Metric Monday: Just How Experienced Are Your Buyers?

saraboostani

Hi all!

Across our years of research on B2B buying, we’ve seen time and again that buyers move well into their journeys and, in 8 out of 10 cases, decide who they’ll buy from before ever speaking to sales.

In our first year of studying this, we deduced that this independence is possible for two main reasons. First, much of vendors’ content has long been available online, eliminating what was once a buyer’s only option -- to connect with sales for product info. Second -- and more significant -- B2B buyers are already familiar with both the buying process and the range of vendor options in their category.

Last year, we began gathering data to test that second point and we expanded on it even further this year, quantifying how many prior evaluations buyers have taken part in within their product category -- a number that nearly reaches double digits.

Buyers are far from blank slates. Yet most marketing content is still written as if they’ve never heard of you -- or your competitors.

We explore this reality in two deep dive reports: “B2B Buyers Are Not Blank Slates” (2024) and “B2B Buyers Are Even Less of a Blank Slate Than We Thought” (2025) -- both free and ungated, as always!

@Kerry

Kerry

I think of the experience level of buyers as explaining how they can form shortlists and make decisions before the journey really starts. If you have a history as a brand, your buyers know it — have experienced it.