A Leader's Checklist for Reducing B2B Buyer Friction

It is easy to spot friction inside your own organisation: the approval that needs three signatures, the report nobody reads, the meeting that should have been a message. It is harder to see the friction your organisation creates for the people trying to buy from it.

A survey from B2B market research consultancy Audience puts numbers on that second kind. The B2B Buyer Backlash: How Vendors Can Break Through in 2026 is built on answers from 350 B2B buyers spanning the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Africa and the Middle East, gathered during July 2025 and released in November of that year.

It is October 2026, and the year the report was named for is in its final quarter. The survey was a single pulse of multi-select questions, and it offers a snapshot of what buyers said about vendor frustrations, misunderstandings, buying-process improvements and the skills they value.

One of those questions, on skills, looked one to two years ahead of the fieldwork, a window that runs to mid-2027 at the latest, so part of it is still open. This article uses that snapshot as a checklist to test against your own practice today.

Why friction belongs on a leader's desk

Buying is already hard work. Gartner research cited in the report found that 77% of B2B customers rate purchases as complex, with six to ten stakeholders involved, and the report adds that 13 people on average influence a B2B purchase. Buyers cope by narrowing the field: citing Martech Edge, the report says 86% shortlist products they already know, and 71% buy their top choice.

With a field that narrow, the report notes, it is hard for new vendors to cut through. Chris Wells, Managing Director at Adience, says in the report that advantage will come from "understanding faster and earning the right to be on the shortlist, every time." The report also quotes a Gartner figure that 73% of B2B buyers actively steer clear of suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. If your team's targets reward the volume of contact, that is the number to put beside them.

Check one: does your team know what "good" looks like for this buyer?

Asked what vendors most often misunderstand, buyers pointed first to their priorities, such as speed versus price versus service (35%). Industry-specific pain points followed (30%), then technical requirements or constraints, competitive context and the level of formality expected in proposals (28% each), and finally how the buyer's business makes money (27%).

The pattern varied by sector. Insurance, manufacturing and automotive buyers cited unmet industry pain points more often than other sectors did, while for media companies the standout item was the formality expected in proposals.

On the vendors buyers remember, Joe Kopyt, Director of Integrated Marketing at Responsive, is quoted in the report: "The ones who listen, not lecture, are the ones we remember."^{Supplementary reading:}^{How To Promote Your Business with B2B Web Portals}

The leadership question is a simple one. What does a colleague receive before a first meeting with a prospect? If the answer is a name and a product list, the six items above make a better template for a short buyer brief.

Check two: was the buying process designed, or did it accumulate?

The report also asked buyers what they would most like to see improved in how they buy. The results were close. Being evaluated on fit rather than price came top at 43%, followed by streamlined internal approvals and sign-offs (41%), clearer criteria or scoring (39%), earlier vendor engagement (36%), less legal and procurement complexity (35%) and faster decisions (33%).

Two details stand out. Among financial services stakeholders, 58% want vendor engagement to begin earlier in the process, and procurement respondents were more likely than their colleagues to ask for a lighter legal and procurement load (43% versus 31%). In a separate question about vendor behaviour, 27% of buyers listed unanswered RFP questions among the things that frustrated them most in the past year, and 26% listed attempts to bypass procurement.

Several items on that list, such as legal review and internal approvals, can sit outside the sales team. The report's seventh play speaks to this. It asks vendors to treat the buying process as a product: define the steps, clarify what "done" means and equip stakeholders to move forward. So who in your organisation owns that product?

Check three: Is AI sharpening your outreach or only speeding it up?

In a multi-select question about the vendor behaviours that frustrated them most over the past year, AI misuse was selected by 26% of buyers, with the report listing a robotic tone, obvious autofill and wrong facts as examples.

The skills question adds nuance. Among buyers who explicitly ask vendors about AI, the report gives data fluency 45% and AI competence 40%; among those who do not ask, it gives deep category knowledge 36%. Across all respondents, the leading skills were staying current with market trends (34%), interpreting data, applying AI tools and demonstrating deep category knowledge (33% each).

On the human side of AI-assisted selling, Spectro Cloud's Director of Content, Ant Newman, is quoted in the report: "The best sales teams still have to build trust and real human connections".

For leaders, the practical question is who reviews AI-assisted outreach for tone, accuracy and context before it reaches a buyer. The report's own guidance is to let AI speed up analysis and drafting, keep a human layer on top, and disclose AI use where appropriate.

Four moves to trial before the year ends

The report sets out seven plays for vendors. These four translate well into a leader's agenda:

Do the homework first. Replace long question lists with pre-work, then run a short, pointed gap assessment.
Shorten the material. Trade the 30-slide deck for a single page built around what the buyer wants to achieve.
Open the path. Give buyers templates, redlined legal clauses and a visible route through procurement.
Arrive earlier. If shortlists favour familiar names, show up sooner with credible, problem-led points of view.