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AI agents will do more of the B2B buying. Humans will still make the decisions that matter.

Sam PageSam Page

Brand Strategy & IdentityAI
AI agents will do more of the B2B buying. Humans will still make the decisions that matter.

Gartner predicts AI agents will intermediate more than $15 trillion of B2B spending by 2028.

In my last article I argued that technology gets adopted when it serves us and rejected when it takes away more than it gives. It's why I don't think personal AI agents will be as widely used as some people expect. A lot of us enjoy shopping, planning a holiday or browsing a bookshop, and we don't want an agent doing that for us.

The exception is the difficult tasks with very little joy in them, like group organisation and life admin. Agents will be welcome there, as long as they can do them really well.

B2B is slightly different. There's much more need for agents here, and brands should be getting ready for it.

A lot of B2B buying isn't a joy

A lot of B2B purchases aren't necessarily a joy. Supplier research, comparing options, RFPs, chasing quotes. They can feel like a bit of a sluggish experience.

Buyers are already voting with their feet. Gartner found 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, and 69% have found inconsistencies between a supplier's website and what its sellers told them.

So AI doing more of that for us is undoubtedly going to be very helpful. It takes away effort without taking away anything people enjoy.

Be visible, accessible and ready for agents

Which is why it's so important for brands in B2B to be visible and accessible to AI.

That means clear, consistent and structured information about what you do, who it's for, what it costs and the proof behind it. If an agent can't find or make sense of it, you're not on the shortlist.

And ultimately, brands need to start thinking about how they build agents to interact with other agents. Answering a buyer's agent on specifications, availability and pricing. Qualifying requirements. Sharing proof at the right moment.

There are always human outcomes

But in a considered purchase, and in B2B, we shouldn't forget there are always human outcomes, even if they're one or two steps removed.

I don't mean that in terms of the impact on jobs. I mean how it impacts human lives. Whether it's accounting, and how people get paid and how much. Whether it's assessment, and who gets hired or promoted. Or the products people use and how they affect them.

When the stakes for people are that real, the decision carries more weight. And the more weight it carries, the more confidence buyers need before they act.

Complex decisions still need a person

At 7DOTS we talk about the psychological attributes of a considered purchase. The things that move people from the messy middle, with plenty of interest and intent, to action and purchase. We call the space in between the Confidence Gap™.

And there's never anything more true than an extremely complex purchase with significant human outcomes. I believe for a long time yet, a human will still need to be involved to add the final layer of trust.

Think about buying a flat, or a car. We are slowly seeing a shift, and people are now prepared to put down deposits for cars online. But it's still very rare someone would buy a car without having gone to try it physically and spoken to someone about it. There are some exceptions. You can test drive a Tesla and buy one without seeing a human being. But it's a minority rather than a majority. You only have to look at brands like BYD, which opened its 125th UK retail site at the end of 2025 and is still investing in showrooms for that reason.

It's the same in business. Procuring large services for an organisation. Changing your digital provider. BCG found 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, and that the people side (organisation, culture and ways of working) is usually what decides it. A lot of transformation projects fail because of how teams work together, even when the expertise and technology behind them are right. What works is teams working well together, with the right technology set up behind them.

B2B can be more organised and process-driven, but the human is still so important.

What B2B brands should be doing now

For me it's quite clear. Get ready on both fronts.

  • Make the simple steps easy for AI. Be visible in AI search, make your information structured and consistent, and make it easy for an agent to compare and shortlist you.
  • Start designing for agent-to-agent. Work out which questions and tasks a buyer's agent will bring to you, and how your own agents could respond.
  • Invest in the human moments. The senior conversations, proof, relationships and support that give buyers the confidence to commit when the decision really matters.

AI doing more of the work in B2B buying is undoubtedly going to be very helpful. But the more complex the purchase and the bigger the human outcome, the more the human still matters. Intelligent systems, human outcomes.

If this is something you're working through, we'd love to help.

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