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Insights · Buyer Behaviour

Why the decision is made before you get the call.

The short answer

Most of the deciding happens before a buyer ever calls. By the time a managing partner reaches out, a shortlist already exists in their head, built from what they found, read and heard about your firm long before they needed one. Nine in ten buyers end up choosing a vendor that was already on that day-one shortlist. If your firm was not on it, no pitch meeting was going to put it there.

Cathleen Vermaak-Nisbet
By Cathleen Vermaak-Nisbet, Co-founder and CEO

Buyer Behaviour

The shortlist forms before the call A thread running left to right over a dashed baseline marked time. Three nodes along it, found, read and heard, lead to a lit node marked shortlist. To the right, inside a dashed box marked the call, an empty node: the call comes after the shortlist is already written. Time Found Read Heard Shortlist The call
The shortlist · built from what a buyer found, read and heard, before the call.

01The evidence

The shortlist is already written.

What this means in practice is uncomfortable for anyone who thinks of business development as something that starts when the phone rings. It does not start there. It starts whenever a buyer first forms an impression of your firm, which can be months or years before they have a problem you could solve. The call is not the beginning of the decision. It is closer to the end of it.

  1. 90%

    of buyers choose a vendor that was already on their day-one shortlist.

    Source Bain & Company and Google buyer survey, reported in Harvard Business Review, September 2022.Base: 1,208 US business buyers, cross-category. Applying it to services is our own reading.

02Why now

AI moved the research earlier still.

It used to take real effort to research a firm quietly: reading articles, asking around, finding people who had worked with them. Generative AI removed most of that friction. Buyers can now assemble a surprisingly complete picture of a firm without ever speaking to anyone at it, which means the shortlist forms even earlier, and even more quietly, than before.

  1. 94%

    use AI during buying, and validate with trusted human sources.

    Source Forrester, "The State of Business Buying, 2026".Nearly 18,000 global business buyers. Average across purchase types, not services-specific.

Being findable is not enough on its own: an AI answer that omits your firm is a closed door, and an AI answer that describes it inaccurately is a worse one. That is what generative engine optimisation, GEO, is for. It is not a new category of work. It is the oldest kind, being found and being described accurately, run against a research process that has changed shape.

Quiet research, before and now Two threads, one above the other. The upper thread, marked before, passes three nodes, read articles, ask around and find people, before reaching a lit node marked shortlist. The lower thread, marked now, passes one node, ask an AI, and reaches the lit shortlist node sooner. Before Read articles Ask around Find people Shortlist Now Ask an AI Shortlist
Earlier still · three steps of quiet research become one question, so the shortlist forms sooner.

03The consequence

Spend the effort where the deciding happens.

If most of the choosing happens before the call, the call is the wrong place to spend the marginal hour.

The firm that wins the shortlist is the one that was doing something, consistently, long before there was a deal to win: being visible to the right people, saying something specific enough to be remembered, and being described accurately wherever an answer gets formed, human or AI.

That does not mean the pitch stops mattering. It means the pitch closes a decision that has, in most cases, already been shaped somewhere else. Firms that treat business development as a single moment, one call, one proposal, one pitch, are optimising for the one-tenth of the process they can see. The rest happens earlier, more quietly, and largely without them in the room.

04Questions

What partners ask about this.

Short answers.

or pick the ones to ask your AI

How do you get on a buyer's shortlist before they start looking?

Become fimiliar to the right people before they need you. Nine in ten buyers choose a vendor already on their day-one shortlist (Bain & Company and Google, reported in Harvard Business Review, September 2022), and that list forms from what they have found, read and heard about you. Be visible to the people who decide, say something specific enough to be remembered, and make sure AI answers describe your firm accurately.

If the decision is already made, why take the call at all?

Because the call still decides fit, detail and the working relationship, and Fimiliarity between two people rarely finishes forming until they actually talk. The shortlist narrows who gets a call; the call decides who gets the work. Both steps matter. They just happen in a different order than most firms assume.

How long before a firm reaches out does this research start?

There is no reliable, sourced number for this, and we would rather say so than invent one. What the data does show is that it starts well before outreach, often long before the buyer has a defined need. The honest answer is: earlier than most firms plan for.

Does this mean marketing now matters more than sales?

Not more, just earlier. Sales still closes the deal. What changes is where the deciding work happens: less of it in the pitch, more of it in the months of becoming fimiliar to the right people, and being described accurately wherever buyers look, including to an AI.

Next step

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