{
  "schema_version": "1.1",
  "id": "b2b-buyers-57-percent-before-sales",
  "slug": "b2b-buyers-57-percent-before-sales",
  "url": "https://groundedkit.com/claims/b2b-buyers-57-percent-before-sales/",
  "api_url": "https://groundedkit.com/api/claims/b2b-buyers-57-percent-before-sales.json",
  "claim": "B2B buyers are 57% through the purchase decision before talking to sales",
  "commonly_cited_as": "\"Buyers are 57% (or 70%) done before contacting a vendor\" (as current)",
  "verdict": "outdated",
  "verdict_definition": "Source found and quoted correctly, but old enough that the market has changed.",
  "confidence": "high",
  "rating": {
    "value": 3,
    "best": 5,
    "worst": 1
  },
  "origin": {
    "publisher": "CEB Marketing Leadership Council (with Google)",
    "title": "The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing",
    "year": "2012"
  },
  "quote": "the average customer had completed 57% of the purchase decision-making process prior to engaging a supplier sales rep directly.",
  "method": "CEB Marketing Leadership Council Customer Purchase Research Survey, 2011: 1,500+ customer contacts (decision makers and influencers in a recent major purchase) of 22 large B2B suppliers.",
  "drift": [
    "Date: 14 years old, quoted as current"
  ],
  "interest": "CEB (now Gartner) sells sales and marketing advisory.",
  "safe_rephrasing": "CEB research from 2012 found B2B buyers were on average 57% through the purchase process before engaging a sales rep.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "CEB/Google: The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing (2012, PDF)",
      "url": "https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/677/the-digital-evolution-in-b2b-marketing_research-studies.pdf",
      "primary": true
    },
    {
      "title": "Strategy+Design — quoting CEB 2012",
      "url": "https://strategydesign.co/how-multi-channel-marketing-enables-dialogue-with-sales/",
      "primary": false
    }
  ],
  "kind": "stat_check",
  "as_of": "2012",
  "last_checked": "2026-10-16",
  "stale": false,
  "date_reviewed": "2026-10-16",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}