A buyer fills out your contact form. From your side, this is the start of the sale. From theirs, it's close to the end.
6sense surveyed nearly 4,000 B2B buyers for its 2025 Buyer Experience Report. The findings are uncomfortable for anyone who thinks selling starts with the first call:
- Buyers make first contact about 61% of the way through their process.
- 94% have already ranked their shortlist in order of preference before they talk to any seller.
- 95% of the time, the vendor that wins was on the shortlist from day one.
- About four in five deals go to the first vendor the buyer contacts.
- The average purchase takes 10.1 months and involves around ten people.
Put those together. For months, a group of people you've never met is deciding whether you make a list. Then they call the company they already prefer.
One caveat. These were large purchases, with a median between $200,000 and $300,000. Smaller deals move faster. In our view the pattern holds at any size: people research on their own first and call their favorite.
Being called first is a result
It's tempting to read "the first vendor contacted usually wins" as advice to be quick on the phone. The report tested that. In the small group of buyers who hadn't ranked their list before reaching out, the first vendor they spoke with won only 57% of the time.
So the first call goes to whoever is already the favorite. Speed still matters once a lead arrives. It just can't make up for never being considered.
What the buyer is doing while you can't see them
They're reading your website without filling anything out. They're asking peers who they use. They're looking at your LinkedIn page and the profiles of the people who run the company. They're reading reviews and case studies. Someone on the committee is forwarding a link with the note "these guys seem to get it."
None of that shows up as a lead. All of it decides whether you get one.
How a company gets on the list
Be findable for the problem, not only the product
Early in the process, buyers don't search for a vendor. They search for their problem. "Radio dead spots in a warehouse." "What a failed fire inspection costs a clinic." The company that explains the problem clearly gets remembered when the search turns into a purchase.
Publish what you actually think
Most company content is written to offend nobody, so nobody remembers it. A clear opinion about how the work should be done, backed by specifics from real jobs, is what makes someone forward a link.
Put names and faces on it
The same report found that 75% of buyers personally know sellers at the vendors they evaluate. People shortlist people. An owner or lead engineer who posts once a week about real work builds more familiarity than a company page will.
Let the open pages do the selling
If pricing guidance, process, timelines, and case studies sit behind a form, the anonymous buyer never sees them. A competitor's are out in the open. Guess who makes the list.
Give ten people something to agree on
The person who found you has to sell you internally to everyone else. A one page summary, a short case study from their industry, and a plain answer on cost make that easy. If they have to write it themselves, they'll write it about someone else.
What to measure besides leads
Lead count only tells you about the part of the process that happens after contact. For everything before it, watch branded search volume, direct visits, returning visitors on service pages, and how often new prospects say they already knew of you.
You can also just ask. Put one question to your last five new customers: when did you first hear of us, and where? Compare the answers with the date they first got in touch. The gap between those two dates is where the sale was decided.
Filling that gap on purpose is what our thought leadership and authority work is for. Book a call and we'll look at what a buyer finds when they research you.
