How B2B buyers choose software: 7 lessons for founders

How B2B buyers choose software comes down to one fact: they decide mostly alone, and late in the process they call the vendor they already prefer. The 6sense 2024 Buyer Experience Report found buyers are nearly 70% through their purchase before they talk to a seller. So your job is to be found, trusted and tried before that first call.

Most advice on this topic is written for large sales teams. This post is for a founder of a small B2B SaaS who has no sales team and wants the first customers. Each of the seven points below starts from a published number and ends with one thing you can do this week.

1. Be where buyers research, long before they reach out

The same 6sense study says buyers start the first contact more than 80% of the time. Cold calls and meeting requests rarely move that moment. What moves it is whether the buyer met your name while they were still reading, comparing and asking around.

For a small SaaS, a lot of that reading happens in public. People ask for tool recommendations on Reddit, Hacker News, X and Threads, and they read the answers. A helpful reply in such a thread is research material for every buyer who finds it later. LitePal finds these public conversations for your product and drafts a reply for each one, and you post from your own account. Our guide to social listening without your brand name shows which words to watch.

• Write down five questions a buyer asks before they would ever need you.
• Search for those questions on the forums your buyers use.
• Answer two threads a week with a real answer, and mention your product only when it fits the question.

2. Win the preference before the shortlist exists

By the first call, 81% of buyers already have a preferred vendor, and 85% have largely set their requirements. The same report says more than 90% of buyers had prior experience with at least one vendor they considered.

This is hard news for a new product, because nobody has prior experience with you yet. It also tells you where to work. Requirements are written early, often from the content the buyer read. If your article, your reply or your comparison page named the right criteria, the buyer may bring your criteria to the meeting.

• Publish one page that explains how to evaluate tools in your category, in neutral words.
• List the criteria where your product is strong, and be honest about where it is not.
• Link that page in your replies when someone asks how to choose.

3. Let buyers try the product without a sales rep

Gartner's survey of 646 buyers says 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, and 45% used AI during a recent purchase. A TrustRadius survey of 1,862 buyers found that 77% say free trials influence their software decisions, and 73% say the same of product demos.

For a founder, this is good news. A trial and a short recorded demo cost less than a sales team, and they are what buyers want. Remove every step that forces a call before the buyer can see the product working.

• Let a visitor start a trial without a call.
• Record a five-minute demo of the main task, with real screens.
• Put the demo on the home page, not behind a form.

4. Sell to a group, not to one person

The average B2B buying group in the 6sense study has 11 people, and the average buying cycle lasts 11.3 months. Your first contact is rarely the only person who decides.

A small company that buys your tool will have a smaller group than 11. Still, plan for at least a user, a budget owner and someone who checks risk. Each one needs a different answer, and the person who found you has to carry those answers into rooms you never enter.

• Write one short page for the user: what the product does for their day.
• Write one for the budget owner: what it replaces and what it saves.
• Write one for the risk owner: data, access and how to leave.

5. Make your website and your words say the same thing

In Gartner's 2025 study, 69% of B2B buyers report inconsistencies between a vendor's website and what its sellers told them. Gartner says such mismatches create mistrust and can put the deal at risk.

When the founder is the whole sales team, this is easy to fix and easy to forget. Your site says one thing, your last call said another, and an old pricing page says a third. Read your site the morning before every call, and change the site when your pitch changes.

6. Send fewer messages, and make each one relevant

The same Gartner survey of 632 buyers found that 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. A bad email is worse than no email, because it can remove you from a list you were never on yet.

Relevance starts with the right person and a reason that is about them. Our guide on how to find the decision maker at a company covers the first part. For the second, write the first line about a fact you found about their company, not about your product.

7. Plan for a long cycle, and do the arithmetic

A worked example shows why early presence matters more than a fast pitch. Take a hypothetical scheduling tool for dentist offices, sold to small dental groups.

• The 6sense average buying cycle is 11.3 months.
• If the buyer is about 70% through the process before the first contact, and we read that share as time, the silent part lasts about 0.7 × 11.3 = 7.9 months.
• If 10 buyers contact this founder in a quarter, the 81% figure suggests about 8 of them already have a preferred vendor at that moment.

The two numbers point to the same plan. The founder has almost eight months of quiet research to be visible in, and only about two buyers in ten arrive still open. The best place to compete is in those eight months, in the threads and pages the buyers read. These are averages from large surveys, so treat them as a direction, not a forecast for your product.

For a small team this is the core of founder-led sales for a B2B SaaS: the founder shows up where the research happens, answers questions in public, and is ready with a trial when the buyer decides to talk.

What to do this week

• Find three public threads where people ask for a tool like yours, and answer them well.
• Remove any call that blocks a trial.
• Record a short demo of the main task.
• Read your website and fix one claim that your pitch no longer matches.
• Write three short pages: one for the user, one for the budget owner, one for the risk owner.

Paste your site into LitePal to see the public threads where buyers are already researching a product like yours, each with a reply drafted for you to post.