Peep Laja, the CEO of research platform Wynter, published the results of a survey this week that most marketing departments will quietly scroll past. His team asked 100 B2B marketing leaders, VPs, CMOs and heads of marketing at tech companies, not what they believe about research but what they actually did the last time a big decision had to be made.
The answers describe an industry that talks like a lab and decides like a dinner table.
How do B2B teams actually make big decisions?
35 percent of the leaders said their last major marketing decision was mainly a gut call from leadership. 13 percent said it was based on research with target buyers. The rest leaned on internal data, sales feedback and analyst reports, all useful inputs, none of them the voice of the people who were supposed to hand over money.
One answer in the survey summarizes it better than any percentage. Asked to describe the last time the team tried to understand what buyers think, a product marketing executive wrote that they asked sales for opinions, argued about their own, never contacted anyone in the target audience, and defaulted to guessing like they usually do. That last clause is the finding. Guessing is not the exception in B2B marketing. It is the routine.
Why do teams claim research they do not do?
Because claiming it is free and doing it is uncomfortable. 76 percent of the surveyed leaders said yes, they research buyers who are not yet customers. But when asked to describe the last time it happened, only 37 percent could point to a single non-customer. And the number one method they named for learning about non-customers was chatting at conferences and trade shows.
This is the same gap founders know from their own customers. What people say they do and what they actually do are different datasets. It turns out the people who sell research-driven marketing live inside that gap too.
Did AI fix the research gap?
It made it more comfortable. 92 percent of teams mine their sales calls and 85 percent interview their customers, and about a third now run AI over call recordings, CRM notes and transcripts. All of that analyzes people who already said yes or are already in the pipeline.
Meanwhile 53 percent of these teams talk to buyers outside their pipeline once a year or less, or never. The people who chose a competitor, stalled, or never entered the funnel stay unheard. AI made listening to the same voices cheaper. It did nothing about the voices nobody was collecting, and that is where the surprises live. The top thing these leaders said they wish they knew is exactly that: why buyers choose, switch, or stall and do nothing.
What does this mean for founders?
Two things. First, stop assuming your established competitors know something you do not. A third of them decided their current strategy on instinct, and most of them have not spoken to a stranger about it in a year. The market you are entering was mostly shaped by confident guesses.
Second, the bar for an edge is lower than it looks. You do not need a research department. You need contact with the people you want money from, before the argument in the room settles the question for you. Evidence from a handful of real target buyers beats a consensus of internal opinions, because internal opinions are what everyone else is already using.
Key takeaways
- 35 percent of B2B marketing leaders made their last big decision mainly on gut feel. Only 13 percent used research with target buyers.
- 76 percent claim to research non-customers, but only 37 percent could name one from their last attempt.
- AI is mostly used to re-listen to existing customers and pipeline, not to reach the buyers nobody hears.
- If professionals default to guessing, talking to real buyers is an edge available to anyone willing to feel uncomfortable.
The professionals are guessing. The founders who check are rare. That is the whole opportunity.