Buyers are engaging with vendors sooner, but not for the reasons you may think. Here’s what’s really driving it

The 6sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report was released at 6sense’s Breakthrough customer conference, and there are some important findings vendors should know as they look to generative AI to help them get on the radar of prospective buyers.

The report provides an annual overview of how the buyer journey is evolving and the factors that may be driving change.

The decision-making process hasn’t changed - mostly

In the past two reports (here’s a summary of the 2023 report), it was found that there are two main phases of the buyer journey: the selection phase, where buyers spend the bulk of their time researching and building their shortlist, and the validation phase, where buyers validate the shortlist and select a winner. The entire process took about eleven months.

A year later, what’s changed? Well, the buyer journey is now about a month shorter, but more importantly, buyers ...