How B2B buyers shortlist agencies before they contact one

By the time a prospect writes to you, most of the decision has been made without you in the room. The work is to be in the room earlier, without being there.

Written by the Colleviate Strategy desk

What the study found

6sense's 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, as summarised by CustomerThink, found that the average first contact between buyer and seller now happens when the buyer is 61 percent of the way through the buying process, down from 69 percent in earlier studies. Buying groups evaluated about five vendors and filled four of those five places on their shortlist on the first day. 94 percent of buyers ranked their shortlist by preference before they contacted anyone, and 6sense's own page puts the winner's presence on the day-one list at 95 percent.

Read it with care. The data is 6sense's, drawn from its own buyer survey and platform, in markets where it sells, mainly software and technology services. It is not an Indian agency benchmark, and the company itself describes the ratios as directional. The direction, though, is consistent with how considered purchases work: people form a view first and use the first conversation to confirm it.

What that means for an agency

If the shortlist is mostly set before contact, then a prospect who writes to you is already leaning your way, and a prospect who never writes to you may have ruled you out without you knowing. Your marketing is judged in the silent part of the process. Three things build the shortlist:

• Prior experience and recommendation. People shortlist agencies they know or were told about. This is the oldest channel and the strongest, and it is why the first ninety days with an agency and how an engagement ends are marketing too.
• Search and AI answers. The question “who should we hire for this” is now put to assistants as well as search engines. Whether you are named is measurable, as in how to track whether AI answers name your brand.
• Things a buyer can inspect without talking to you. Published prices or ranges, as in a pricing page that sells, and work you can describe in detail.

Where it matters most

In sectors where the buyer is a specialist and the purchase is considered, as in manufacturing and industrial marketing and professional services marketing, the shortlist is built from a small number of trusted names and a few deliberate searches. A brand that exists only in paid media is easy to skip. Share of search for B2B is one way to see whether yours is in the set at all.

A test you can run

1. Ask your last five clients, in a sentence, how they first heard of you and who else they considered. You will learn more from five answers than from a funnel report.
2. Ask the same of the last three you lost.
3. Run your category's buyer questions through the main assistants and search, ten times each, and see whether you appear.
4. Write down the first place a stranger could verify you. If it is a contact form, there is nothing yet for them to inspect.

None of this replaces the rest of the programme, as B2B lead generation in India sets out. It changes what the programme is trying to do: be known well enough before the first call that the first call is short.