Buyers are now researching, comparing, and short-listing using AI tools before any seller is engaged. The seller’s information advantage has collapsed.
What remains is execution: who can stand up the proof of value fastest, who can navigate the buyer’s ecosystem, who can close. Co-sell partners become the differentiator because they shorten the path between “this looks promising” and “this is in production.”
Practical implication for partnerships: the partner’s value isn’t introducing the buyer to a vendor — the buyer already knows the vendor. The partner’s value is operational integration: the cloud already runs there, the SI already has the team, the ISV already shipped the connector. Co-sell becomes the primary route to faster TTV.
What practitioners ask
- “Who is the AI-era B2B buyer?”
- “How are B2B buyers using AI in the purchase process?”
The answer
The AI-era B2B buyer is the purchaser who arrives with an AI agent — or AI-assisted research — that has already done the vendor work. They have read the analyst notes, run the comparisons, surfaced the customer reviews, and short-listed providers before any seller is engaged. Gartner’s 2025 buyer survey found that 45% of B2B buyers used AI tools during a recent purchase, and 67% now prefer a rep-free purchasing experience. The seller’s information advantage is gone.
The shift is generational as much as technological. Forrester reports that more than two-thirds of large B2B transactions (over $1M) are now driven by Millennial and Gen Z buyers — and more than 90% of those using AI for major decisions report positive outcomes, evaluating five or more providers per purchase. Industry analyses converge on a familiar number: buyers complete roughly 61% of their research before contacting a vendor. By the time a sales rep enters the conversation, the field has been narrowed.
What this means for sellers — and for the partnerships function in particular — is that the win condition has moved downstream. If buyers already know the vendor, the differentiator is no longer awareness; it’s execution. Who can prove value fastest? Who already runs in the buyer’s cloud? Who has the SI bench, the connector, the integration with the data platform the buyer has standardized on? Forrester’s framing is that modern B2B “buying networks” now explicitly include AI agents alongside partners and external influencers — and that providers must respond by treating co-sell partners and provider-side agents as part of the same revenue surface.
The partnership implication is direct. The partner’s value is no longer introducing the buyer to a vendor — the buyer already knows the vendor. The partner’s value is operational integration: the cloud already runs there, the SI already has the team, the ISV already shipped the connector. Co-sell becomes the primary route to faster time-to-value, and the partnership motion has to be operational at machine speed to keep up with a buyer who is already moving at machine speed.
Related concepts
- Integration-First Buyer — the buyer’s procurement criterion has shifted from features to “does it run where I already run?”
- Co-Sell Convergence — why co-sell becomes the central GTM motion when sellers lose the information advantage
- Agentic Execution — what partners need to match a buyer-side agent’s pace
- Live Deal Context — the data substrate the partner side needs to act in time
- Manual as Default — the operational state most partnership teams are still stuck in
- Justin Graci — HubSpot’s perspective on AEO and visibility when the buyer is the AI