Key Takeaways
- B2B buying groups choose the vendor they favored before contacting a seller 82% of the time, and vendors left off the initial shortlist have less than a 10% chance of winning.
- While 81% of buyers use an LLM during evaluations, only 26% use one to discover vendors, relying instead on existing knowledge and internal discussions.
6sense’s annual 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report finds the buying journey does not start when the evaluation starts— buyers keep up with vendors between purchases, enter evaluations with preferences already formed, and choose the vendor they favored before contacting a seller 82% of the time.
Buyers in all buying group roles have 6-8 previous evaluation cycles in relevant solution categories, and nearly all (96%) stay up to date on vendors and solutions between purchases, most often through vendor websites (36%). Their views move during that time: 71% of buyers say their view of vendors changed somewhat or significantly between cycles.
As a result, when buying groups form, most (73%) have two or more vendor preferences in place already, and the winner is on that list 92% of the time. The buying group’s job is more deliberation than discovery. This is possible because most relevant vendors have been around for a decade or more, and in software roughly 90% are at least 10 years old.
Why Does Making the Initial Vendor Shortlist Matter So Much?
The study surveyed 4,611 recent B2B buyers across North America, APAC, Continental Europe, and the UK and Ireland.
“Vendors are being evaluated continually— between and within evaluation cycles,” said Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense in a statement. “Buyers spend those periods following vendors and revising their views. Initial vendor shortlists are formed from the collective preferences of the buying group, and a vendor that doesn’t make that initial list has a less than 10% chance of winning.”
How Do B2B Buyers Use LLMs During Vendor Evaluations?
Most buyers use an LLM somewhere in an evaluation (81%, down from 94% last year), and they use it to sort, summarize, and validate what they already know. Only 26% use LLMs to discover vendors. Instead, new vendor discovery is a more organic process, which takes place through buyers’ complex network of influences. Before contacting a seller, 21% cite LLMs as an influence on their view of vendors, compared with 34% who cite their own existing knowledge and 32% who cite internal discussions.
Buying groups spend roughly 60% of an average 10.3-month buying cycle in the selection phase, the stage before they contact a seller. In it, the group works out whether the category deserves investment and which vendor it prefers. More than half of buyers (56%) say justifying the category is as difficult as, or more difficult than, selecting a vendor. By the time the validation phase begins at seller contact, the group has a favorite, and that vendor wins 82% of the time.
What Triggers a B2B Evaluation and Predicts Its Outcome?
Advances in available technology are the most common reason evaluations begin (39%). The reason also predicts the outcome. Internal growth needs were cited in 34% of evaluations that ended in a purchase and 19% of those that stalled or were abandoned. Dissatisfaction with the current solution shows the reverse pattern: it was cited in 11% of purchases and 22% of stalled or abandoned evaluations.
“What many revenue teams think of as the sales cycle is really the validation phase of a selection process that has already been unfolding for multiple quarters,” Cunningham added. “The journey doesn’t start when the evaluation starts.”
The 2026 Global B2B Buyer Experience Report is available for download here.
