Discover how B2B buyers research independently, use AI, and rely on sales reps for validation before making purchasing decisions.
Most B2B buyers now research without a sales rep, then ask a person to confirm what AI told them. Here is what that means for your content, your sales team, and your budget.
If your sales team keeps meeting buyers who already know your pricing, have compared you with three competitors, and want to talk about one specific concern, you are seeing what has become the normal B2B purchase. Sales and marketing teams have long assumed that a deal takes shape in a conversation with a person, but most buyers now prefer to skip that conversation for as long as they can, and that preference is still growing.
Gartner's survey of 646 B2B buyers, published March 9, 2026, found that 67% prefer a rep-free buying experience (one with no sales representative involved), up from 61% in Gartner's 2025 survey. A six-point rise in a single year suggests the shift is still under way rather than leveling off. Gartner's May 20, 2026 release added that 70% prefer a completely digital, self-service process, along with a finding that changes how to read both numbers: 69% of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales rep.
Read together, the findings describe a buyer who does most of the work alone, often with help from AI, and then wants a knowledgeable person at a few decisive moments. For a leadership team, the practical point is that the rep still has a role, that role now sits much later in the journey, and marketing carries most of the work that used to happen in the first meeting.
The rep-free buyer
Won in the content. Confirmed in the conversation.
The modern B2B journey
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Self-service
Research, compare and narrow options through your content, reviews and AI tools.
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Rep
Validate, resolve, build confidence.
Four rep jobs your content now has to do
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Educate
Teach the category and the trade-offs. Don’t pitch.
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Handle objections
Name price, risk and switching costs. Answer them in writing.
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Assess fit
Say who it’s for, and who it isn’t.
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Build trust
Named customers, real results, checkable claims.
What breaks the rep-free journey
- Measuring only leads handed to sales
- Gating the content buyers need to decide
- No easy way to reach a person
- Pitching a buyer who already decided
of B2B buyers prefer a completely digital, self-service buying experience.
Source: Gartner survey of 645 B2B buyers, fielded August to September 2025, published March 2026.
Why buyers prefer to go it alone
Self-service fits most of the work buyers are doing, which says more about the work than about your reps.
Most of a B2B purchase is research: understanding a category, comparing options, and learning what matters before anyone signs. Buyers increasingly prefer to do that research at their own pace, without the pressure of a sales conversation, and Gartner's data shows how much of it they now handle on their own. In its May 20, 2026 release, Gartner reported that buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase, which means your website is one voice among many, and that 45% used generative AI (tools such as ChatGPT that write answers to questions), mainly to research vendors and products.
That does not mean buyers fully trust what they find. In the same survey, 51% said they were more likely to encounter misleading information from generative AI, compared with 49% who said the same about sales reps, a near-even split that suggests buyers are wary of both. In a companion release the same day, Gartner reported that buyers were 39 percentage points more likely to say a rep understood their needs than to say the same of generative AI, which is a wide gap on the one thing a rep is expected to do well. Buyers prefer to research alone, and they appear to know where that research falls short.
Where the sales rep fits in the journey now
Fewer conversations, later in the journey, and more decisive when they happen.
The common pattern now is mostly self-service with a few selected human touchpoints. A buyer researches, compares, and narrows the options independently, then contacts a person near the decision to check what they have learned, settle a specific concern, and build the confidence they need to bring the rest of their buying group along.
Those moments carry a lot of weight. Gartner's 2022 B2B buyer research found that buyers are 1.8 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal when they use a supplier's digital tools together with a rep than when they use those tools on their own, so the combination outperforms either path alone. Gartner's March 2026 release added that confident buyers are twice as likely to report a high-quality deal as buyers with low decision confidence, which makes buyer confidence a revenue issue for the leadership team. The human touchpoint comes less often and later in the journey, and it is often where that confidence is won or lost.
For a leadership team, this has two consequences. Marketing has to carry the buyer most of the way to a decision, and sales has to be ready to add real judgment at the moment the buyer asks for it, instead of restarting a pitch the buyer has already moved past.
In most deals, the buyer decides in your content and confirms the choice in a conversation.
Four sales jobs your content now has to do
What a good salesperson does, and how content can do each part.
It is easy to agree that content should do the work of a salesperson, and much harder to put that into practice. A good rep does four distinct jobs, and each one needs a deliberate answer in your content.
Educate. A rep explains the category and what matters in it. Content has to teach before it sells, with clear explanations of the problem, the options, and the trade-offs, written for a buyer who does not yet know your terminology.
Handle objections. A rep surfaces concerns and answers them, often before the buyer raises them. Content has to name the objections a skeptical buyer actually holds, such as price, implementation effort, risk, and switching costs (the time and money it takes to leave a current vendor), and answer each one plainly in writing.
Assess fit. A good rep helps a buyer decide whether the product suits their situation, including saying so when it does not. Content makes that possible through specific use cases, honest comparisons, clear pricing models, and plain statements of who the product is for and who it is not for.
Build trust. A rep earns trust through candor and quick, useful responses. Content earns it through transparency and proof, which means named customers, specific results, credible third-party reviews, and claims a buyer can check for themselves.
How AI-assisted research removes the chance to recover
A buyer who researches through AI may never give your rep a chance to fix a weak first impression.
Rep-free buyers increasingly do their research through AI assistants in addition to your website. They ask an assistant to explain the category, compare vendors, and judge fit, and if the assistant cannot find clear, credible information about you, the buyer may never seriously consider you.
In a rep-led journey, a strong salesperson could make up for a weak digital presence by getting the meeting anyway. In a rep-free journey that runs through AI, there is often no meeting to get, so a weak digital presence most likely fails quietly, with no person there to correct it. We cover how to make your information clear and credible to AI tools in "AEO for SaaS" and "The Invisible Journey."
The numbers behind the shift
B2B buyers, AI and the rep
70% of B2B buyers prefer a completely digital, self-service experience. 69% still want a rep to confirm what AI tells them.
Asked whether generative AI or a sales rep is more likely to mislead them, buyers split almost evenly. Self-service wins the research; people still close the doubt.
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Self-service preference | ||
| B2B buyers who prefer a rep-free buying experience, previous survey versus this one | 61% → 67% | Gartner, March 2026 |
| B2B buyers who prefer a completely digital, self-service experience | 70% | Gartner, March 2026 |
| AI and the rep | ||
| B2B buyers who prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales rep | 69% | Gartner, May 20, 2026 |
| Buyers who say they are more likely to encounter misleading information from generative AI, versus from sales reps | 51% vs 49% | Gartner, May 20, 2026 |
| B2B buyers who used generative AI during a purchase | 45% | Gartner, May 20, 2026 |
| Information sources buyers use in a typical purchase, on average | 7 | Gartner, May 20, 2026 |
| Reps and digital together | ||
| Likelihood of a high-quality deal when buyers use supplier digital tools with a rep, versus alone | 1.8× | Gartner, 2026 |
Gartner surveyed 645 B2B buyers from August to September 2025 and released findings in March and May 2026.
Both Gartner buyer surveys were fielded in August and September 2025 and published in 2026. Figures reflect stated preferences across B2B categories; interpret them in the context of your own market and buyers.
The cost of moving budget from lead generation to self-service
Funding the experience buyers actually use means funding less of something else.
Most sales and marketing organizations are still built to generate leads for conversations, with marketing filling the top of the funnel and sales closing in the meeting. If most buyers decide before they will take a meeting, that structure is built around a moment that matters a little less each year.
Rebalancing has real costs. Budget moves from lead generation toward content, digital tools, and review programs, and some lead volume metrics will likely fall, which can be uncomfortable to explain to a board. Sales also has to learn a different role, focused on validation and judgment instead of discovery. In return, you get a buying experience that matches how buyers want to buy, and sales conversations with better-prepared buyers. The strongest case for the change is the Gartner finding that buyers who combine digital tools with a well-timed rep are the most likely to reach a high-quality deal.
Four failure modes to watch for
Each one comes from designing for the old journey or overcorrecting away from it.
The first is measuring marketing only by leads handed to sales, which rewards activity in the part of the journey that now matters least. The second is gating the content buyers need to decide, such as pricing and comparisons behind a form, which pushes rep-free buyers toward competitors whose information is open. The third is overcorrecting into pure self-service with no easy way to reach a person, which fails buyers at the exact moment Gartner says they want human validation. The fourth is a rep who treats a well-researched, late-stage buyer like an early lead, which wastes the one conversation the buyer chose to have.
How to test the approach before you scale it
Find where self-service breaks before rebuilding the whole experience.
Pick three to five recent deals and walk through each one from the buyer's side. Ask whether a buyer could have reached the edge of a decision using only your public content, and note every point where they would have needed to ask someone. Fix those gaps first, with content that educates, answers objections, and helps buyers assess fit, then track whether new buyers arrive at sales conversations better prepared. If they do, expand the approach, and if they do not, you have learned where the real gaps are at a low cost.
Next, write a one-page guide to how a rep should handle a late-stage, self-educated buyer, and give it to a new member of the sales team. If they can follow it without coaching, the practice is most likely ready to scale.
What this likely means over the next 6 to 18 months
Expect more self-service, more AI in research, and more weight on the moments buyers choose to talk.
If current trends continue, more B2B buyers will research and compare vendors on their own and through AI tools, and fewer will want a rep involved early. At the same time, the moments when buyers do want a person will likely become more valuable, because that is where they check what AI told them and build confidence for their buying group. Gartner predicted in August 2025 that by 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritize human interaction over AI, which suggests the human role is shifting toward the end of the journey. Companies that build a strong self-service experience and pair it with reps who are ready to validate and advise are likely to be best placed for both trends.
If you want to see how AI tools describe your company to buyers researching on their own, Camino5's free AEO Invisibility Score shows you in about 30 seconds, with results delivered by email.
How to start today
Walk through your website as a buyer would and ask whether someone could reach the edge of a decision without talking to anyone, then list every point where they would get stuck.
Write down the five objections your sales team hears most, and check whether your public content answers each one plainly.
Publish at least one honest page or section that says who your main product is for and who it is not for.
Make it easy to reach a knowledgeable person from every key page, and route late-stage buyers to someone who can validate their choice instead of restarting a pitch.
Add one self-service measure, such as content-assisted deals or how prepared buyers are at the first meeting, to the same report as lead volume, so leadership sees both.
Most of your buyers will make their decision without you and then ask for a person near the end, so the practical work is to make your content strong enough for the first part and your reps ready for the second.