What B2B Buyers Expect From Sellers Today
Insights from more than 1,200 B2B buyers on what earns attention, builds trust, and supports real decisions.
Buyer purchasing behavior is vastly different than it was a few years ago. They have more information, more access, and less patience for conversations that don’t help them understand their situation. Many sales team still use approaches that don’t match what buyers respond to, which causes them to disengage early and reduces seller effectiveness.
Across teams and industries the same challenges appear: conversations that feel productive because the room is engaged and the right boxes get filled in the CRM, but don’t move anything forward; buyers who disappear after a discovery or demo call; and prospecting efforts that land with less impact than they used to. These outcomes point to misaligned expectations without revealing the underlying causes. Without knowing how people expect to be engaged, it’s hard to see which parts of the sales process support their evaluation and which parts interrupt it.
This report explains what more than 1,200 B2B buyers find useful, irrelevant, or frustrating during sales conversations, what earns their attention in the first conversation, and what causes them to disengage. It outlines the expectations buyers bring into evaluations, the behaviors that build credibility, and the patterns that make it harder for sellers to create movement.
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What’s Inside
The findings are organized around the key stages of the buying process and the interactions that shape a buyer’s willingness to continue the evaluation. Each section focuses on what buyers pay attention to, what they ignore, and where conversations start to break down.
How Buyers Move Through the Sales Process
Breaks down how buyers begin their evaluation, what they do before speaking with a rep, how often they rescope, and what accelerates or slows their progress. Covers:
- How buyers rank stages of the buying process
- How they prepare
- How they spend their time
- What moves deals forward
- What causes stalls
- How often buyers choose the wrong solution and why
What Buyers Respond to in Cold Outreach
Outlines what motivates a reply, what makes messaging relevant, and what stops buyers from responding. Includes:
- Preferred outreach types
- What earns a response
- What motivates a meeting
- Behaviors buyers want sellers to avoid
- How often outreach leads to a purchase
What Buyers Want in the First Meeting
Highlights the gap between what buyers want covered and what most sellers focus on. Details:
- Topics buyers find valuable
- Topics buyers consider irrelevant
- Reasons buyers hold back information
- Signals that discovery is losing momentum
What Buyers Need in Demos and Presentations
Shows the factors that make demos useful versus forgettable. Focuses on:
- The demo elements buyers value most
- How personalization affects effectiveness
- What standard demos overlook
- How often core demo components are missing
How Buyers Make Decisions
Breaks down how buyers compare vendors, evaluate risk, and choose between similar solutions. Includes:
- What influences decisions when options look comparable
- Whether price drives final decisions
- How often buyers exceed budget and why
- What increases confidence in making a change
- Why buyers go dark and what re-engages them
What Buyers Value in Salespeople
Identifies the skills and behaviors that build trust, improve decision confidence, and increase purchase likelihood. Covers:
- Skills that shape buying decisions
- Behaviors that build or weaken trust
- What buyers dislike most
- How credibility influences the entire evaluation
Who This Report Is For
Organizations reviewing why opportunities progress unevenly will find these insights essential. The data outlines the buyer reactions that shape each stage of the evaluation and the moments that create friction.
It’s built for:
- Sales reps who want to see how buyers interpret their approach
- Sales leaders looking for patterns affecting early conversations and deal progression
- Enablement teams shaping training around what buyers value
- Revenue Operations reviewing how buyer behavior influences movement through the process
- Founders and CEOs who participate directly in selling
Each role can use the findings to adjust how conversations are prepared and delivered throughout the buying process.
FAQ
What makes this survey worth reviewing?
It gives a grounded view of how people move through evaluations and what they respond to during sales conversations. The findings point to the specific moments that influence whether an interaction continues or stalls and highlight the behaviors that strengthen or weaken a seller’s impact.
Who participated in the survey?
More than 1,200 B2B buyers across industries and company sizes in the United States and Canada. Respondents shared how they evaluate outreach, discovery, demos, and late-stage decisions.
Does the survey cover both early and late-stage conversations?
Yes. The questions explore how people prepare before engaging a rep, what they value in initial conversations, how they view demos, and what drives their final decision.
Will the findings apply to my team?
Teams selling into any B2B environment will recognize the patterns. The insights focus on behaviors and expectations common across industries, deal sizes, and internal structures.
Are there recommendations for improving conversations?
Each section highlights the approaches people respond to and the moments where conversations begin to break down. Readers can use the insights to adjust preparation, questioning, and overall structure during evaluations.
Is this focused on enterprise or mid-market?
The responses include a mix of company sizes. The expectations people describe, preparation, relevance, understanding of their situation, appear consistently across segments.
About A Sales Growth Company
A Sales Growth Company builds sales training and enablement programs based on Gap Selling. The approach centers on helping sellers understand the problems buyers are working through, the impact of those problems, and the causes driving them. Training is built around uncovering this information in outreach, discovery, demos, and deal conversations.
The findings in this survey reinforce what we see every day inside revenue organizations: many selling approaches don’t match what buyers expect. People want relevance, preparation, and conversations that help them make sense of their situation. This report highlights those expectations and gives teams a clearer view of where interactions begin to lose momentum.
Our work focuses on helping organizations close that gap and run a sales process that aligns with how buying decisions are made.
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