# The New Sales Moment

**Referrals. AI. Positioning.**

Mavenray presentation for Microsoft partner leadership

## 01. The change

### The buyer stopped waiting for you.

Buyers are doing more of the work alone, with AI beside them. Sales did not disappear. Its moment moved.

- **67%** prefer a rep-free buying experience.
- **70%** prefer a fully digital, self-service experience.
- **45%** used AI during a recent purchase.
- **69%** still turn to a sales rep to validate what AI told them.

The fourth number is the point. Sellers are not obsolete. They have been relocated from information delivery to validation, judgment, and confidence.

Source: [Gartner survey of 645 B2B buyers, 2025](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-20-gartner-survey-finds-sixty-nine-percent-of-b-two-b-buyers-turn-to-sales-reps-to-validate-ai-generated-insights)

## 02. The buyer's journey

### Starting sooner is more valuable, and more difficult.

When the buyer does the early work with AI, your first chance to matter moves downstream. Enter late and you defend scope, timing, and price. Become known earlier and your point of view helps shape the decision.

The journey moves through five moments:

1. **Need surfaces:** Before the search.
2. **Buyer asks AI:** Questions form.
3. **Shortlist forms:** Criteria harden.
4. **Sales engaged:** Differences narrow.
5. **Decision:** Price carries weight.

If you first appear when sales is engaged, the buyer already has a shortlist and a point of view. You enter as another option to compare, with less commercial leverage and more pressure on price.

Move the entry point earlier and the effect changes. When you are already known and trusted, your point of view can frame the problem, influence what the buyer asks AI, shape the shortlist, and protect more of the value you create.

The directional commercial effects show up across:

- Customer acquisition cost
- Close rate
- Lifetime value, including the dollar value of longer relationships and lower churn
- Billable rate

## 03. Three ways out of the loop

1. **Referrals**
2. **AI**
3. **Positioning**

## 04. Create your own referrals

### Create more referrals, build trust earlier.

Build a portfolio of small starts. Then run the same recipe: expand, repeat, or earn the next introduction.

### The common model

Work the same accounts until the work runs out. Revenue looks dependable, then one budget shift leaves a hole in the pipeline.

The pipeline is concentrated in a few large accounts. We keep returning to the same clients for more work until a budget changes, a sponsor leaves, or the need simply dries up.

### The engineered model

Create more starting points. Offer a focused, useful project that is easy to approve. Then use a repeatable account recipe to turn the result into:

- Larger work
- Recurring work
- A warm introduction
- A completed project that ends without taking the portfolio with it

Not every small account will expand. Not every client will refer. The advantage comes from having enough small starts, and a deliberate next step for each one, that the outcomes compound across the portfolio.

That lets you get ahead of AI's influence on discovery. You are not waiting to be selected from an AI-generated shortlist. You are creating more trusted relationships that produce good old-fashioned referrals, engineered on purpose.

## 05. Sell to AI

### Their AI is already researching this.

Build something useful for that research and their AI becomes a referral channel.

The buyer's AI is already identifying requirements, surfacing options, and drafting a shortlist. A useful tool can create momentum while keeping your expertise embedded in the process.

### Example: Build Your ERP RFP

The buyer starts with a rough problem:

> Our ERP is slowing down a growing, multi-site manufacturing business.

The tool helps the buyer structure:

1. Requirements
2. Processes
3. Integrations
4. Risks

The result is an AI-ready working brief with the context and instructions the buyer's own assistant needs to continue.

**Buyer context → Useful tool → Their AI continues → Your expertise**

## 06. Say what AI cannot

### What can you tell me that AI can't?

AI can summarize what you do. Your advantage is what it cannot originate: lived experience, earned judgment, and proof from doing the work.

### Thought leadership changes the commercial path

- **90% sales receptivity:** Buyers are more receptive when a company with a useful point of view reaches out.
- **23% new business:** Among buyers who discovered a new need through thought leadership, 23% later hired or bought from the company behind it.
- **60% pricing power:** Buyers would pay a premium to work with a company whose thinking they value.

Source: [2024 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report](https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2024-02/_2024%20Edelman-LinkedIn%20B2B%20Thought%20Leadership%20Impact%20Report%20Final.pdf?previewMode=true)

### Your website carries the answer

A buyer may arrive from a referral, a proposal, an AI answer, or search. They already have a need and are trying to answer a more specific question: **Why you?**

The first 10 seconds are critical to the stay-or-leave decision. A broad B2B benchmark also found that visitors viewed about two pages per visit and spent roughly two minutes on desktop.

In that short window, the buyer wants to know:

1. Do you understand my exact problem?
2. Have you solved it before?
3. What do you see that others miss?

The next test is increasingly simple:

> **Does my AI agent like you?**
>
> I put your URL into ChatGPT. It is reading your whole site for me, so I do not have to. What does it think?

And then:

> **Do I trust you?**
>
> 73% of B2B buyers trust what a company teaches more than what its marketing claims.

“Certified Dynamics Partner” says one thing.

**“We've untangled forty ERP migrations for mid-market manufacturers, and here's what actually breaks”** says something else.

Sources:

- [Nielsen Norman Group: How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-long-do-users-stay-on-web-pages/)
- [Clear Digital: User Engagement Metrics for B2B Websites](https://www.cleardigital.com/insights/user-engagement-metrics-for-b2b-websites)
- [2024 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report](https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2024-02/_2024%20Edelman-LinkedIn%20B2B%20Thought%20Leadership%20Impact%20Report%20Final.pdf?previewMode=true)

## The recap

**Referrals. AI. Positioning.**

[Continue the conversation](mailto:hello@mavenray.com?subject=The%20New%20Sales%20Moment)

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