61% of the decision has already happened before the first contact with you

Most of the work to convince the buyer has already happened before they fill out a form or respond to a salesperson. By the time contact is made, the buyer has already researched, compared, and narrowed down the list of who could solve their problem. Getting onto that list after it has already closed is competing for a space that, in practice, almost never opens up again for the same business.

Part of this list formation research is already happening within an AI, not through traditional search. According to G2 (In the Answer Economy, Don't Win the Click, Win the Answer), 51% of B2B software buyers are starting their research in an AI chatbot more frequently than on Google. If the consideration list is being formed there, a brand absent from those responses risks never being considered, long before any salesperson enters the scene.

This behavior is not a distant market hypothesis; it is already a reality in Brazil. The country is the third with the most active ChatGPT users in the world, behind only the United States and India, with 140 million messages sent by Brazilians every day, according to data released by OpenAI (InfoMoney).

In a more recent national survey, the Super Panorama study (Mobile Time in partnership with Opinion Box) measured that 75% of Brazilian smartphone owners have used some AI assistant in the last 12 months (Canaltech). Your next client's consideration list may be forming in one of those conversations right now, before any commercial contact.

If almost every deal goes to those who have been on the consideration list since day one, investing in content and campaigns only when the customer has already decided to reach out is investing too late. By this point, the decision of who makes it onto the list has already been made, and what remains for the supplier that was left out is to compete for deals that, according to 6sense's own numbers, already have a 95% chance of going elsewhere.

The cheapest entry point remains appearing well before that first contact, within the responses the buyer is already reading while forming the list.

What does "61% of the journey has already happened before the first contact" mean? According to 6sense (2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report), it refers to the portion of the B2B buying journey that the buyer has already navigated alone, researching and comparing options, up to the moment they make the first contact with a supplier.

Does this mean prospecting and performance marketing have stopped working? No. It means these channels continue to compete for a smaller slice of the decision. The larger slice, which decides who makes it onto the consideration list, is formed earlier, including within AI responses, and today most brands have no visibility over what is being said there.

How can I know if my brand is already on the consideration list formed by AIs? The first step is to run a diagnosis with the real questions a buyer in your sector would ask an AI and see if your brand appears in the responses, how often, and alongside which competitors. This diagnosis is what MencionAI provides.

Want to know if your brand is already on this list? Schedule a demo and see the diagnosis in practice.

Pedro, CMO of MencionAI