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B2B buying groups now include internal stakeholders, external influencers, and AI-assisted research. Forrester research director Dave Frankland explains why individual-lead models struggle with this complexity. Marketing becomes more useful when it helps the group make progress, supports buyer autonomy, connects pre-sale and post-sale experiences, and organizes revenue teams around the customer rather than departmental priorities.
The B2B buyer is rarely one person. A significant purchase can involve business leaders, users, finance, procurement, security, legal, partners, peers, review platforms, and AI-assisted research.
In a Renegade Marketers Unite conversation about B2B buying mayhem, Dave Frankland, VP research director at Forrester, discussed research involving approximately 18,000 people who had participated in a major purchase.
The research found an average of 13 internal participants and nine external influences. That creates a group of 22 before accounting for the expanding role of AI in research and evaluation.
Those numbers expose the limits of marketing and sales processes built around an individual lead. The person who downloads an asset may represent only one perspective inside a much larger decision.
One contact may request information without controlling the budget, using the product, evaluating security, managing implementation, or defending the decision internally. During the conversation, Dave assessed how organizations are adapting their revenue processes to account for buying groups.
He identified two problems: “One is not recognizing the scale and size of that, still thinking of the quote-unquote ‘lead’ as a person rather than the group. The other side of this is the changing buyer.”
Even organizations that have adopted buying-group language may still organize their programs and data around one visible contact. A larger group brings more perspectives and more opportunities for disagreement. Finance may focus on economic impact, while security examines risk. Users may care about disruption, and an executive sponsor may need a credible explanation for why action is necessary now. During the discussion, Dave considered how marketing’s orientation toward that group could change.
“There needs to be a cultural switch from ‘How do we target a buyer?’ to ‘How do we help your buyer buy?’”
The shift moves attention from individual engagement to collective progress. Marketing can examine whether the group has enough shared understanding to make a decision, which concerns remain unresolved, and what evidence could help stakeholders reach agreement.
Most members of a buying group will not experience every campaign or speak directly with the vendor. Information has to travel between people with different priorities and levels of familiarity with the problem.
Portability therefore matters. A clear framework, concise research findings, customer examples, comparisons, or an implementation guide can help an internal champion explain the opportunity to colleagues.
The content also needs to support different jobs within the decision. A technical evaluator may need evidence about integration, while an executive sponsor needs a business case. Procurement may need clarity about commercial terms, and users may want proof that the change will improve their work.
A connected set of materials can give the group a common narrative while allowing each participant to examine the issue through a relevant lens. The pieces should reinforce one another, so the internal champion does not have to reconcile inconsistent messages.
Portable content benefits from plain language and visible evidence. When the material depends on insider terminology or a sales representative’s explanation, it becomes harder for one stakeholder to share it accurately with another.
Peers, analysts, communities, partners, review platforms, and former colleagues can influence a purchase without appearing as contacts in the CRM. Dave identified nine external influences in the Forrester research.
Those influences included “ecosystem partners, personal contacts that you have in the industry, peers, folks you’ve worked with before, as well as things like review sites [and] industry experts.”
Marketing cannot control all those conversations. It can contribute credible information that moves through them, including research, useful guidance, transparent product information, customer evidence, and distinctive positioning.
Reputation matters because an external advisor may dismiss an unfamiliar or poorly understood vendor before the buying team ever makes contact. Market education and brand building shape the environment in which the group evaluates risk.
The same dynamic makes customer advocacy more valuable. A buyer may place greater confidence in a peer’s experience than in a vendor’s description of its own strengths.
Modern buyers often want control over when and how they engage. Product information, pricing context, implementation guidance, customer evidence, and self-service tools allow the group to investigate before entering a sales conversation.
That autonomy changes where human interaction adds the most value. A seller becomes particularly useful when the group needs interpretation, internal alignment, risk resolution, or a decision path tailored to its situation.
Marketing can support the transition by organizing information around buyer questions instead of internal funnel stages. Clear navigation, consistent terminology, and accessible proof reduce the effort required to move from self-directed research to a useful conversation.
Autonomy also raises the standard for consistency. If public content, sales conversations, product experiences, and customer stories present different versions of the company’s promise, the buying group must resolve that confusion itself.
Buying complexity becomes harder when the vendor’s internal departments coordinate poorly. Dave used an organizational metaphor during the conversation.
“Each of us thinks our department is the sun and all other departments are moons that rotate around us. No. The customer is the sun. How do we rotate around the customer, and what do we need to do that most effectively?”
The metaphor challenges teams to look beyond departmental measures. Marketing may focus on engagement, sales on pipeline, product on adoption, and customer success on retention, but the customer experiences one relationship.
A connected revenue process links the promises made before purchase with the experience delivered afterward. It also creates shared visibility into where the customer is making progress and where friction remains.
Sales and marketing shape expectations before the agreement. Product and customer success carry much of the responsibility for delivering the outcome, so a gap between those stages becomes visible quickly.
Signing the agreement does not end the buying journey. New stakeholders may enter, implementation concerns may surface, and the promised value still needs to become visible. Dave introduced this part of the discussion with a provocative statement: “Even your newest customers are unhappy with you.”
The observation reflects the uncertainty that can follow a major purchase. The buying group has committed resources and professional credibility, but it may not yet have evidence that the decision will succeed. Dave credited Forrester colleague Sherry Shrevnik with describing this transition as aligning the “promise maker” in sales with the “promise keepers” in customer success. That alignment helps preserve what the buying group learned, expected, and prioritized before signing the agreement.
Marketing can help reduce that uncertainty by reinforcing the original business case, setting expectations, supporting onboarding communication, and giving internal champions material they can use with new stakeholders.
The post-sale experience can also improve future marketing. Questions raised during implementation may reveal gaps in pre-sale content, while successful adoption stories can become credible proof for future buyers.
Traditional funnels create internal stages and ownership boundaries. Buyers experience questions, decisions, delays, and moments of confidence that do not always align with those stages.
A buyer-centered operating model considers whether the group understands the problem, agrees on the desired outcome, trusts the available evidence, and knows what happens after the purchase.
Marketing’s contribution can span the full journey. It can help the market recognize a problem, give stakeholders language for discussing it, provide evidence that reduces risk, and reinforce value after implementation.
This broader view connects demand generation with the rest of the customer experience. Marketing becomes part of the system that helps a complex buying group reach, defend, and realize a decision.
The Forrester research discussed in the source found an average of 13 internal participants and nine external influences, creating a combined group of 22.
A single lead rarely represents all the roles, concerns, authority, and external influence involved in a complex purchase.
Buyer enablement provides information, evidence, and decision support that help a group understand its options, resolve concerns, and build internal agreement.
AI can help buyers research, compare, summarize, and prepare questions, adding another source of influence to an already complex journey.
Listen to the full conversation with Dave Frankland. CMO Huddles helps B2B marketing leaders win by bringing together peers, fresh perspectives, and opportunities to build stronger personal brands. Want to join the huddle? Learn more about CMO Huddles and join CMO Huddles Starter.