<b>The buying committee grew to ~11 people — and content has to reach all of them</b>

<b>The buying committee grew to ~11 people — and content has to reach all of them</b>

The question: how many people now sign off on a typical B2B purchase, and how does that reshape content strategy?

The dataset: Gartner's B2B buying research, surveying buyers on complex solution purchases, measures the size of the buying group and how it spends its time.

Three findings:
— A typical complex B2B purchase now involves ~6–10 (often cited around 11) stakeholders, up from ~5 a decade earlier.
— Buyers spend only ~17% of the journey meeting with potential suppliers — and when split across vendors, any one rep gets ~5–6% of buyer time.
— The hardest job isn't convincing one buyer; it's helping the group reach internal consensus — 'buyer enablement' content.

Caveats: averages mask huge variance by deal size; self-reported journey allocation is approximate. Treat as directional but methodologically solid.

What it means for B2B: content aimed at a single persona misses the room. The committee needs assets that travel internally — the ROI one-pager a champion forwards to procurement, the security brief for IT. Build content that wins arguments you're not present for.

Bottom line: you're not persuading a buyer; you're arming a champion to persuade their colleagues.