What Buyers Do Before They Contact Your Sales Team

It was a Tuesday morning a few years ago. I was sitting with the sales team of a machinery manufacturer, reviewing an enquiry that had arrived almost out of nowhere.

The prospect had already spoken to two competitors. They had narrowed the machine configuration. They had questions about throughput, service support and payback. By the time our salesperson got involved, the conversation was no longer, “What options do we have?” It was, “Can you prove that your machine belongs on our shortlist?”

I am sure many of us have seen this happen. What I was seeing was the hidden half of the B2B buyer journey stages.

We often think the sales cycle starts when the buyer calls, sends an email or asks for a quotation. In reality, the buying journey has already been playing out for months.

The B2B buyer journey stages you cannot see

The invisible part of the buying journey is not empty time. It is where opinions are formed.

A 2025 6sense study of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers found that first seller contact moved to about 61% of the buying journey, while the average buying cycle was 10.1 months. In that research population, first contact therefore came more than six months into an average buying cycle. The same study found that 94% of buying groups had already ranked their shortlist before engaging sellers.

That should make us pause.

What is happening in those months?

For a machinery buyer, the questions may begin long before a machine is specified: “Why are our rejection rates increasing?” “Can we handle the next product mix?” “Do we need more automation?” “Would a new line actually improve total cost?”

Then the questions become more technical.

Which technologies should we consider? Which manufacturers have experience in our application? What kind of service response can we expect? Will our operators adapt? What happens if the machine does not deliver the promised output?

And notice something important: these questions may be asked by different people.

The production head worries about throughput. The maintenance team thinks about reliability. Finance thinks about total cost and payback. Procurement thinks about commercial risk. The owner or CEO is thinking about whether the investment will create a problem six months after installation.

Who is talking to all of them before the RFQ?

Usually, nobody.

What does a buyer actually do before contacting you?

A buyer rarely moves neatly from “problem” to “supplier meeting”. Instead, they move through a series of small confidence-building moments.

They notice a problem.

They search for possible approaches.

They learn the language of the problem.

They compare technologies.

They ask colleagues, peers, distributors and existing suppliers.

They look at websites, videos, case studies, specifications and application examples.

They quietly eliminate vendors.

Only then do they begin serious supplier conversations.

McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse found that buyers use an average of ten different ways to interact with suppliers across the journey. The research also found that roughly one-third of buyers prefer in-person interaction, one-third remote interaction and one-third digital self-service at any given stage.

So, the pre-contact journey is not simply “website research”.

It is a collection of touchpoints.

And each touchpoint answers a different question.

At the problem stage, your content should help the buyer recognise what may be wrong.

At the exploration stage, it should help them understand possible approaches.

At the evaluation stage, it should help them compare technologies, applications, risks and expected outcomes.

At the shortlist stage, it should reduce uncertainty around your company, machine, references, service capability and credibility.

This is where I feel many machinery manufacturers miss an important opportunity. Their content starts too late.

The website says what the machine does. The brochure lists specifications. The salesperson explains features after the enquiry arrives.

But what helped the buyer decide that this was the problem worth solving in the first place?

That is the missing conversation.

Gartner’s 2026 research adds another dimension: 67% of B2B buyers said they prefer a rep-free buying experience, and 45% said they had used AI during a recent purchase. Yet buyers still turn to salespeople when they need context and validation.

That is not the end of selling.

It is a change in where selling begins.

Where should you show up before the RFQ?

On the ground, this changes the question for the sales and marketing team.

Instead of asking, “How do we generate more enquiries?”, ask, “What is the buyer trying to understand three months before the enquiry?”

Instead of creating another machine brochure, ask, “What decision is the buying committee trying to make?”

Instead of publishing another post about your latest installation, ask, “What uncertainty would a production head, maintenance head or CFO still have?”

Let’s take a packaging-machine manufacturer.

A buyer may first search for ways to reduce changeover time. Later, they may investigate servo technology, automation architecture or line integration. Only after that do they begin comparing suppliers.

If your organisation appears only at the final stage, you are entering after the buyer has already learned the language, framed the problem and possibly formed preferences.

The practical lesson is simple: map the pre-contact journey account by account or application by application, then identify the content and human touchpoints that should exist at each stage.

Not more content.

More relevant presence.

That is a very different thing.

To sum up,

• The sales conversation often begins long after the buying decision has started forming.

• Industrial buyers need different information at different stages: problem understanding, technical exploration, business justification and risk reduction.

• The organisations that understand this journey can build familiarity before the RFQ, so the salesperson enters a conversation with context rather than starting from zero.