The awareness and problem-solving stages of the buyer's journey, which historically relied on website content and search, are being fundamentally altered. Buyers now use AI to get synthesized, "unbiased" information, bypassing vendor websites entirely for their initial research, thus removing key intent signals for marketing teams.

Buyers now use AI to arrive with a full research dossier on your product, pricing, and competitors. This changes the GTM role from persuading customers with clever messaging to enabling their decision-making. The new focus is helping buyers quickly experience your product's value on their own terms.

Leverage AI to conduct comprehensive research on a prospect's company, industry, and the specific individuals you're meeting. This allows you to bypass basic discovery questions and dive into more relevant, informed conversations, making the sales call more efficient and valuable for the customer.

Previously, buyers considered only 2-3 vendors. AI tools now allow them to easily evaluate up to 10, meaning your competitive landscape has expanded. Sales teams must use these same AI tools to research who is being surfaced alongside them and adjust their competitive positioning accordingly.

G2's research shows a dramatic acceleration in AI adoption for B2B purchasing. The percentage of buyers starting their journey with an LLM surged from 29% to 50% in just four months. This signals a fundamental, non-negotiable shift in buyer behavior that marketing strategies must immediately address.

With buyers completing nearly 80% of their research using tools like Generative AI before vendor contact, the linear funnel is dead. Traditional metrics like MQLs and SQLs are meaningless. Go-to-market strategies must be rewritten to influence buyers during their independent, non-linear discovery phase.

AI is making buyer journeys non-linear and compressed. Instead of a linear funnel, GTM strategy must shift to a continuous, customer-centric "flywheel" model. Buyers conduct deep research upfront, making direct sales engagement optional for some and requiring an always-on, value-first approach.

Marketers focus on using AI as a new tool, but the more profound shift is that customers now use AI for research, comparison, and even RFP generation, fundamentally altering the buying journey before they ever interact with a brand.

The rise of AI agents means website traffic will increasingly be non-human. B2B marketers must rethink their playbooks to optimize for how AI models interpret and surface their content, a practice emerging as "AI Engine Optimization" (AEO), as agents become the primary researchers.