By the time sales gets involved, the deal is mostly already decided.

83% of B2B buyers say they would rather research and gather information themselves than talk to a sales rep. I cannot blame them. I know I always preferred to gather information at my own pace rather than according to someone else’s quota. Honestly, I am debating whether to include an NDA as an automated response to meeting events. I assume that anything we are going to talk about is going to be private - otherwise you would not have contacted me.

The B2B buyer journey has always been nebulous, but it is even worse now. The journey is composed of stitched-together datasets, assumed match rates, and all sorts of other junk. That was before AI got involved both as an advisor and as a content generator. 

Businesses are now flooding the zone with high-gloss, low-information through AI efficiencies. It is a great way to generate downloads and annoy buyers by failing to answer their questions.

40% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before ever speaking to a sales rep. That is a lot of sales and marketing collateral to consume. It is probably a failing on the part of many of us marketers that it requires so much content. We are so focused on the quantity of content we put out that we lose sight of how important quality is to the buying journey. Buyers are generally dissatisfied with most sales and marketing content because it is overly generic and fails to address their needs. What matters more than ever is content that delivers clear answers so the buyer (be it human or AI) can be informed. We are at the beginning of the zero-click era - not even close to the peak. 

When they reach out to you, it is a sign that they are really interested in your product or service. They will have specific questions about platform functionality, capabilities, and integrations. Ensure your sales team is ready and armed with the answers. Even more progressive and forward-thinking, just publish it yourself. Not trade secrets or anything like that, but post your integration specs, share pricing, disclose what platforms you do not integrate with - just answer questions and stop wasting time.

94% of buying groups rank their shortlist before reaching out to sales, and the vendor ranked first wins the deal roughly 80% of the time. That is why I strive to deliver material that answers questions and enables sales. If you are not building tailored, specific content that answers buyer questions and gets you found, then you are in trouble. At this point, you should assume that as soon as you publish a piece of content, it has been ingested by the core platforms and is in AI-Snippets. The days of lead generation through content downloads are coming to an end. 

Too often, sales and marketing teams try to obfuscate buyers' questions to maximize extraction. That sets the relationship up to fail and leaves your business with an unhappy customer. Unhappy customers go to G2 or Capterra to complain. The model pulls in these complaints as context about your business, which tanks the model's perception of your business, making you less likely to be included in the future.

So you might as well answer questions, share standard integration docs, and publish whatever else your buyers ask for as follow-ups after the first call. Make the buying journey a little better through easier discovery, and you earn trust before the first call even happens.

If this resonates with you - my email is brian@bskstrategies.co, and I would love to work with you.