How B2B buyers buy today, and what it means for callers

How do B2B buyers buy today? In groups, mostly on their own, and they talk to suppliers late. CEB research described in Harvard Business Review found that an average of 5.4 people formally sign off on a purchase, and that buyers are 57% of the way through the process before they engage a sales rep. For callers, that changes three things: when you call, what you say, and who you try to win over.

This article sums up the main research on the B2B buying journey, with its age and limits, and turns it into practical choices for a calling team.

Buying is a group decision

Sales training long taught reps to find the one person who can sign. That person rarely exists. In 2015, Karl Schmidt, Brent Adamson and Anna Bird of CEB (now part of Gartner) wrote "Making the Consensus Sale" in HBR. Their research team ran four surveys of more than 5,000 people involved in B2B purchases. Key findings:

• On average, 5.4 people had to formally sign off on each purchase.
• Those people come from many more functions than before. An IT supplier might need buy-in from finance, marketing, operations, legal and procurement, not only from IT.
• Buyers named group decisions as the most difficult twice as often as decisions they made alone.
• The authors link this to longer sales cycles, smaller deals and, in the worst case, deadlock that kills the deal.

For a caller this is good and bad news. Bad: the person you reach is almost never the only one who decides. Good: you do not need to reach the "top" person first. You need to reach someone who can get the group moving.

Buyers contact suppliers late

Two CEB studies in HBR give a similar number. In "The End of Solution Sales" (2012), a study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found they completed nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision before talking to a supplier. That work includes researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements and benchmarking prices. The 2015 consensus research put the moment of first contact with reps at 57% of the way through.

The same 2015 article adds a detail that matters even more. Buyers are, on average, 37% of the way through when they reach the stage of agreeing on what kind of solution they need. And that stage, agreeing on a solution regardless of supplier, was the one buyers found hardest. In other words: the group often gets stuck before any rep arrives.

A cold call is one of the few ways a supplier can show up before that 57% point. That is the real case for outbound. You can reach people while they are still forming an opinion, instead of waiting for a request for proposal that is written around someone else's product.

Buyers spend little time with suppliers

Gartner research reported by DestinationCRM in 2018 found that B2B buyers spend just 17% of their buying time meeting potential suppliers. Gartner's Brent Adamson added a simple calculation: if a buyer compares three suppliers, each one gets maybe a third of that time, so 5 or 6%. That is an illustration, not a measured figure, but the point holds. The minutes you get are few.

That has a direct effect on a cold call. In the 2025 cold calling report by Cognism, the average cold call lasted about a minute and a half. You will not explain your whole offer in that time. You can plant one idea and earn a second conversation.

Buyers say they prefer fewer reps, but regret more without them

In a Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers in August and September 2024, 61% said they prefer an overall buying experience without a sales rep. Across all stages, buyers said they would prefer to complete on average 1.8 activities through digital self-service, 2.3 with supplier reps and 3.0 using both. They preferred self-service for general information and learning, and wanted seller input when they needed judgment about fit. The same release reports that 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.

A 2024 Gartner summary adds the other side. 43% of buyers reported high purchase regret when they completed a purchase through self-service digital commerce, against 26% for traditional purchases led by a rep. Buyers want control, but they also want help making the right choice. A useful call gives them both.

Personal messages can split a group

One finding in the consensus research goes against common advice. Stakeholders who felt supplier content was tailored to their specific needs were 40% more willing to buy from that supplier. So far, so expected. But when each person in a group gets a different message about their own narrow interest, the differences between them grow. The finance lead hears about cost, the operations lead about speed, and nobody agrees.

The authors' advice: connect the stakeholders to each other, not only to you. Give them a shared language and a shared view of the problem. For a caller, that means one clear problem statement that works for every role, with a sentence of tailoring on top. Not five different pitches.

Look for the person who wants change

"The End of Solution Sales" sorted customer stakeholders into seven profiles, based on a survey of more than 700 stakeholders. Three of them, called Go-Getters, Teachers and Skeptics, were best at building consensus. The authors call them mobilizers. Three others, Guides, Friends and Climbers, are pleasant and open but less able to move a group. The authors call them talkers. Average reps tend to spend their time with talkers. A seventh type, the Blocker, prefers to keep things as they are.

Two more findings from the 2015 article explain why mobilizers are hard to win:

• In a CEB survey of nearly 600 buyers, half of those willing to buy something were not willing to publicly advocate for it.
• Personal value, such as career progress or being seen as a better leader, was five times as strong a driver of advocacy as business value like product features or return on investment.

On a cold call you cannot run a full stakeholder analysis. But you can listen for signs. Does the person talk about wanting to improve something? Do they push back with sharp questions? A tough question is often a better sign than a friendly chat.

What it means for callers

A simple question set for the end of a good conversation (example wording):

1. "Who else would have an opinion on this?"
2. "What would they want to see before they would take it seriously?"
3. "Would it help if I sent you a one-page summary you can forward?"
4. "Shall we plan 30 minutes, and you invite whoever makes sense?"

These ideas link closely to the Challenger approach, which grew out of the same CEB research. Read the Challenger Sale applied to cold calls for how to teach, tailor and take control in a short call. And if you are unsure which companies are in a moment of change, start with your ideal customer profile.

Put it in your script

Research only helps if callers use it on the next call. Three small changes to a cold calling script carry most of the value:

• A one-sentence problem statement at the top, the same for every role.
• A short checklist of questions about the buying group, to tick off during the call.
• A fixed offer for the next step that the contact can share internally.

In Ringlane, you can build that into the script itself, with a checklist block for the group questions, so every caller works from the same latest version.

Limits of the research

• Age. The CEB studies in HBR date from 2012 and 2015. The 17% figure was reported in 2018. Digital buying has grown since.
• Source interest. CEB and Gartner sell research and advisory services built on these findings.
• Large companies. Much of this research looks at complex purchases in larger organisations. A small business with one owner may decide alone and fast.
• Not local. The samples are international, not specific to Belgium or the Netherlands.
• Self-reported. Buyers describing their own behaviour in a survey is not the same as observing it.

Use the findings as a lens, not a law. Then check them against what your own buyers tell you on the phone.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Harvard Business Review: Making the Consensus Sale (Schmidt, Adamson and Bird, 2015)
2. Harvard Business Review: The End of Solution Sales (Adamson, Dixon and Toman, 2012)
3. Gartner: Sales survey finds 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience (2025)
4. Gartner: Increase buyer enablement through a digital content strategy (2024 abstract)
5. Cognism: The State of Cold Calling in 2025
6. DestinationCRM: Buyer enablement is the key to B2B sales (on Gartner research, 2018)