Buyer Perspective · October 2026 · 3 min read

The buyer's dilemma

They don't want a sales rep. They don't trust the alternative. And they can't decide without help.

Picture a buying team three months into a decision. Seven sources of information. An AI summary that sounds authoritative. Six people with opinions, two of them with budgets. And still no agreement on what to do.

That team is not unusual. It is the modern B2B buyer, and new research from Gartner shows the bind they are in.

What the research says

Gartner surveyed around 645 B2B buyers in late 2025 (two surveys, of 646 and 645) and published the results this spring. Three findings stand out.

Most buyers would rather not deal with a rep at all. 67% say they prefer a rep-free buying experience. They want to research, compare and decide on their own terms.

But they don't trust what they find on their own. 45% used generative AI in a recent purchase. Yet 51% say they are more likely to get misleading information from AI, and 49% say the same of a sales rep. Call it a draw. Buyers trust neither source fully.

So they go back to the rep anyway. 69% of buyers (Gartner, May 2026, from the same late-2025 fieldwork) prefer to validate what AI tells them with a sales rep. And when asked who actually helps, buyers rated reps well ahead of AI: 39 points more likely to say a rep understood their needs, 32 points more likely to say a rep made them feel confident in the decision, 28 points more likely to say a rep helped them move to the next step.

That confidence matters. Gartner found that buyers who felt confident in their decision were twice as likely to report a high-quality deal, meaning a purchase they were satisfied with afterwards, compared with buyers who felt unsure.

The dilemma

Put those findings together and the picture is clear. Buyers want to go it alone. Going it alone leaves them unsure. And unsure buyers do one of two things: they stall, or they buy less than they planned.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable part for sales teams. The thing buyers are avoiding is the pitch. Discovery questions they've answered a dozen times. A demo of features they've already read about. A proposal shaped to fit a spreadsheet. Most sales motions are built around exactly the behaviour that makes buyers want a rep-free experience in the first place.

The rep's job has flipped

For decades, a rep's value was information. The buyer didn't know the market, the options or the product, and the rep did.

That advantage is gone. Buyers have more information than they can use. What they lack is someone to help them sort it, check it and feel sure about the decision. That is the job now, and it is the one thing the research says reps do far better than AI.

Our take: buyers aren't fed up with reps. They're fed up with being sold to.

What the reps buyers want to talk to do differently

The reps who still get the second meeting have changed how they work from the first conversation.

1. They start with what the buyer already knows. Confirm it, correct it where it's wrong, and add what's missing. Repeating the website is the fastest way to lose the room.
2. They show the product when asked, after a short check. "We're ready to show you. First, help us understand what you're trying to solve, so the demo is relevant." In our own selling, most buyers offered that choice talked first.
3. They lay out the real options. Including the one every buyer is weighing: do nothing. A rep who can honestly say "you may not need us for this" is the one who gets called when they do.
4. They arm the champion for the room they're not in. Much of a deal is decided in internal conversations the rep never sees. The buyer needs the case, the options and the risks in a form they can carry to colleagues.

None of this is faster than pitching. It is more effective, because it answers the dilemma instead of adding to it.