How 6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report Validates Our 2026 GTM Predictions

The Window to Influence Is Shrinking. The Prepared Will Win.

When Lucrum Partners released our 2026 GTM Predictions, we framed the upcoming year around a simple but urgent message:

Growth in 2026 belongs to the prepared.

Now, the newly released 6sense 2025 Buyer Experience Report reinforces that prediction with powerful, data-backed clarity. Buyers are moving faster, arriving more informed, forming vendor preferences earlier, and expecting higher-level engagement sooner.

Below, we map the most important findings from the report directly to each one of Lucrum Partners’ 2026 predictions—and outline what B2B leadership teams must do now.

Prediction 1: The Head of Sales Role Gets Rebuilt

From Quota Commander to Growth Architect

What 6sense Confirms:

• Buyers now choose their preferred vendor before the first conversation more often than ever.

• The first vendor contacted continues to win disproportionately.

• Vendor shortlist placement happens early—long before sellers engage.

Implication: The sales leader’s job can no longer be reactive. They must become the architect of buyer-intelligence systems, mapping journeys, designing signals, and shaping the pre-contact influence engine.

What to do:

• Redesign the sales leadership role to own funnel architecture, intent signals, and early-phase content.

• Create readiness dashboards that track preference, not just pipeline.

Prediction 2: AI Becomes GTM Fuel, Not a Toy

Operationalization > Experiments

What 6sense Confirms:

• Buyers are using LLMs, peer content, and deep digital research before speaking to a rep.

• AI is accelerating research, compressing timelines, and raising expectations.

Implication: AI isn’t an efficiency tool—it’s the only way GTM teams can detect, understand, and engage buyers in the moments that now matter most.

What to do:

• Build an AI-powered signal engine to detect selection-phase activity.

• Equip sellers with AI-generated insights before the first call, not after discovery.

Prediction 3: Training Evolves into a High-Performance Revenue Dojo

Continuous, scenario-based, pressure-tested skill development

What 6sense Confirms:

• Buyers arrive deeply educated and expect sellers to add new insight—not repeat what they already know.

• Because buyers engage earlier, sellers must be capable earlier.

Implication: Annual training events can’t keep pace. You need weekly, scenario-based environments where reps sharpen executive-level conversations and pressure-test real buyer dynamics.

What to do:

• Implement a Revenue Dojo that simulates early-phase conversations.

• Shift training from “product knowledge” to “executive insight, business acumen, and problem framing.”

Prediction 4: The Rise of Signal-Led GTM

Precision beats volume, intelligence beats activity.

What 6sense Confirms:

• The point of first vendor contact is shifting earlier—toward ~60% of the buyer journey.

• But preference is often formed even before that, meaning the true window to influence occurs in the “unseen” digital phase.

• Vendors contacted first continue to win at dramatically higher rates.

Implication: Signal detection becomes the center of the GTM universe. The companies that know exactly when a buyer enters the Selection Phase—not when they request a meeting—will dominate 2026.

What to do:

• Build a “Signal Stack” that captures:

  • research surges

  • AI-related interest

  • comparison-page engagement

  • executive involvement

  • repeat interaction patterns

• Align plays to each signal tier so sellers know exactly when and how to engage.

Prediction 5: Expansion Becomes the First GTM Strategy

Retention & expansion aren’t post-sale—they’re pre-sales advantages.

What 6sense Confirms:

• Buyers overwhelmingly prefer vendors they already know.

• Familiarity and trust are major selection drivers, especially under budget pressure.

• Existing customer experience directly shapes new customer decisions.

Implication: Your current customers are not just a revenue stream—they’re the foundation of your future new-logo growth.

What to do:

• Build expansion plays into your onboarding and first 90-day plan.

• Treat customer references and case studies as early-funnel assets, not late-stage proof.

The Big Takeaway

The 6sense 2025 research makes one thing indisputably clear:

The deal is no longer won during the call. It’s won before the call.

In 2026, competitive advantage will belong to the organizations that can:

• detect buyer intent earlier

• influence preference earlier

• enable sellers earlier

• engage executives earlier

• expand customer value earlier

If you’re preparing your team for 2026 and need help designing your buyer-intelligent, signal-led GTM system, Lucrum Partners is here to partner with you.

→ Want a deeper GTM readiness assessment? Let’s book a session and evaluate your “influence before contact” capability.

www.LucrumPartners.co