A demo request tells a B2B company when a buyer becomes visible. It does not tell the company when that buyer began to prefer a supplier. The practical implication of 6sense’s new research is to record the buyer’s starting position before treating a new lead as newly created demand.
Released on 2 November, the global study surveyed 4,611 recent B2B buyers. Its headline finding is that the supplier preferred before contact with sellers won 82% of the time. That is a reason to examine the work preceding the handoff, not a formula for assigning a fixed share of budget to brand advertising.
Read the European evidence on its own terms
The European report, co-produced with LeadFabric, reports an 84% win rate for the pre-contact favorite. The eventual winner appeared on the initial shortlist in 92% of cases. First seller contact came 57% through an average 10.3-month evaluation. These are European findings, not interchangeable substitutes for the global rate.
Both publications come from a vendor that sells B2B marketing and sales technology. The survey describes reported buyer experience; it does not randomly assign marketing exposure. Preference and winning can move together without establishing which campaign created the preference or how much incremental revenue a channel produced.
For management, the defensible question is narrower: does our handoff record whether we entered as a favorite, a credible alternative or an unfamiliar supplier? Without that distinction, strong sales execution and strong entry preference can become indistinguishable in the same pipeline report.
Add a neutral entry record to the sales handoff
At the first substantive conversation, ask what prompted the evaluation, which suppliers were considered before contact and whether the group had a preference. Ask what information helped the group reach its current view. Present these as discovery questions, not an attempt to obtain the answer marketing wants to hear.
Record the answer, when it was collected and whose perspective it represents. One contact may not know the whole buying group’s opinion. Preserve “unknown” and conflicting answers instead of inferring preference from a website visit, a download or a salesperson’s confidence.
Add these fields to an existing process before buying another tool. Agree who collects the evidence, who checks completeness and when sales may update a previous answer. The point is a credible entry state, not another compulsory field filled with guesses.
Build content for the group’s decision, not only the form
Use interviews and lost-opportunity reviews to separate two needs: understanding why the category deserves investment and understanding which supplier fits. Our recommendation is to make both visible in the content plan. A product comparison can help with supplier fit while leaving the internal case for any purchase unanswered.
For category justification, prepare an explanation of the business problem, the alternatives to buying and the assumptions a buyer must test. For supplier evaluation, show implementation boundaries, relevant evidence and the conditions under which your offer is a poor fit. Name the owner who can keep each resource current.
Prioritize the gaps buyers can describe. If conversations repeatedly reveal uncertainty about implementation effort, a clear implementation guide may be more useful than another broad awareness asset. This is a hypothesis to test with your buyers; the report does not prove that a particular content format will change a shortlist.
Compare entry cohorts without claiming causal attribution
Separate opportunities by reported entry preference and compare progression, eventual outcomes and reasons for changing suppliers. Keep category, deal size and market differences visible. A preference-based cohort can reveal an operating question even when it cannot identify the marketing activity responsible.
Review missing answers as carefully as wins. If only enthusiastic buyers answer the questions, the apparent advantage of the favorite group can be exaggerated. If sales learns the final outcome before recording the initial preference, retrospective explanations can contaminate the comparison.
Use the findings to select the next investigation: strengthen category evidence, clarify supplier fit or improve validation after contact. Sales still has meaningful work to do. The managerial change is to recognize the buyer’s history before the first recorded lead and measure that history with appropriate uncertainty.
Sources
- 6sense: 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report release (2 November 2026)
- 6sense and LeadFabric: 2026 European B2B Buyer Experience Report
