RESEARCH
All researchPeople can't choose what they can't remember.
In any three months, about 5 in 100 business buyers are looking for a new supplier. The figure is a rule of thumb, not a measurement, and the point survives it: the rest choose later, from the names they already remember.
business buyers are looking for a new supplier in any three months, if companies change suppliers about once every five years.
DAWES, EHRENBERG-BASS INSTITUTE, 2021 · A WORKED EXAMPLE, NO SAMPLELIMIT · ARITHMETIC FROM AN ASSUMED FIVE-YEAR CYCLE, NOT A SURVEY. THE AUTHOR CALLS IT A HEURISTIC.The question.
If most of the companies that will ever buy from you are not looking this quarter, what decides whether they call you when they are? For a company whose product is ahead of how it looks, the answer matters, because a buyer starts from the names already in their head. We went back to where the 5 in 100 figure came from, and to the research on what business buyers do once they start looking.
How we know.
The 5 in 100 comes from Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, in a short paper written for the LinkedIn B2B Institute in 2021. It is not a survey. He takes it that companies change suppliers such as their main bank or law firm about once every five years, which puts 20% in the market in a year and about 5% in a quarter. For what buyers do once they start looking we read two surveys: Google and Bain, 2022, 1,208 people at US companies, and 6sense, 2024, 2,509 buyers in three regions. For the gap between unknown and rejected we read Jenni Romaniuk's 2021 report on 609 UK and 616 US business buyers.
What it means.
A funded deep tech or industrial company usually sells something bought rarely, to people who were not looking on the day it launched. The evidence says those buyers start from a short list of names they already hold, and that being unknown loses more of them than being disliked. So the work before the sale is to be a name, with one sentence attached, in the heads of people who are not buying yet. None of these studies measured deep tech buyers, so read it as direction.
What is settled before a seller is in the room.
SHARE OF BUSINESS BUYERS, BY SURVEYBUYERS REPORTED THEIR OWN BEHAVIOUR. GOOGLE SELLS ADVERTISING AND 6SENSE SELLS GO-TO-MARKET SOFTWARE, SO NEITHER IS NEUTRAL.
Three pieces of evidence.
WHAT BUYERS HOLD IN MIND BEFORE THEY LOOKThe day one list is the group of suppliers a buyer already knows they want to consider, and 86% had one.
By the first conversation with a seller, the choice was usually made.
Buyers who had never heard of a brand outnumbered buyers who refused it by more than four to one.
Unknown is the bigger problem.
AVERAGE ACROSS 12 BRANDS IN EACH CATEGORY, SHARE OF BUYERSROMANIUK, EHRENBERG-BASS INSTITUTE, 2021 · 609 UK AND 616 US BUSINESS BUYERS. TWO SERVICE CATEGORIES. AWARENESS WAS PROMPTED.
In depth.
THE LONG READWhere does 5 in 100 come from?
The figure comes from Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, in a short paper written in 2021 for the LinkedIn B2B Institute: Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule. It is a worked example, not a survey. Dawes writes that corporations change service providers such as their principal bank or law firm around once every five years on average. If so, 20% of business buyers are in the market over a whole year, and something like 5% in a quarter. The other 95% are not looking. The paper reports no sample and gives no source for the five years. Dawes is open about it: the 95% figure is not meant to be a precise rule, and he uses it as a heuristic. In the same paper, a category bought every two years puts around 13% of buyers in the market in any quarter.
How firm is it?
Firm as a direction, soft as a number. Marketing Week reported the paper on 15 July 2021 and noted that the 95% figure is not a precise one for every sector. In that article Dawes said that in commercial banking only one in 10 clients will look to appoint or switch a bank in any given year, half the rate his own example assumes. A Forrester blog post pushed the other way for marketing technology: about 20% of organisations plan to change their main provider, 78% of those within 12 months, so it put the share in the market at 15 to 30%. That post names no survey and no sample size. What survives is the shape: in any quarter, most of the companies that will one day buy from you are not looking. Dawes's advice is to ask your own buyers how often they purchase, then do the sum.
What do buyers do when they start looking?
They start from a list they already hold. In 2022 Google and Bain surveyed 1,208 people at US companies who were involved in buying software, cloud hosting, hardware, telecoms, logistics, marketing and industrial equipment. Google's summary reports that 86% had a day one list, a group of suppliers the buyer already knows they want to consider, and that 92% bought from it. 6sense's 2024 survey of 2,509 business buyers found that 81% had a preferred supplier before speaking to a seller, with about 69% of the buying process already behind them. Among its 674 European buyers, the supplier at the top of the shortlist at first contact won 78.5% of the time. Both surveys rest on what buyers say they did. Google sells advertising and 6sense sells go-to-market software, so neither is a neutral party.
Is it memory, or preference?
Controlled research says memory can decide on its own. Prakash Nedungadi's 1990 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research describes two experiments that changed how easily a brand came to mind, then tracked recall, consideration, choice and evaluation. Its abstract concludes that for a brand to be selected in memory-based choice, the consumer must recall that brand and fail to recall other brands that might otherwise be preferred. We read the abstract, not the full paper, so we quote no figure from it. In business markets, Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute reported in 2021 on 609 UK buyers of business banking and 616 US buyers of business insurance. Across the 12 brands compared in each category, 11% and 6% of buyers on average would refuse a given brand. 40% and 51% did not know it when prompted. Even Barclays had more buyers unaware of it, 16%, than refusing it, 10%.
What does it not show?
None of this was measured on deep tech or industrial buyers. The five-year cycle is an assumption about banks and law firms. The surveys cover buyers of software, telecoms, logistics, banking and insurance, and Google and Bain asked US companies only. They show that buyers choose from names they already hold. They do not show why a name is held. A place on a day one list can be earned by past work, a colleague's word or a real lead in the product, and the surveys do not separate those from familiarity. Nedungadi's experiments come from consumer research. The Dawes and Romaniuk papers were distributed by LinkedIn's B2B Institute, and LinkedIn sells advertising. Read every number here as direction. The argument needs only that most buyers are out of the market most of the time.
What should a company selling complex technology do?
This part is our reading, not a finding. If most buyers are not looking, the work before the sale is to become a name they already hold, with one sentence attached. Dawes's paper puts the aim plainly: reach people who are not in the market now, so that when they enter it your brand is one they are familiar with, and one they connect with the need that brought them there. A sentence carries that better than a logo. Compare two invented lines. Innovative solutions for a changing world could be anyone, and nobody repeats it. The team that makes batteries last twice as long is one clear thing, and anyone can repeat it. Three things make a sentence stick: one thing you do better than anyone else, plain words anyone can repeat after hearing them once, and the same sentence everywhere you show up.
What to do with it.
THREE THINGS THAT MAKE IT STICK. OUR READING, NOT A FINDINGSay one thing.
Pick the thing you do better than anyone else and lead with it. The rest can come after they call.
Use plain words.
Write it so anyone can repeat it after hearing it once. A buyer has to say it to a colleague when you are not in the room.
Say it every time.
The same sentence, everywhere you show up. Dawes describes advertising as building and refreshing memory links, and a sentence that keeps changing gives memory nothing to refresh.
ONE QUESTION
What do you want to be remembered for?
Write it in one line. If you cannot, a buyer who is not looking yet has nothing to keep.
Asked about this research.
NOT ANSWERED HERE?
tony@appart.giEVERY FIGURE HAS A SOURCE
Sources and limits.
- DAWES, 2021Dawes, J., 2021. Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule: most B2B buyers are not in the market right now. Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, written for the LinkedIn B2B Institute. Read in full.
- MARKETING WEEK, 2021Valentine, M., 15 July 2021. Ehrenberg-Bass: 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products. Marketing Week.
- GOOGLE AND BAIN, 2022Google and Bain, B2B Discovery to Devotion Study, US, 2022, 1,208 buyers. Read in Google's own summary, The new B2B landscape, Marketing Dive, 5 December 2022, sponsored content, and in Sherrard, S., Dave, R. and MacGregor, M.P., What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers, Harvard Business Review, 20 September 2022.
- 6SENSE, 20246sense, The 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report, 2,509 buyers. Cunningham, K., 2024 European B2B Buyer Experience Report, 6sense, 9 October 2024, 674 buyers.
- ROMANIUK, 2021Romaniuk, J., 2021. Brand Rejection in B2B: Incidence, Reasons and Implications. Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, distributed by the LinkedIn B2B Institute. 609 UK and 616 US business buyers.
- NEDUNGADI, 1990Nedungadi, P., 1990. Recall and Consumer Consideration Sets: Influencing Choice without Altering Brand Evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research 17(3), 263 to 276. Abstract only.
- FORRESTERThe 95-5 Rule Is Not A Rule, But It's Not A Myth Either. Forrester blog. The page as read shows no author, date, survey name or sample size.
- LIMITSThe 5 in 100 is arithmetic from an assumed five-year cycle, not a measurement, and its author calls it a heuristic. The buyer surveys are self-reported and come from companies with something to sell. No source studied deep tech or industrial buyers. Nedungadi was read as an abstract only. The three things to do are our reading, not a research finding.
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