What B2B buyers want from sales reps has split into two camps, and the same buyer can sit in both. Updated Gartner data shows that 67% of buyers want a rep-free purchase experience, up from 43% just a few years ago. At the same time, 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate the AI-generated insights they’ve already gathered. Read both numbers together and they tell you exactly what kind of rep you need to be.
The two Gartner stats and what they actually mean
A few years ago, Gartner reported that 43% of B2B buyers preferred a rep-free experience. I used that stat constantly in my training. I paired it with the good news: buyers who cut reps out of the process had a 23% higher regret rate. That was proof that sales reps added value, just different value than before.
The numbers have moved. The latest data puts the rep-free preference at 67%. That’s a meaningful jump, and it would be easy to read it as bad news for the profession.
It isn’t. Because at the same time, 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate their AI-generated research. Same buyers, different moment in the process. Combined, these two data points tell you exactly what the market wants.
What the 67% are telling you
The 67% isn’t rejecting salespeople. They’re rejecting a specific kind of sales rep: the one who shows up to a discovery call and starts walking them through information they already pulled from ChatGPT.
If a buyer can get your value proposition, competitor comparison, and a pricing estimate from an AI in 30 seconds, they don’t need to schedule 30 minutes with you to hear the same thing. They’d rather stay in the AI. It’s faster, cheaper, and less awkward.
The rep who gets filtered out by the 67% is the one who was always a little optional. The one who was hoping the discovery call would tell them what to sell. That rep is done.
What the 69% are asking for
The same buyer who wants to skip the traditional discovery call absolutely wants a rep at the table before they commit real budget.
But what they want is different from what they used to want. They’re not asking you to educate them. The AI already did that. They want you to validate what they learned, connect it to the specific context of their business, and tell them what the AI missed.
That is a harder job. It requires you to know their business before the call, to have an informed point of view, and to add something they couldn’t get by spending another ten minutes in ChatGPT. What B2B buyers want from sales reps is no longer information. It’s judgment.
Why ICP work is the answer
In the last few weeks, I got on the phone with two different friends of mine. Both are experienced operators bringing new products to market. I asked each of them the same first question: who is your ideal customer profile?
Both gave me the same answer: we can pretty much do anything for anybody. Our product is a fit for everyone.
I gave them both the same feedback I’ve been giving sales leaders for 25 years. If you can sell anything to anybody, you’re going to sell nothing to nobody.
If you don’t know exactly who your ideal customer profile is, exactly what problems they’re facing, and exactly how your product connects to those problems, there’s no way you’re going to get outbound traction. You’ll send generic messages to a mixed list, get generic responses, and blame the tools when it doesn’t work.
I’m doing this exercise on my own business right now, and it’s harder than I want it to be. The AEO work we’ve been doing has started pulling in inbounds from industries and structures outside my historical Tech/SaaS ICP. The market is telling me something, so instead of ignoring it, I’m going back to the top of the funnel and rebuilding from scratch with real data.
How to rebuild your ICP with real data
Here’s the three-step process I’m running on my own business.
First, I’m using Claude to work through my FTF02 Ideal Customer Profile prompt pack. It’s a six-phase exercise that pulls patterns out of my top 10 to 20 customers, builds a tiered ICP framework, pressure-tests each tier, and outputs an approach strategy per segment. Running it on yourself is humbling.
Second, I’m using Otter to pull transcripts from every inbound conversation I’ve had in the last two months. I’m running those transcripts through Claude and asking it to extract the actual problems these prospects are describing, the language they’re using, and where their pain shows up before they even name a solution. That’s the kind of pattern analysis a spreadsheet can’t give you, because it comes from the actual words the prospects used.
Third, I’m feeding all of that back into Apollo. Refined ICP, updated persona definitions, sharper messaging that matches how prospects are actually describing their problems, and short-loop tests across small batches to see what resonates before I scale it. The ICP goes into the audience filters. The messaging goes into the sequences.
If you want a thought partner on this kind of work, this is exactly what I’m building through my Sales Advisory Services.
The stakes are different now
Bad targeting used to cost you time and burn through your lists. Now it costs you credibility.
When you send generic outreach to a wrong-fit prospect, the AI-native buyer at the other end knows immediately. They’ve seen ten versions of that message today. The moment yours lands, you’re the 67%.
Sharpening your ICP isn’t optional in the AI era. It’s the first move that puts you in the 69%.
The rep buyers want in 2026 does the work before they reach out. The work is knowing exactly who you should be talking to, exactly what problems they’re facing, and exactly how you show up differently than the AI that already gave them the surface-level answer.
If your answer to “who is your ICP” is “everybody,” you don’t have an ICP. You have a wish list. And in a market where AI has made generic outreach effortless, that wish list is going to hurt you faster than it ever has before.
What does the Gartner data say about B2B buyers and sales reps?
Updated Gartner data shows that 67% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free purchase experience, up from 43% a few years ago. At the same time, 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights before committing to a purchase. The two numbers describe the same buyer at different stages of the process, not two different types of buyers.
Why do 67% of buyers want to avoid sales reps?
Buyers who prefer a rep-free experience are opting out of interactions that don’t add value beyond what AI already provided. When a rep’s primary role is educating buyers on the product, features, and pricing, AI handles that faster and with less friction. The rep who gets filtered out is the one who shows up to a discovery call with information the buyer already has.
What do buyers want from a sales rep in the AI era?
The 69% of buyers who turn to reps want validation, not education. They’ve done their research with AI tools. What they need is a rep who can verify their conclusions, challenge their assumptions, connect the solution to the specific context of their business, and identify what the AI missed or got wrong. That’s a fundamentally different job description than traditional discovery.
How does ICP work help a sales rep show up in the 69%?
You cannot validate a buyer’s AI-generated research if you don’t know enough about their business to add anything new. A sharp ideal customer profile, one that captures exactly who your best-fit buyers are, what problems they face, and how your solution applies to their context, is what makes a rep capable of being genuinely useful at the validation stage. Without it, you’re guessing on every call.
What is the FTF02 Ideal Customer Profile prompt pack?
The FTF02 ICP Prompt Pack is a six-phase exercise inside the JB Sales Learning Lab that uses AI to build a tiered ideal customer profile. It pulls patterns from your best customers, builds a segment-by-segment framework, pressure-tests each tier’s assumptions, and outputs an outreach strategy per segment. It’s designed to run in Claude or any capable AI model and works for individual reps defining their territory and founders defining their go-to-market.
John Barrows helps sales leaders decide whether to replace or rebuild their teams for the AI era. For 25+ years he has worked with the world’s most demanding sales organizations, including Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta, building the frameworks that became Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. Today he advises CROs and VPs of Sales on AI readiness, team restructuring, and go-to-market strategy, drawing on exposure to every type of B2B sales organization over that span. John believes sales is a science, not a personality contest. His training focuses on the fundamentals that hold up regardless of what the market or the technology does next. He is the host of Make It Happen Mondays, author of I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up, and an LP at GTMfund.
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