There’s a strange thing happening in B2B right now. Marketers are pouring budget into campaigns, optimizing funnels, fine-tuning messaging—yet buyers are slipping further out of reach.
It’s not that demand has dried up. It’s that the way people discover, research, and decide has quietly changed.
Think about it:
A procurement manager no longer leans on a vendor pitch first. They ask their AI copilot to compare options.
A marketing team considering new software doesn’t sit through endless demos. They run self-serve trials, read peer reviews, and only talk to sales once they’re 70% convinced.
A founder looking for a tool doesn’t land on your blog via search. They skim an AI summary, and if you’re not cited there, you don’t exist.
This isn’t theory. Forrester says more than half of large B2B deals (over $1 million) will close through digital self-service by 2025. PwC reports nearly 80% of organizations already use AI agents to accelerate decisions. Bain notes that up to 80% of consumers rely on zero-click results in 40% of their searches. The evidence is everywhere.
In Edition 58 of Vik’s M.I.X., we’re unpacking what this means for us as marketers and leaders.
What We’ll Break Down
AI-agents are moving from shiny demos to real buying copilots
Self-service is rewriting the rules of big-ticket B2B deals
Search is shifting from pages to answers—and the click is disappearing
Grab your coffee. By the end, you’ll see how these threads tie into one message: the buyer is building their own path, with AI quietly steering in the background.
AI-Agents & Multimodal Hyperpersonalization
The easiest way to dismiss AI-agents is to call them a passing fad. The harder—but more useful—view is this: they are quickly becoming the middle layer between your brand and your buyer.
Forrester and PwC data already show the trend: 80% of organizations are using AI agents, and 96% plan to expand in 2025.
Benefits are clear: 66% of leaders report productivity gains, 57% cost savings, and over half faster decision-making.
This isn’t theory—it’s workflows being rebuilt in real time.
Now imagine B2B buying. A manager types into their copilot:
“Compare Vendor A vs Vendor B for data security, total cost of ownership, and peer reviews.”
Within seconds, they have a side-by-side summary pulled from public sources, analyst notes, and filings. If your brand isn’t showing up cleanly and credibly, you’ve lost the deal before sales even knows it exists.
Examples in Action:
Salesforce’s Einstein GPT is embedding copilots into CRM workflows.
HubSpot’s AI assistants draft emails, build workflows, and surface recommendations.
Microsoft Copilot is powering procurement and finance workflows.
Walmart uses Pactum’s autonomous negotiation bots for supplier deals.
In India, SuperOps, Zycus, and BrowserStack are rolling out agent-driven automation across SaaS and procurement.
And with multimodal capabilities, agents now parse voice, screenshots, and video, then output charts and narratives. This is what buyers will grow used to.
The takeaway: your content must be structured, transparent, and agent-ready. You can’t outshout AI with ads—but you can earn your way into its answers by being the most credible, structured source in your category.
Digital Self-Service & Buyer Autonomy
The cliché about B2B buyers wanting “more control” is no longer lip service—it’s boardroom reality.
Forrester predicts by 2025, over half of million-dollar B2B purchases will be processed through digital self-service.
McKinsey found buyers spend only 17% of buying time with suppliers; the rest is independent research, peer input, or self-serve testing.
Examples in Action:
Adobe’s trial-to-enterprise path starts small and scales up.
Canva grows bottom-up adoption through self-onboarding.
AWS built its empire on usage-driven self-service.
Salesforce integrated Coveo’s AI-powered help search, saving $2M annually.
Closer to home, apna’s AI-driven job marketplace is bypassing recruiters entirely.
The signal is clear: autonomy is moving upstream into million-dollar deals.
For marketers, this means your website is your best salesperson. Product pages, transparent pricing, interactive demos, peer proof, and sandboxes matter more than any cold call or outbound sequence. Buyers won’t fill six-field forms just to see a demo anymore.
Autonomy doesn’t weaken relationships—it strengthens them. By the time buyers engage, they’ve already built confidence in your brand.
AI-Driven Search & Discovery Shifts
Search has always been discovery’s frontline. But the rules are evaporating.
Bain: 80% of consumers rely on zero-click results for at least 40% of searches.
SearchEngineLand: 27% of US searches end without a click.
Pew: when Google shows AI summaries, click-throughs drop sharply.
And with AI-native search engines like Perplexity, buyers increasingly trust summaries with citations over raw search results. If you’re not cited, you’re invisible.
Examples in Action:
Notion built structured FAQs and libraries designed for AI summarization.
Canva leaned into explainers and use-case snippets optimized for AI engines.
HubSpot invested in AI-ready content hubs with schema markup.
Xponent21 grew organic traffic 4,000% in a year by optimizing for AI search.
In India, Google’s new AI Mode is already testing multimodal search queries.
The takeaway: optimize for machines that summarize, not just humans that click. That means structured data, authoritative references, and content that answers nuanced, multimodal queries.
Being found now means being the trusted citation in a buyer’s AI agent feed.
To Conclude
Step back, and these aren’t separate shifts—they’re strands of the same story:
AI-agents shape what information buyers see first.
Self-service makes digital experiences the arena for decision-making.
AI-driven search changes discovery so trust flows through summaries and citations.
Put together, the funnel looks almost quaint. Buyers aren’t moving linearly from awareness to decision. They’re looping through AI agents, peers, and digital platforms—often forming opinions long before sales gets involved.
For marketers, the opportunity is clear:
Treat your website like your best rep.
Design content for both humans and the agents that summarize it.
Embrace self-service as proof of trust earned.
The brands that win won’t be the loudest. They’ll be the ones showing up cleanly in AI comparisons, enabling buyer autonomy, and earning citations in trusted summaries.
This isn’t the future. It’s already here. The only question is: is your brand discoverable inside it?