Enterprise purchasers are turning to LLMs to scrutinize vendors and the partners who refer them, according to a study from the AI Revenue Institute published earlier this month.
The survey of 521 decision-makers found that chatbots pervade buying committees. Purchasers frequently use AI to weigh vendor sales claims against public information — more than half of B2B buyers said they removed a vendor from their shortlist after AI pointed out a shortcoming, according to the report.
Purchasers also reported using AI to balance referrals from peers and third-party advisors, with 82% of respondents declaring they would be more skeptical of referrers in the future or avoid them altogether, should AI find fault with the recommended vendor.
“All of a sudden, they're doubting not only the vendor, but the partner,” AI Revenue Institute Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Khali Henderson told Channel Dive.
More than two-thirds of buyers said they use AI to save time in the buying process, while over three-quarters have it review vendor documentation. Most importantly, companies are acting on information gathered from AI tools. The study found that a quarter of purchasers are using AI to negotiate with vendors, while another quarter is testing AI's capabilities in negotiation and contracting. More than a quarter intend to bring agents into negotiations in the upcoming 12 months.
“In this particular case, the use of AI is ahead of all the projections, and revenue teams just aren't prepared for how far they are,” AIRA Co-founder and Managing Director Casey Freymuth said.
The survey results are a warning for channel partners — their clients are using a new microscope to inspect their recommendations, even if they don’t disclose it. Businesses now have an “easy button” to run an RFP or initiate a renewal review, Henderson said.
Buyers are also under stricter scrutiny due to AI. The majority of respondents said their supervisor or buying committee colleagues are using AI for vendor evaluation.
“They're asking AI to basically review your work for them because they don't have time to really do it, and they're not the experts,” Henderson said. “As that purchasing manager, you now have to worry about them and what they're saying.”
For some technology advisors, the availability of AI chatbots is a push to engage in deep buy-side advisory services for clients, rather than just recommending a vendor.
“If you've been fortunate enough to have a great network where you can just come in and refer something to somebody, now you have to go into those same conversations knowing that a second opinion is extremely easy to get,” Cloud Communications Group VP Business Development Tyler Dool said.
Some partners have leaned on a select number of known vendors. That’s a useful rolodex, Dool said, but it may not measure up to AI scrutiny.
“It’s like a trusted anecdote,” Dool said. “For us, I think we already kind of go into all of our engagements assuming that every claim that we make is going to be checked by somebody.”
The limits of LLMs
B2B buyers are most frequently using frontier models such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini to vet vendors, according to the study.
But partners warn that hallucinations and improper data sets make the LLMs incomplete guides.
While Rise Technology Advisors Co-founder Ed Wu is not immune to using AI in his research, he said it’s important to verify the data input.
“It comes across so confidently and with such authority that it's hard not to take it as the gospel,” Wu said. “But if you've played around with it, it doesn't take much to crack the veneer, challenge that assumption and get a pretty quick walkback on said recommendation.”
AI tools are massive time-savers for ingesting documents, but partners warn that publicly available information scraped by LLMs can only get customers so far. The public models are missing key data that exists only in internal systems, CCG Partner Chris Moffett said.
“How does a provider perform during implementation? How do they handle account relations? What do clients say about them? The frontier models can get you a decent second opinion, but they're not going to have the complete picture,” Moffett said.
Third-party partners are well-positioned to collect such data across service providers and OEMs, according to Rise Technology Advisors Co-founder Ed Wu. Yet those partners must stick with their clients throughout the client lifecycle to amass information, rather than handing leads to vendors and walking away.
“There's just no substitute for real experience,” Wu said.
