Looking back: April 2026
The buyer I sold to in 2019 doesn’t exist anymore. Some of what changed was temporary; some was permanent; some was always there and just became more visible. Sorting the three has been clarifying — and has changed how I approach every sales motion since.
Here’s what I think actually changed, and what it means for how to sell in 2026.
Buyers Are Better Informed Before You Meet Them
Pre-2020, a significant portion of the buyer’s education happened during the sales cycle. You ran demos, walked them through case studies, explained the product, answered their questions.
Now, by the time a buyer is willing to take a first meeting, they’ve already read your website, watched a demo video, scanned your LinkedIn, read about your company, and often talked to one or two peers who use your product. The seller’s role has shifted from educator to validator — you’re not teaching them what the product does; you’re helping them confirm (or challenge) what they already think.
This changed the craft of discovery. The old “walk me through what you do” opening is now a waste of time. The buyer already knows. The better opening is “what do you already understand about us, and what are the gaps I can fill in?” That question respects the buyer’s preparation and surfaces what they actually need from you.
Meetings Are Shorter
The 60-minute pre-2020 meeting has given way to the 30-minute meeting as default. Buyers schedule tighter calendars. They tolerate less pre-amble. They expect you to get to the point faster.
This tightening reshapes meeting design. You can’t run a 30-minute meeting the way you ran a 60-minute one with a compression factor. You have to restructure — less discovery theater, more specific value delivery, tighter next-step definition.
The sellers who adapted to this kept their effectiveness. The ones who tried to squeeze the old 60-minute structure into 30 minutes just delivered worse meetings in less time.
Buying Committees Are More Skeptical
Something shifted in the 2020-2022 period that left buyers permanently more cautious. Deals that would have closed on a verbal commitment in 2019 now go through three rounds of internal review. Deals that would have moved on the economic buyer’s say-so now need to satisfy a procurement team, a legal team, and often an executive committee.
Part of this is post-crisis tightening of governance. Part of it is genuinely higher buyer sophistication. Part of it is skepticism about vendor claims that built up during a period when vendor promises outran delivery capacity.
Whatever the cause, the practical effect is that closing an enterprise deal now requires more internal advocacy, more evidence, and more patience than it did pre-2020. Sellers who forecast on old timelines miss their numbers. Sellers who adapted to the new reality of longer internal processes forecast more accurately.
The Tolerance for Vendor-First Messaging Collapsed
Pre-2020, buyers would sit through vendor-first messaging — product decks, feature comparisons, company origin stories — before getting to what they actually needed. They’d give you the courtesy of the full presentation before engaging.
They don’t anymore. If the first five minutes of your meeting are about you and your product, the buyer is either disengaged or moving toward ending the meeting. What works now is buyer-first messaging — “here’s what we think is happening for organizations like yours,” followed by specific relevance, followed by your company only when the buyer asks for it.
References and Social Proof Became Dominant
Pre-2020, references mattered but weren’t always decisive. Now they often are. Buyers who can’t talk to two or three current customers before deciding usually won’t decide.
This has raised the importance of customer success and reference programs dramatically. Companies with strong reference programs close deals that companies with weak programs lose. The delta is often larger than any product feature difference.
Buyers Are Faster to Disqualify
Pre-2020, a buyer who was lukewarm on your offering would often continue the conversation anyway — giving you a few more meetings to change their mind. Now, a lukewarm buyer disqualifies early. If the first meeting doesn’t create clear excitement, there often isn’t a second meeting.
The Principle I Apply Now
Every aspect of the sales motion has become more unforgiving. The messaging has to be more buyer-first. The meetings have to be more specific. The process has to account for longer internal cycles. The references have to be stronger. The margin for error on any specific interaction is smaller.
This sounds harder — and it is, for sellers running old-school motions. For sellers who already ran high-craft motions, it’s actually easier now than it was pre-2020, because the buyers reward high-craft work more distinctly than they did before.
The meta-lesson: the post-pandemic buyer amplified the differential between thoughtful selling and transactional selling. Thoughtful wins. Transactional loses. The middle ground compressed.
If you’re selling to a 2026 buyer the way you sold to a 2019 buyer, you’re almost certainly missing. If you’ve adapted to the new buyer, you’ve probably found a market that rewards serious craft more than it used to. Both realities are downstream of the same underlying shift.