Behavior Report found that 40% of buyers now say evaluation is the longest stage of their buying journey, compared with 36% for research and 22% for the decision stage.
Source: G2, “Buyer Behavior in 2026: What GTM Teams Need to Know,” summarizing “The Evaluation Maze: 2026 Buyer Behavior Report.”
https://sell.g2.com/buyer-behavior-in-2026-what-gtm-teams-need-to-know
Once the shortlist exists, the friction increasingly comes from getting the purchase through the organization.
In the same research, G2 found that IT security review was the biggest source of delay between vendor selection and completed purchase for 39% of buyers. Budget approval followed at 32%, and implementation planning at 25%. Among enterprise buyers, 50% named IT security review as their largest post-selection delay.
Additional source: G2, “The Evaluation Maze: 2026 Buyer Behavior Report.”
https://sell.g2.com/2026-buyer-behavior-report
This may be where Sales can become most valuable.
The buyer might have researched your category more times this month than they'll make a purchase like this in their entire career.
You sell all the time.
They may buy once every few years.
They may have no idea what happens next.
Garin Hess makes a version of this argument in his book Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle. Hess advocates moving away from a seller-centric process and toward helping buyers navigate the complexity of making the purchase itself.
Source: Garin Hess, Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle, River Grove Books.
https://www.overdrive.com/media/5539055/selling-is-hard-buying-is-harder
The seller can become the sherpa.
Here's what Security is going to ask.
Here's what Procurement will need.
Here's the documentation Legal usually requests.
Here's what delayed customers like you in the past.
Here's who should be involved now rather than three weeks from now.
Here's the implementation work you should start thinking about before the contract gets signed.
Suddenly Sales isn't pushing the customer through your sales process.
You're helping them through their buying process.
That's a much more valuable job.
The salesperson becomes logistics grease
If I were rebuilding a technical B2B sales process around today's buyer, that's probably the phrase I'd use.
The salesperson becomes the logistics grease.
Discovery determines what the buyer already knows, what needs reinforcement, what needs correction, and what's missing.
The demo validates their assumptions in their specific environment.
Proof comes from real outcomes for similar companies, ideally from the same vertical or at a similar scale.
ROI is specific, conservative, and defensible.
Security and procurement support remove organizational friction.
And follow-up should leave both sides with action items.
That last part matters.
The salesperson should feel like they're in the purchase with the buyer, not standing on the other side waiting for the PO.
This also changes what good technical content looks like
There's one more consequence for technical companies.
If buyers are increasingly using AI systems to compare products before talking to you, vague marketing language becomes even less useful.
AI needs substance to work with.
Clear documentation.
Specific use cases.
Accurate technical explanations.
Real customer outcomes.
Well-defined product boundaries.
Competitive differentiation that goes beyond adjectives.
Independent reviews and evidence.
The same G2 AI-search research points toward this. If AI systems are helping buyers compare products, vendors need clear documentation, credible third-party validation, strong reviews, accurate positioning, and consistent information across the places those systems learn from.
This is why I think technical companies may actually have an advantage in the AI-informed buying era if they use it properly.
They often have the substance.
They just haven't always translated it well.
AI doesn't make Sales less important. It raises the price of a bad sales conversation.
A buyer who has done two hours of research and then spends 30 minutes listening to information they already know is going to wonder why the meeting happened.
That's reasonable.
And the research suggests that the opinions buyers form before those conversations are anything but casual.
In another analysis of its 2025 buyer research, 6sense found that 95% of winning vendors were already on the buyer's Day One shortlist. It also found that buyers placed roughly four of the five vendors they would eventually evaluate on that shortlist at the beginning of the journey.
Source: 6sense, “Getting to Yes: Why Vendors Win & How Buying Groups Agree,” November 11, 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/getting-to-yes-why-vendors-win-and-how-buying-groups-agree
So the seller isn't necessarily entering a blank canvas anymore.
They're entering a picture that's already partially painted.
Sometimes their job is to validate it.
Sometimes it's to add detail.
Sometimes it's to point out that the buyer used the wrong color entirely.
But simply painting over it with the standard corporate deck is becoming less useful.
The informational advantage Sales historically held is disappearing quickly.
The human advantages are still very real.
Context.
Judgment.
Challenge.
Confidence.
Proof.
Political awareness.
Risk reduction.
And the experience to help someone navigate a purchase they may rarely make.
Technical companies don't need to fight the AI-informed buyer.
They should assume the buyer is informed and build the sales experience accordingly.
Match their effort.
If they did the research before they arrived, don't make them start over when they get to you.
Help them finish.
Sources
G2. “The Answer Economy: How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying.” April 15, 2026.
https://learn.g2.com/g2-2026-ai-search-insight-report
G2. “The Evaluation Maze: 2026 Buyer Behavior Report.” 2026.
https://sell.g2.com/2026-buyer-behavior-report
G2. “Buyer Behavior in 2026: What GTM Teams Need to Know.” 2026.
https://sell.g2.com/buyer-behavior-in-2026-what-gtm-teams-need-to-know
6sense. “2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report.” 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025
6sense. “The Timeline for Influencing B2B Buyers Is Shrinking: Insights From 6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report.” 2025.
https://6sense.com/news/the-timeline-for-influencing-b2b-buyers-is-shrinking-insights-from-6senses-2025-buyer-experience-report
6sense. “How European B2B Buying Journeys Differ (and Don’t) From the Rest.” November 11, 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/how-european-b2b-buying-journeys-differ-and-dont-from-the-rest
6sense. “Getting to Yes: Why Vendors Win & How Buying Groups Agree.” November 11, 2025.
https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/getting-to-yes-why-vendors-win-and-how-buying-groups-agree
Gartner. “Gartner Survey Finds 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights.” May 20, 2026.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-20-gartner-survey-finds-sixty-nine-percent-of-b-two-b-buyers-turn-to-sales-reps-to-validate-ai-generated-insights
Gartner. “Gartner Survey Finds Sales Organizations That Provide AI-Enabled Next Best Actions Are 2.6x More Likely to Achieve Commercial Growth.” May 20, 2026.
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-20-gartner-survey-finds-sales-organizations-that-provide-ai-enabled-next-best-actions-are-two-point-six-times-more-likely-to-achieve-commercial-growth
Hess, Garin. Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle. River Grove Books.
https://www.overdrive.com/media/5539055/selling-is-hard-buying-is-harder