Want to Win More Tech Deals? Get in Early, Stay Visible, and Influence the Buying Vision

In 2025 and Beyond, Outdated Sales Tactics Are Your Biggest Liability

Tech buyers aren’t making decisions the way they used to — and they certainly don’t make them the way most sales teams expect. If you’re failing to publish thought leadership, waiting for buyer intent signals before engaging, focusing your pitch on product features, or trying to win deals by undercutting competitors on price, you’re likely to lose most of your deals.

Buyers are doing their own research long before they ever speak to a salesperson. By the time they reach out, they’ve probably already chosen their preferred vendor. In fact, according to a Harvard Business Review article, most B2B buyers start their search with a shortlist already in mind — and 90% of the time, they end up buying from that day-one list.

That means your sales team has a narrow window of opportunity: if you’re not on that list from the start, your chances of winning the deal drop dramatically.

The New Reality for Tech Sales

To win more deals, you must engage with buyers before they start actively shopping. That means:

• Building brand awareness early so you’re a known entity when buyers start their search.
• Publishing insightful, data-backed content that shapes how buyers define their needs and evaluate solutions.
• Positioning yourself as a trusted advisor — so when buyers are ready to engage, they see you as an expert they trust, not just another vendor.

If you’re waiting until buyers ask for a demo, you’re competing for scraps. The real battle is won before the buying journey even begins.

How Buyers Build Their Shortlist — And Why It’s So Hard to Break In

A survey by Bain and Google found that most B2B buyers narrow their options early in the process. Sellers mistakenly assume they can persuade buyers later with superior offerings, but that’s not how it works today. By the time a Tech buyer reaches out to vendors, they’ve likely already picked their favorite, and that decision has a lot to do with brand awareness. The selection process is influenced by:

• Pre-existing brand awareness – If they’ve never heard of you, you won’t be on the list.
• Thought leadership and buyer education – Companies that proactively shape the buyer’s thinking early in the journey are more likely to be considered.
• Multi-stakeholder influence – Tech purchases involve multiple stakeholders, and each one has their own input.
• Previous experience with a vendor – most vendors get shortlisted because someone on the buying committee has had prior experience with them.

Buyers don’t start with a blank slate. Before they ever visit your website, they’ve already formed opinions about the key players in your space. Their shortlist is shaped by brand awareness, thought leadership, peer recommendations, and past experiences — not by the vendors who happen to show up in their inboxes at the right time.

Once that list is set, getting them to reconsider is an uphill battle. So the real question isn’t how to sell once they reach out — it’s how to make sure you’re one of the few vendors they’re already considering.

And that’s where thought leadership comes in.

Here's more on what you need to know about connecting with B2B buyers(from Google).

Why Thought Leadership Puts You on the Shortlist (And Ignoring It Keeps You Off)

The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report found that 75% of buyers and C-suite executives say thought leadership has prompted them to research a product or service they weren’t previously considering. 

Even more telling, 60% of decision-makers say high-quality thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium to work with a company.

For tech vendors, this translates to a major opportunity. Instead of waiting for buyers to reach out, you should be proactively educating them on industry trends, key challenges, and solutions before they even realize they need you.

That means your prime directive should be to get on their radar.

But you also have to make sure that thought leadership is accessible, because AI is changing everything. 

The Changing Research Process: AI is Reshaping B2B Buying

AI is dramatically changing the buying experience. A few months ago, we met with a buyer (let’s call him “Dave”) who was evaluating ERP products like Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage Intacct and Netsuite. Dave was using AI to do almost all of his research. It wasn’t a simple process. He had compiled hundreds of pages and worksheets as he evaluated the various tools. And Dave specifically told us that when vendors don’t provide access to content he needs for the analysis, he tends to disregard that provider. This was having a particularly severe impact on the partners who will ultimately be called on to do the implementation. 

Dave specifically said that vendor demo pages are a blocking factor in his research (giving high praise to the Acumatica Resource Center for its cache of useful information). If they require a demo with a salesperson to access specific resources, he just moves on.

He’s not alone. According to the research, this approach to buying is growing rapidly.

AI Adoption in B2B Buying

A 2024 Forrester study found that 89% of B2B buyers have adopted generative AI in at least one area of their purchasing process, and nearly 95% anticipate using it to support their decision and purchase process in the next 12 months. AI has leaped from an emerging trend to a dominant force in B2B buying, with its role growing across every phase of the purchase journey.

And that means that vendors have to dramatically change the way we facilitate and inform that buying process. Gone are the days when you could hide pricing. Gone are the days when you can force a customer to talk to a salesperson before they’re ready. If you don’t allow them access to the information they need while they’re doing their research, you’ll just get ignored. 

AI’s Expanding Role Across the Buying Cycle

Buyers are leveraging AI at every stage:

• Discovery Phase: Buyers use AI to research vendors, develop business cases, create shortlists, and identify best practices.
• Evaluation Phase: AI assists with writing RFPs, analyzing RFP responses, comparing vendors, and validating offerings.
• Commitment Phase: AI helps justify purchases, refine business cases, and finalize selections. It can even support price negotiations.

Since AI serves as a primary self-service research tool, you’ll have to optimize your content for AI-powered search tools to ensure visibility in the buyer’s journey.

AI is Expanding Vendor Consideration & Reintermediation

In contrast to the way customers were building shortlists in 2022 based on the Bain study, now, buyers can use AI to discover vendors they might not have considered. AI is reducing barriers to vendor evaluation. So in 2025 and beyond, we expect that AI is likely to change the way buyers build their shortlists.

AI allows buyers to efficiently surface and explore more options. Forrester predicts that AI-driven search will increase vendor consideration, meaning buyers are more likely to evaluate five or more providers for large purchases. But this means that vendors need to be publishing strong content that addresses early buyer needs as they’re just starting their research. If you’re not publishing content the AI tools can access and being ever-present in industry discussions, your offering probably won’t be surfaced.

Trust & Validation Remain Key Factors

While AI improves efficiency, hallucinations are a real problem. Buyers are not blindly trusting AI; they are validating its output through additional research, influencer opinions, and peer networks. Your content has to be easily findable by GenAI, AI-assisted search, and traditional search methods. So that means your content has to be findable, accurate, authoritative, and AI-friendly, so AI tools pull reliable information that leads buyers back to their solutions.

Trust & Validation: Why Thought Leadership Is Your Competitive Edge

AI may be reshaping how buyers research solutions, but it hasn’t replaced their need for trust and validation. Buyers know that AI-generated content is unreliable and full of hallucinations.They don’t blindly accept its analysis. Instead, they verify AI-driven insights through peer networks, industry influencers, and authoritative content.

If your company isn’t consistently producing credible, insightful content, you’re missing a critical opportunity to shape buyer perceptions and reinforce your authority in the market. AI is surfacing answers—but buyers are still the ones deciding what (and who) to trust.

To stay in the conversation, your content needs to be:
✅ Easily discoverable - Optimized for AI-driven search, GenAI models, and traditional SEO.
✅ Credible & authoritative - Rooted in expertise, industry insights, and real-world data.
✅ Consistently visible - Engaging buyers at multiple touchpoints long before they reach a decision.

Thought leadership isn’t just a brand-building exercise — it’s a trust-building necessity. 

When AI surfaces your insights, and buyers can validate them through multiple channels, you’re no longer just an option on their list — you’re a trusted source.

But even when you are the trusted advisor, that doesn’t mean the deal will close. 

More Buying Decisions are Stalling

Even the most qualified and well informed buyers aren’t always making it to the finish line. According to Forrester, 86% of B2B purchases stall due to internal roadblocks. The problem isn’t just indecision — it’s complexity.

Tech buying decisions aren’t made in isolation. Forrester found that on average, 13 stakeholders are involved in major tech purchases, and nearly 90% of deals require buy-in from multiple departments. The more people involved, the harder it is to get consensus — and the more likely the deal ends in no decision.

If your sales team is only engaging with one or two key decision-makers, you’re missing the bigger picture and internal friction points. Buyers are rarely equipped to do the internal selling necessary to get all the stakeholders on the same page. So even the most highly motivated and senior level buyers can get stuck in the mire of competing priorities, budget sensitivity and risk concerns.

As the seller, your team’s job is to help buyers move the deal forward, anticipate friction points, align the full buying committee and facilitate the buying process. Otherwise, the deal will probably stall out.

How to Keep the Buying Process on Track

Instead of relying on a single champion to push the deal forward, your sales team must take an active role in guiding the buying process. 

That means:

✅ Mapping out the full buying committee: Identify all stakeholders early, not just the senior decision-makers. And talk with them. Make sure you understand their priorities.
✅ Uncovering internal friction points: Buyers won’t always tell you where deals are stuck. If you’re engaging with multiple stakeholders, you can identify the friction and risks before they derail momentum.
✅ Equipping your champions to sell internally: Give your buyer the insights you’re gathering from stakeholders plus tools, data, and narratives they need to influence other stakeholders.
✅ Building alignment across departments — IT cares about integration, finance focuses on ROI, and operations wants efficiency. Help them see a shared path forward.

Your job isn’t just to sell — it’s to facilitate the buying process. If you can help buyers anticipate objections, remove roadblocks, and drive internal conversations, you don’t just win deals — you make buying easier. And that’s what wins deals.

The Role of Sales is Changing

And that brings us to another important point. The role of the seller is changing dramatically. 

AI-driven research means the first human conversation a buyer has with sales is now equivalent to what used to be the third or fourth conversation. By the time a buyer engages with a sales team, they expect:

• A highly informed, tailored discussion
• Advanced insights rather than introductory overviews
• A consultative approach rather than a product pitch

Sales teams must adapt to a post-AI world, where their role is less about providing basic information and booking demos. Now it’s about helping buyers with complex decisions, understanding the competing priorities of the broader buying committee, surfacing objections and facilitating the buying process.

And you can’t expect a BDR who’s been out of school for a year to be able to carry those conversations.

The New Playbook for Winning Tech Deals

If you want to consistently win tech deals in 2025, shift your strategy:

1. Be on the buyer’s radar before they start shopping. Invest in brand visibility and thought leadership.
2. Shape their buying vision early. Publish insightful content that gives business leaders new ways to look at their business challenges.
3. Engage the full buying committee. Identify key stakeholders, get them into conversation, and create messaging tailored to each.
4. Optimize for AI-driven search. Ensure your content is structured for AI engines that buyers use in research and evaluation.
5. Address buyer concerns. Help buyers navigate common roadblocks and avoid purchase dissatisfaction.
6. Blend digital and in-person engagement. Use online channels for reach but engage prospects directly as well. Those relationships matter..
7. Deliver powerful demos. Don’t just use canned demos. Customize what you show to the buyer’s specific needs and use case.

Tech buying dramatically changed in the past 2 years. The vendors who win in 2025 and beyond will be those who spur business leaders to rethink their challenges and facilitate their buying journey. 

Is your company ready for this new reality? Adapt or get left behind. Your choice.

About the Authors: 

Candyce Edelen is founder of PropelGrowth, where she teaches B2B entrepreneurs and sales professionals to build authentic, human-to-human relationships on LinkedIn. Her strategies have helped clients shift from spammy automation to genuine outreach, resulting in higher-quality leads and increased sales. Candyce is passionate about helping professionals build trust and create a reliable, predictable sales pipeline. She's also a firm believer that you can't automate a relationship.