AI didn’t rewrite the B2B buying journey. It just hid the parts you used to see.
Your buyers still research for months. They still rely on an average of seven information sources. What changed is where that research happens, and how little of it lands in your CRM. A serious buyer now opens with a paragraph, not a keyword, then asks an AI to build a shortlist and explain the trade-offs. No website visit. No form fill. No record. And 68% of Google searches now end without a click at all.
So the old dashboards feel emptier. The temptation is to buy more signal to fill the gap. That’s exactly the wrong move.
Informa TechTarget Tara Faulkner on Intent Data
That’s the argument Tara Faulkner, VP of Campaigns and Demand Generation at Informa TechTarget, makes in her standout contribution to this report. She spent a decade on the buying side of intent data, defending the line item to her CEO every year and sitting through every sales pitch under the sun. Her verdict is refreshingly blunt: “Don’t spend another dime on intent without taking a hard look at what happens to the signal you already have. A strong signal fumbled by poor processes produces the same result as a bad one.”
Faulkner shares the two questions every signal must pass before it touches your stack. Can you name the person, not just the company? Did the engagement actually happen, or did a model guess from an IP address? Her own numbers make the case. At her last company, 80% of prospects who took a meeting became real opportunities, but only 13% of flagged leads ever reached that meeting. That’s not a demand problem. That’s a follow-up problem, and no amount of premium data fixes it.
The report pairs her insider view with practical guidance from leaders at 6sense, NetLine, DerivateX and The Vomela Companies. Preference forms early, front-runners win 80% of the time, and the teams that read the buying group first win the deal.
Download the report to learn:
- What AI actually changed about the B2B buying journey, and what stayed exactly the same
- How to use intent data with precision, from reading signals over time to matching your response to the buying stage
- How to stay discoverable in the AI era, with content strategies that earn citations across chatbots, AI overviews and communities
Win earlier. Get the full report.
