CEB’s widely cited 57% buying-journey figure originated in research conducted in 2011 and updated in 2013. Its age and scope limit its usefulness as a current planning benchmark. For demand leaders, the strategic risk is turning directional research into precise assumptions about customer behavior. Those assumptions can distort decisions about sales involvement, brand investment, and audience coverage.
Research Scope Limits What the Numbers Can Decide
CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council conducted the study with Google, drawing on roughly 1,500 decision makers and influencers across 22 large companies. The finding supported an enduring observation: buyers research potential purchases before approaching sellers.
The average also masked substantial differences between categories and deal types. It doesn’t establish when prospects in a particular market will welcome sales contact.
SiriusDecisions challenged interpretations suggesting sellers had no role during the earlier stages of a purchase. LinkedIn’s sales blog also questioned the statistic’s use as a reason to delay engagement.
For positioning, the useful implication is that buyers need credible information before a sales conversation. The evidence doesn’t justify excluding sellers from early engagement or imposing a universal handoff point.
Demand teams can preserve the research’s value without treating its percentage as a forecast for their pipeline.
Supplier Access and Buying Groups Require Different Responses
Gartner’s research found that supplier interactions occupied approximately 17% of the overall purchasing process. That allocation covered every supplier being considered, rather than a single vendor.
The distinction changes the commercial interpretation. Each seller competes for a portion of already limited direct contact. Clear differentiation and useful conversations become practical priorities, alongside information buyers can access independently.
Buying-group research raises a separate challenge: reaching the people involved in a decision.
CEB’s average increased from 5.4 participants to 6.8 over two years during the mid-2010s. Gartner describes complex purchases as typically involving six to ten decision makers, with some enterprise transactions involving more.
These figures describe different scopes and periods. They don’t establish a fixed audience size for every opportunity.
A demand program built around one economic buyer may overlook other participants influencing the purchase. Yet applying an industry average to every account can also misdirect content and sales effort.
The practical response is to identify actual participants in current opportunities. Their roles provide a stronger basis for messaging than a borrowed committee size.
The 95:5 Rule Supports Brand Investment, Not Exact Allocation
Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute introduced the 95:5 rule through LinkedIn’s B2B Institute in 2021. It proposes that up to 95% of potential customers may be outside an active purchasing window.
Dawes presents the figure as a strategic heuristic. Its derivation assumes companies replace a service provider approximately every five years. That implies around 20% enter the market annually and roughly 5% quarterly.
The reasoning supports advertising beyond buyers ready to purchase immediately. It gives demand leaders a rationale for maintaining brand visibility between purchasing cycles.
It does not establish the current proportion of active buyers in a specific account portfolio. Nor does it prescribe a matching split between brand spending and demand capture.
The positioning opportunity is longer-term familiarity. The budget decision still requires evidence about the company’s customers and commercial priorities.
Give Planning Assumptions an Evidence Check
Demand leaders can make one concrete change: require an evidence note beside each buying statistic used in planning.
- Record the research date and any subsequent revision.
- Identify the sample and the market covered.
- Preserve qualifiers, including whether supplier time includes competitors.
- Compare the assumption with CRM records and available customer analytics.
This check separates useful market context from numbers suitable for operational decisions. Internal records can help establish who participates in deals and which accounts show purchasing activity.
Published research still offers strategic direction: independent investigation, shared decisions, constrained seller access, and intervals between purchases. Each finding informs a different response; none supplies a complete demand model.
CEB’s historical average cannot determine a current sales handoff. Gartner’s findings cannot specify every account’s buying group. Dawes’s heuristic cannot settle a quarterly budget. Demand leaders can use each to frame decisions, then ground execution in evidence from their own customers.
