The enquiry arrives with a clear brief and a deadline. Your sales team prepares a proposal, checks the pricing and follows up. Everything suggests you are competing for the business. Except the buyer may already have a preferred supplier. Your quotation could be helping them validate a decision rather than make one, while another company has spent months building familiarity, demonstrating expertise and giving the buyer reasons to trust it.
For B2B service providers, this raises a question: how much of the competition happens BEFORE the sales team becomes involved?
The 2025 Buyer Experience Report from 6sense offers a useful perspective. Its survey of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific found that buyers first contacted sellers, on average, 61% of the way through their purchasing journey. In 95% of cases, the successful supplier was already on the shortlist formed at the start of that journey. Services accounted for 41% of purchases, making the findings relevant beyond technology products. These were substantial purchases, with a minimum qualifying spend of US$25,000, so the results should not be applied indiscriminately to every small contract. Nevertheless, they underline how much consideration can take place before an enquiry reaches a supplier.
For service businesses, the challenge is particularly significant because buyers cannot fully assess an adviser, training provider or outsourced partner by inspecting a product. They need confidence in the people, their judgement and their ability to deliver. A company can respond promptly to every enquiry yet remain absent from the earlier conversations that determine which firms deserve consideration. Referrals may introduce the name, but prospective customers still need evidence that the business understands their circumstances and has relevant experience.
The person requesting the proposal is also unlikely to be the only person whose confidence matters. Edelman and LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report surveyed nearly 2,000 global professionals, including less visible decision-makers in functions such as finance, procurement and operations. Among these “hidden buyers”, 71% reported little or no interaction with sales teams, while 95% said strong thought leadership made them more receptive to sales and marketing outreach. These findings suggest that a supplier’s expertise needs to be accessible to people who may never attend its presentation or speak to its account manager.
This has practical implications for how service firms explain their value.
An operations director may want reassurance about implementation, while finance questions whether the expected benefit justifies the fee. Procurement may need evidence of consistent delivery. A case study explaining the original problem, the decisions taken and the outcome gives a prospective client something concrete to circulate internally. An informed article can demonstrate how a firm approaches a difficult issue. The purpose is to give buyers evidence they can use when assessing and discussing a potential appointment.
In conversations with founders and sales directors, I still encounter the view that Facebook and Instagram are primarily for consumer businesses. Their customers are procurement managers or business owners, so they question the platforms’ commercial relevance. An advertisement is unlikely to settle a complex purchasing decision, but it can introduce a relevant supplier or prompt further investigation. In our work introducing Harrisons Sauces to hospitality buyers in Dubai, enquiries included executive chefs, procurement managers and food and beverage directors. That demonstrated we were reaching relevant professional roles; it did not establish that every enquiry would become an order. Research supporting early visibility does not remove the need to test which channels work for a particular audience and offer.
The same discipline should apply to measurement. For example, campaigns we ran for BNI New Dubai between May 2023 and May 2024 generated 2,676 leads and more than 1,800 confirmed information-session bookings. Those figures describe different stages and do not, on their own, establish attendance or membership.
Service businesses need comparable clarity between an enquiry, consultation, proposal and signed contract. A low cost per lead has limited value if prospects have unsuitable requirements or budgets. Equally, relevant prospects can lose interest when follow-up fails to answer their questions. Marketing and sales must agree what constitutes a useful opportunity and examine where those opportunities stop progressing.
For business leaders, the starting point is to examine what a prospective customer can learn before making contact. Can they understand which problems the company solves, assess the experience of its people and find credible evidence of its contribution? Is there enough substance for someone to recommend the firm to a colleague?
The first sales conversation remains important, but it should build on confidence already developing. By the time a proposal is requested, your business should have given the buyer reasons to take it seriously.
This is a contributed article by Namita Ramani. She is the Founder and CEO of Above Digital, a Dubai-based digital performance marketing agency she established in 2004. With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing, she has built Above Digital into a trusted partner for forward-thinking businesses looking to combine data, creativity and technology to drive measurable growth.
