94% of buyers use AI before they talk to you. Here's what that changes.

I recently bought a new car for my growing family. What struck me afterward was how I shopped for it.

Before I ever set foot on a lot, I used AI to do the work that used to take weeks of open browser tabs and half-remembered advice from friends. I narrowed a crowded field down to a two-car shortlist based on aggregated peer reviews, safety ratings, cargo space, our budget, and more. By the time I walked into the first dealership, I already knew what I wanted and what it should cost.

This made the negotiation feel completely different, too. There were no nerves or uncertainty because I had the facts. When I left two dealers with two offers, I dropped both into AI and compared them side by side. Seeing the financing terms, trim differences, and the fees buried at the bottom helped me make my decision faster and with far more confidence than I ever had when buying a car before.

Here's the thing: The salespeople had no idea that I had done my research.

That experience happens millions of times a day, in consumer purchases and, increasingly, in B2B deals. A new kind of buyer, with all the facts in hand, is showing up. They've done the research, built the shortlist, and formed a point of view before a seller ever says hello.

Across the industry, we’re seeing in our own Gong Labs Trends data and industry that supports the idea that AI is the educator, and most of the time, the seller has no idea.

Gong Labs Trends analyzes the topics and themes surfacing across millions of real B2B conversations. When we looked specifically at how AI is showing up on the buyer's side of the table, the growth was steep across three distinct behaviors since early 2024:

• A 250% increase in AI-driven vendor discovery: Deals where the buyer reveals they found the vendor through AI in the first place.
  • Example: Me identifying the two models I should consider buying.
• A 280% increase in AI used as a buying advisor: Deals where the buyer discloses they're consulting AI to help inform their purchase decision.
  • Example: Me informing my questions for the dealer and negotiation tactics to bring to the dealership.
• A 208% increase in AI-assisted vendor evaluation Deals where the buyer tells the rep they'll be using AI to process intake materials like RFPs, comparison matrices, and proposals.
  • Example: (This was me again, dropping two offers into AI to compare them.)

Three different moments in the buying journey, discovery, evaluation, and decision, are all moving in the same direction at once. The buyer is now bringing AI to every stage, just as I did.

Every one of these trends depends on the buyer explicitly telling the seller that AI is involved. The rep has to capture a moment where the buyer volunteers, "I asked ChatGPT about this," or "We found you through an AI search," or "We're going to run your RFP through AI."

But with my car purchase, I did it all in silence. The salesperson never knew the shortlist was AI-built or that their offer was being compared against a competitor's by a model in my pocket.

Most buyers don't narrate their research process; they’re simply better prepared. What we're measuring is only what’s visible, the fraction of AI usage that buyers disclose. The real prevalence is almost certainly far higher.

These figures are leading indicators of a behavioral shift, and they're already growing rapidly, even though they're wildly undercounted. Read them as the conservative floor of a much larger phenomenon you need to address.

When our trends data aligns with the industry's largest buyer surveys, the trend stops being a Gong finding and becomes a market reality.

Forrester's 2026 research, drawn from nearly 18,000 global business buyers, found that the share of buyers using AI in their purchase process climbed from 89% in 2025 to 94% in 2026. Plus, twice as many buyers named generative AI or conversational search as their single most meaningful research source than any other, outranking vendor websites, product experts, and sales representatives.

This means the most influential information source in the modern B2B purchase is no longer your website or your rep. It's an AI engine that the buyer consults before you even know the deal exists.

This reshapes where the competition is won. The vendor evaluation process now begins in a system that operates entirely without the vendor's website, sales funnel, or retargeting infrastructure.

Think back to my shortlist. Two cars made it, eliminating the rest of the market before a single dealer got a chance to pitch. If the buyer's first map of the category is drawn by AI, your presence or absence in that map is decided long before the first call.

Now, here's where my car story stops being the whole picture, and where it gets interesting for anyone selling something more complex than an SUV.

While a big purchase for me, buying a car is a relatively simple decision made by one or two people. A six-figure software platform bought by a committee of fifteen is not. Research gets you to a confident shortlist, but it doesn't get you all the way to a confident decision. That last stretch still requires people.

The data backs this up. Gartner's 2026 research found that even as buyers embrace AI and digital self-service, 69% still turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights at key decision points, relying on sellers to reduce uncertainty, build internal support, and strengthen confidence in the final decision. The role of the rep is shifting away from being the source of information and toward being the source of validation.

That human contribution is measurable. In the same body of Gartner research, buyers were 32 percentage points more likely to say a rep made them feel confident in their decision, and 39 points more likely to say a rep understood their needs.

AI delivers speed and breadth, but struggles with reassurance, context, and the judgment a buyer wants before committing real budget.

There's a trust dynamic at work here, too. Gartner found that 51% of buyers said they're likely to encounter misleading information from generative AI, while 49% said the same about a sales rep, a near-even split that suggests buyers no longer trust either source blindly.

Instead, they use each to cross-check the other, creating a verification loop in which AI research is pressure-tested against human expertise and vice versa. I trusted my AI comparison enough to walk in informed, but I still wanted a human to confirm I wasn't missing something before I signed.

If the buyer can now be the most informed party in the room, the old playbook of controlling the information, revealing it strategically, and educating the buyer toward your solution does more than underperform. It actively annoys the buyer who already knows the category inside and out. The fastest way to lose me at that dealership would have been to walk me through brochure facts I'd already absorbed weeks earlier.

A few implications are worth sitting with:

Assume the buyer has already met your competitors in an AI answer.

Every deal informed by AI is now competitive. Discovery is no longer about introducing the category. It's about understanding the frame the buyer has already built, and finding where AI may have given them an incomplete or subtly wrong picture, which you can helpfully correct.

Your value lies in validation.

The reps who win will be the ones who help buyers stress-test what their AI told them, quantify the impact for their specific situation, and build internal consensus, the things Gartner's data shows humans still do far better than machines.

Be discoverable where the research now happens.

If AI engines are the new top of funnel, then showing up credibly in the sources those engines cite becomes the new visibility game. The buyer's first impression of you may be formed entirely without you in the room, just like the cars that never made my shortlist. Align with your marketing team to ensure this happens.

Earn the disclosure.

The buyers telling your reps, "I checked this with AI" are giving you a gift, a window into their research process. Reps who react to that openly and helpfully, rather than defensively, will learn far more about the deal than those who pretend it isn't happening.

AI hasn't replaced the buyer's need for a great seller but it’s raised the bar for what a great seller is. The buyer in your next deal has done more research from more sources, and formed more opinions than any buyer before them. Even so, they're still looking for someone to reassure them.

The data showing this is growing fast, and it's almost certainly undercounting the shift. The most informed buyer in history is already in your pipeline. The only question is whether your team is ready to close them.