Nicky Turnbull, Strategy Director at VML South Africa, says B2B marketing has a new problem. For once, it is not technological, it is all human. There is this persistent belief in B2B marketing that deals are won in the pipeline. In reality, they are won much earlier, often before the process even formally begins.
Buyers are researching, shortlisting and forming preferences long before they engage with suppliers. So by the time a conversation happens, the outcome is already leaning somewhere.
The data reflects this clearly: 61% of buyers make a decision before speaking to sales, 81% of deals go to the first-choice vendor, and 95% of winners are already on the shortlist from day one. That means if your brand is not known early enough to be considered, it will not be chosen later.
It Starts And Ends With Humans
It makes sense that AI is accelerating this behaviour change, but it is not happening in the way many marketers assume.
Most buyers are not starting from zero. These are experienced decision-makers who arrive with a point of view already formed. They have often been through multiple buying cycles before, understand their categories, and already have a shortlist in mind. So the buying journey starts in their heads, not necessarily with Copilot.
Where AI does come in is in the validation phase. AI helps buyers compare, validate their assumptions, and sense-check their choices. It is not creating the shortlist, but it may be reinforcing it.
Only humans can go ahead and commit, however. AI increasingly shapes what gets discovered, interpreted and surfaced, but when the time comes to make a decision, it is humans who are making the final call. The question is, why are they taking so long?
The Collective Bottleneck
To understand why decisions are slowing down, we need to look beyond the individual and towards the group.
B2B decisions are rarely made by one person. They are made by buying groups, typically involving around ten stakeholders, many of whom never engage directly with suppliers.
This makes traditional lead-based thinking increasingly inadequate. A ‘lead’ represents only a fraction of the decision-making reality. The true task is to influence a network of stakeholders, all with different priorities, pressures and perspectives.
It is not an easy task, and even when you get it right, there is still another barrier to contend with.
Hesitation Under Pressure
In B2B, your greatest competitor is often not another brand, but simple indecision. Research shows that 63% of deals fail because of inaction, while 40% are abandoned before completion.
Those are opportunities that just disappeared. And often it is not that the buyers lacked information. In fact, they may have been overwhelmed by it. What they really lack is confidence. When confidence is lacking, buyers don’t focus on whether a solution is right, so much as whether the decision is safe: to sign, defend, and stand by even if things go wrong.
The truth is, in environments defined by risk, scrutiny and multiple stakeholders, the cost of being wrong often outweighs the benefit of being right. So, when in doubt, many choose to do nothing.
Helping Buyers Buy
When you approach it from that point of view, it is no longer enough for marketing to enable sales. Marketing must enable the buyer.
The hardest part of B2B is choosing between options. That is why the most effective organisations focus on building familiarity long before any sign of intent. They shape how buyers understand the category. And they establish trust early, so that when decision time comes, they’re not simply one option among many, but the preferred option.
The challenge is that most buyers aren’t actively in-market at any given time. And because it is hard to predict exactly when they will be, being purely reactive will not work. Instead, marketers must maintain an always-on presence of consistent, relevant visibility that builds familiarity over time. That way, when intent does emerge, you are not trying to create engagement from zero, but rather building on an established foundation of awareness and credibility.
Human First, Not System First
This is where a Human First perspective becomes essential. Yes, AI can generate signals, content and activity. But more does not necessarily mean better. Signals alone do not create understanding. They indicate when something might be happening, but not what it means.
As one insight captured succinctly, signals tell you when to show up, but it is how you interpret those signals that determines what you do when you get there. And for that, you need an understanding of the context, the organisational dynamics, and the pressures influencing each stakeholder within the buying group.
In other words, you need the kind of complex human variables that cannot be automated.
From Personalisation To Relevance
For years, B2B marketing has focused heavily on personalisation. But while it seemed like a good strategy in theory, in practice a lot of this has been superficial, relying on basic signals, like company names or industry references.
Buyers do not disengage because the messaging is not personalised. They disengage because it means nothing to them. The data supports this. While 71% of marketers believe their brand stands out, 68% of buyers feel that brands sound the same.
Being relevant means understanding what buyers are dealing with on the ground. It means getting to grips with their context, constraints, and the outcomes they are accountable for. That is a strategic capability, not a creative execution.
Impact Is Human
As AI continues to reduce the cost and effort of execution, the risk is that marketing becomes a volume exercise: more content, more campaigns, more activity. But ‘more’ doesn’t drive decisions. In fact, often it has the opposite effect, making messaging unnecessarily complex and diluting its meaning.
The moments that ultimately move decisions forward are human. It is the conversation that reframes a problem; the interaction that demonstrates real understanding; the experience that builds trust across a buying group. Because at its core, a B2B decision is a commitment to an outcome, and a willingness to be accountable for it.
It is tempting to prioritise volume and efficiency. But the role of marketing is not simply to inform or persuade; it is to give people the confidence to decide. That takes empathy. And empathy needs humans.
VML SOUTH AFRICA
https://www.vml.com/south-africa
