Top GTM experts, seasoned salespeople, and marketing leaders know that 60% to 80% of the buying journey happens without engaging a vendor.
Ten years ago, the vendor held much of the information. A great salesperson had a lot of room to shine. Education, guidance, and access to information gave those “great salespeople” plenty of runway to build the value-rapport-partnership-purchase chain. It also gave “not so great” salespeople room to polish their skills while learning the ropes correctly.
Today, a buyer expects to be able to recognize a problem, research it, understand the available approaches, identify companies that might solve it, compare them, investigate their claims, look for customers who have done it before, examine their competitors, and reach a reasonable level of comfort before speaking with anyone trying to sell them something.
Access to information, especially in the age of AI, has substantially changed how vendors educate and engage customers. Much of what once happened between buyer and salesperson now happens before they ever meet.
By the time the salesperson arrives, if the opportunity is granted, the buyer has already formed opinions that once would have been shaped during the sales process.
The internet steadily shifted that balance. More recently, what has accelerated is the amount, depth, and variety of information buyers expect to find on their own.
They can read what the company says. Then read what customers say. Then see what competitors say about the same problem. They can look at reviews, directories, analyst commentary, customer stories, technical documentation, social channels, leadership, partnerships, job postings, implementation experiences, and whatever else matters to the decision.
And they expect to do it without raising their hand.
The vendor may think the buying process begins when someone fills out a form, answers an email, or agrees to a meeting. The buyer is already weeks or months into it, forming opinions, investigating possibilities, and visualizing how the solution and potential problems will show up in their environment.
They are learning which companies appear repeatedly when they research the problem. They are seeing which companies explain the problem clearly enough to be understood. They are learning which claims customers support, which capabilities have evidence behind them, and which companies make the risks of choosing them easier to resolve.
By the time the buyer is ready to talk, the shortlist may already be set, leaving you on the sidelines.
Being absent does not make you invisible.
When customers repeatedly search for answers and your company does not appear, you are not simply absent. Your absence becomes evidence against your relevance.
Buyers increasingly trust their ability to find what matters. If they search the problem, investigate the category, examine the alternatives, and never encounter your company, the natural conclusion is that you were not important enough to find.
That judgment carries forward. Your absence says something about your relevance to the problem, the evidence behind your claims, and the value the market places on what you offer.
If you mattered, I would already know who you are.
The buyer may never say that out loud. They have already voiced it by leaving you off the shortlist.
Proof has a time and a place.
This issue surfaced during a recent Strategic Navigation Assessment. The company had substantial evidence of its ability to deliver. It could demonstrate scale, speed, capability, and years of experience. Once someone got close enough to the company to see it, there was plenty of proof.
The problem was getting onto the buyer’s radar in the first place.
Across the discovery channels where buyers were likely to begin forming their view of the market, three of the company’s four closest competitors were visible. The company had the credentials to compete. Buyers doing their own research had little chance of discovering that value because it was lost in the company’s broad positioning, which executives had spent considerable time honing to capture everything the company could offer.
A buyer could decide who deserved further consideration without recognizing evidence that might have changed that decision.
Proof only works when the buyer can find it, understand why it matters, and connect it to the problem they are trying to solve.
This is part of what sales inherits.
By the time a salesperson enters the conversation, the buyer may already have opinions about the company, its credibility, its competitors, and the risks of choosing it.
That leaves sales trying to influence decisions after the company has surrendered much of the opportunity to provide value while those opinions were being formed.
And those are the buyers sales gets to meet.
The others leave no lost opportunity in the CRM. No discovery call to review, objection to coach against, or closed-lost reason to analyze. Customers chose someone else to talk to.
Whether buyers complete 60%, 70%, or 80% of their journey independently matters less than the expectation behind those numbers. They expect to get far enough on their own to decide who deserves their time.
The company only learns about that buying process if they earned the opportunity many weeks or months earlier.