AI Now Outranks a Sales Rep’s Own Pitch
G2’s 2025 Buyer Behavior Report, titled “AI Now Means Always Included” and reported on by SaaStr, finds GenAI chatbots trusted more than a vendor’s own sales representative as an influence on a final purchase decision, 17.2% versus 9.3%.
That is not a small gap for a channel built almost entirely on human persuasion. A prospect increasingly trusts an AI answer about a product over the person selling it, a shift that changes what a sales conversation needs to accomplish once it finally happens.
When Buyers Let Sales Into the Process
62% of buyers surveyed for G2’s report said they avoid talking to sales until the evaluation or decision stage, up 17 percentage points year over year. A buyer delaying sales contact longer than the year before is doing more independent research before that first conversation.
A buyer who arrives at evaluation stage already has an opinion formed from AI search and review platforms. The first real conversation is confirming or correcting that opinion, not building it from a blank page.
AI Search Is Competing With Google for the First Click
29% of buyers now start software research with AI search rather than Google, per the same report. That is nearly a third of buyers whose first research step no longer runs through a traditional search engine, a shift with direct implications for how a SaaS company earns visibility before a prospect ever lands on its own website.
A review platform listing, a well-cited case study, or a comparison page that an AI search tool can surface and summarize is doing work a traditional SEO strategy built around Google alone was not built to measure.
Power Users Set a New Bar for What Counts as Shortlist-Worthy
88% of self-described power users, per G2’s report, will not shortlist software without AI functionality. That is a steep bar for any vendor whose product roadmap has not yet shipped a visible AI feature, regardless of how strong the rest of the product is.
A power user is also frequently the internal champion driving a purchase decision forward, so this is a filter applied by the exact buyer a sales team most needs on its side, not a niche preference confined to early adopters.
Why This Page Cites SaaStr, Not G2 Directly
G2’s own report page loads at learn.g2.com/2025-g2-buyer-behavior-report, a corrected URL after an earlier guess, 2025-buyer-behavior-report, returned a 404. The page confirms the report is real and names its findings, but gates the full statistic sheet behind a download this page’s research did not retrieve.
SaaStr, a named and established B2B SaaS trade outlet, reported the four figures above directly from G2’s report. This page cites SaaStr’s reporting on G2’s findings rather than presenting the numbers as a direct G2 citation, since G2’s own full data sheet was not independently opened.
What a Lower Sales-Rep Trust Score Means for the First Call
A buyer who trusts an AI chatbot more than a sales rep on the purchase decision itself, and who delays contacting sales until the evaluation stage besides, hands more weight per minute to the conversation that finally happens. A rep repeating information a buyer already found through AI search adds little; a rep who can answer a question the buyer’s own research could not resolve adds a lot.
Human + AI SDRs qualify a prospect through a real conversation rather than a scripted pitch, which matters more when the generic information a pitch would deliver has usually already been found somewhere else.
The Numbers
GenAI chatbots are trusted more, 17.2%, than a vendor’s own sales representative, 9.3%, as an influence on a final purchase decision.
62% of buyers now avoid talking to sales until the evaluation or decision stage, up 17 percentage points year over year.
29% of buyers start software research with AI search ahead of Google.
88% of self-described power users will not shortlist software without AI functionality.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- SaaStr, Top 5 SaaStr Learnings From G2’s 2025 Buyer Behavior Report: You Gotta Be AI
- G2, 2025 Buyer Behavior Report: AI Now Means Always Included