New G2 Research: Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Their Research With AI Chatbots

A single individual usually decides on a purchase based on their needs and preferences. In addition, the buying process in B2B and B2C is quite different due to customer needs and purchasing behaviors. The business must create consensus around the purchase decision. In this stage, the business will start exploring potential solutions. Businesses recognize a need, research potential solutions, evaluate alternatives, make a final purchase decision based on their needs, negotiate terms, and evaluate supplier performance.

Journey mapping provides businesses with insights that they can use to improve their processes. Businesses can enhance customer experiences, optimize workflows, and eventually spur development by pinpointing critical points of friction or opportunity. Despite these obstacles, only 36% of B2B businesses employ customer personas and journey maps to comprehend and enhance the buyer experience. Furthermore, 90% of customers don’t take a straight path and frequently go back to review their decisions. Both sellers and buyers are using AI – with 89% of B2B purchases now including AI features in the solution (Salesforce, 2026; 6Sense, 2025). Most B2B deals require at least 5-8 follow-up touchpoints to close.

Customers don’t have to figure out how to refer people or worry about whether they’ll get credit. When prospects see actual results from real people, the value proposition becomes obvious without feeling like a sales pitch. Customers make purchases for long-term solutions, resulting in a longer sales cycle, longer contracts, and longer relationships with companies. The B2B buying process typically unfolds across three distinct stages, each requiring different marketing approaches and content strategies. By defining and optimizing these steps, you can create a smoother experience and ensure customers are progressing toward your desired outcomes. Mapping each B2B customer journey effectively ensures you don’t miss critical moments that could enhance trust or resolve customer pain points.

Referral Marketing Statistics 2026: Top Picks

It has become nearly effortless for buyers to do their research on new solutions independently due to the easy availability of quality information through digital channels. Moreover, the pool of options and solutions organizations can choose from is constantly expanding as new technologies, products, suppliers and services emerge. So, how can you stimulate your potential clients to buy from you and shorten the buying process in B2B? All these activities prove to our prospects we can B2b purchasing process forecast results, reach KPIs, and guarantee stable performance. This is why we’ve added an ROI calculator to our pricing page and always include the base cost of our packages in the sales decks. People involved in a B2B purchase decision-making process always count money but do not always choose the cheapest option.

Upcoming Summit to Explore Solutions

• Here, your buyer realises they have a problem, and they start researching solutions.
• Alternatively, the website can be created for business purposes, where the seller advertises their products to promote and expand transactions.
• Analyze your business operations, identify pain points, and determine areas where improvements or solutions are required.
• B2B online sales to reach $1.8 trillion, and by 2025, Gartner predicts 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and suppliers will occur in digital channels.
• This means many B2B consumers are beginning the buying process based on referrals.

This article provides a complete guide on the B2B buying process, including its steps, B2B buying process examples, and differences from B2C. Learn how to combine both approaches, overcome common challenges, and leverage AI-powered tools to maximize ROI and build lasting customer relationships. Apollo tracks every touchpoint from first contact to closed deal—quantifying time saved, pipeline added, and win rate lift. Apollo provides the all-in-one platform to prospect, engage, and close deals faster. Common causes include unclear ROI, internal misalignment, competing priorities, and risk aversion.

Since B2B purchases are often more expensive and involve larger quantities of goods than B2C purchases, there is more risk involved. While the steps in the B2B buying process may seem quite similar to those in the B2C sales process, the process as a whole is much different. In addition, since B2B purchases are often more expensive and involve larger quantities of goods than B2C purchases, there is more risk involved. While B2C purchases are often made by just one or two people, the level of consensus needed for B2B purchases is much higher.

Around 67% of people are more likely to purchase a product suggested by a family member or a friend on social media. Besides, 55% of the consumers reported sharing their purchases on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Hence, most businesses prefer to run campaigns on social media and invest in social media referral marketing. Social media users are growing rapidly, and 4.8 billion people use these platforms worldwide.

How Digital Transformation Is Reshaping the B2B Buying Process

The goal is to understand what people are doing, what makes them angry or frustrated, and what is causing their behaviors. ” or “What’s the most frustrating part of the buying process for you? You need to know a lot about your customers’ working settings, how they make decisions, and their pain points in order to create a B2B customer journey map that is truly useful. Here’s how to create a journey map that can be a strategic asset for growth. By understanding the nuances of B2B customer journeys, you can create strategies that better address their needs at every stage.

The research process means looking for information online, seeking recommendations from colleagues, and attending industry events or conferences. Thus, this phase also includes the process of gathering relevant data and insights, and defining requirements for the final product to be purchased. Keeping into account these roles is crucial for building an effective selling strategy and technical infrastructure that nudges all participants to finalize the purchase at each stage. The average B2B buying cycle involves 6-10 decision makers, each equipped with over four pieces of information that they have independently gathered. To mitigate possible risks and make an informed decision, multiple stakeholders get involved into the approval process.

Incorporate the best features of self-service portal

Convert high-intent website visitors, prospects in discovery, and event leads in real time. Use agentic segmentation to identify high-value accounts as buyer behavior and intent evolve, and activate across owned and paid channels from a single platform. Agents create, adapt, and optimize content for every buyer, account, and channel, at scale. It’s important to create an ecosystem where sales and marketing strategies are aligned to create awareness and improve your conversion rate.

This social proof lets prospects know that the brand has a track record of reliability and have delighted previous customers beyond expectation. Many business buyers don’t care about the feature list until they understand what problem the brand solves. They just deliver consistent value and trust that when listeners are ready to build an online store, Shopify will be top of mind. The podcast focuses on inspirational stories from entrepreneurs and offers practical tips for starting an online business on Shopify.

Here are some B2B marketing examples of businesses that do it right. A B2B marketing approach that works for one business may not work for another, but that’s not to say we can’t learn something from the pros. She continues, “At FiveFour, we use customer-centric visuals — like infographics and case studies — to turn challenges into solutions and wins into trust. Start by defining the brand’s values, then create content that reflects them.