From Preference to Decision: How Communications Shapes the Buying Journey in 2026

Why trust, proof and expertise matter before the sales conversation

The Buying Decision Is Already Underway

In From Reputation to Preference, I looked at how reputation, trust and leadership visibility can shape preference before a formal decision begins. Over the past couple of months, I have taken that discussion further by looking at the buying journey: what prospects do when they research, compare, look for proof and build internal support before an organization even knows an opportunity exists.

Communications is still often treated as support for a sales process that begins with an inquiry, request for proposal or introductory meeting. But by then, the decision is already underway. A prospect may have read an executive’s perspective, searched for evidence of expertise, reviewed a website, asked an AI assistant a question or talked with colleagues before anyone enters a lead into a system.

The challenge is not simply being visible. It is making expertise easy to understand and trust wherever a decision can take shape. That takes a clear story, useful proof and consistency across the places buyers go for information. Communications creates business value when it helps people move from awareness to confidence and from confidence to action.

Expertise Has to Be Visible

Most organizations have no shortage of expertise. Their leaders and subject-matter experts solve difficult problems every day, recognize patterns their customers may not see and have experience that could help others make better decisions. The problem is getting that knowledge out of the organization in a form people can understand, remember and use.

In a crowded market, visibility itself is relatively easy to produce. Differentiation is harder. An organization does not need to be known for everything. It needs to be known for something valuable: a problem it understands deeply, a perspective it can defend or an outcome it knows how to create.

The obstacle is capacity. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that 53 percent of leaders said productivity must increase while 80 percent of the global workforce reported lacking the time or energy to do its work. Good ideas remain trapped in meetings, presentations and client conversations because the people with the knowledge rarely have time to turn them into a consistent public voice.

A good content process should reduce that burden. Communications professionals can interview experts, test claims, organize evidence and turn one substantive conversation into several useful formats without losing the speaker’s voice. Technology can speed up research, transcription and early drafting, but people are still responsible for judgment, accuracy and accountability. The goal is to help real expertise reach the market.

The Buyer Experience Starts Before Contact

The experience a buyer has before contacting an organization is part of the decision. Dentsu B2B’s 2025 Superpowers Index found that brands with excellent buyer experiences close deals up to 31 percent faster, sometimes as much as four months sooner than poor performers. The study also identified trust, simplicity and ease as important characteristics of stronger buying experiences.

Communications friction rarely appears as one dramatic failure. It builds through jargon-heavy web copy, different explanations from marketing and sales, outdated case studies, weak search results and missing proof. Each gap makes a prospect work harder to understand the organization or explain it to someone else. Uncertainty grows, and decisions slow.

The answer is not to push buyers through a funnel more aggressively. It is to make the path to confidence easier to follow. The message should be clear, the proof should be current and each touchpoint should help a buyer understand what the organization solves and why its approach is credible. Preference may begin before a proposal, but it grows when the experience keeps confirming the initial impression.

One Story Has to Work for the Whole Buying Group

Complex decisions rarely belong to one person. Forrester’s State of Business Buying research reported that an average of 13 people participate in a business purchase and that 89 percent of purchases involve two or more departments. A prospective champion may understand the value immediately, yet still need to build agreement among executives, finance, operations, technical specialists, legal counsel and procurement.

Those stakeholders do not need five disconnected stories. They need one clear story with enough evidence to answer different questions. A case study can help an operations leader understand implementation. A technical article can demonstrate depth. Independent coverage may reduce risk. An executive perspective can connect the investment to a larger business priority. The core value stays consistent, but the proof must work across roles.

Communications and business development should be working from that same story. If a prospect cannot explain an organization’s value to colleagues, even an enthusiastic internal advocate may struggle to move the decision forward. What matters is whether every person involved has a credible reason to support the choice when the organization is not in the room.

Thought Leadership Opens Doors Early

Strong thought leadership can influence consideration before a buyer is actively looking. The 2024 Edelman LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report found that 86 percent of decision-makers would be moderately or very likely to invite an organization that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership to participate in a request-for-proposal process. That is a clear connection between visible expertise and business opportunity.

High-quality thought leadership is not a disguised sales brochure. It helps leaders understand a challenge differently, supports that perspective with credible evidence and offers guidance they can use. It gives a prospective client a preview of how an organization thinks, not simply a list of what it sells. That matters when several qualified providers make similar claims.

One strong article may create a favorable impression, but a consistent body of work builds familiarity and gives buyers more than one way to judge an organization’s thinking. By the time an opportunity becomes formal, that visible expertise may already have influenced who gets included.

AI Search Changes the First Point of Contact

Discovery is changing as AI systems increasingly mediate the questions people ask and the sources they see. Adobe Digital Insights reported that AI-driven visit share to technology and software websites rose more than 120 percent year over year during the 2025 holiday season. The finding is sector-specific, but it illustrates a broader change: a prospect’s first encounter with an organization may come through an AI-generated answer rather than a traditional list of search results.

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, and generative engine optimization, or GEO, are quickly becoming part of communications and digital planning. The terminology will evolve, but the business question is straightforward: Can AI systems understand an organization’s expertise, find enough credible proof to cite it and see consistent evidence across owned and independent sources?

Human expertise matters even more in that environment. AI can organize information and surface sources, but it cannot create the experience behind a case study, earn a journalist’s confidence or take responsibility for whether a public claim is accurate. Technical work helps content get found. Authority still comes from useful explanations, original knowledge, credible proof and sound judgment.

Proof Must Exist Beyond the Website

Buyers do not judge an organization from its website alone. In G2’s 2025 survey of software buyers, generative AI chatbots accounted for 17.1 percent of the influence on vendor shortlists, followed by review sites at 15.1 percent. Vendor websites accounted for 12.8 percent. The survey focused on software, but the point reaches further: buyers also pay attention to what customers, peers, media, analysts and other credible sources say.

A polished website can make a claim. Independent evidence helps people believe it. Customer stories, earned media, current reviews, executive insight and strong case studies should reinforce one another rather than operate as unrelated tactics. That is especially important when buyers conduct much of their research on their own and AI systems draw from multiple sources to assemble an answer.

Every so often, an organization should audit its public presence as a prospect would. What appears beyond the company website? Is the evidence recent? Are the strongest customer outcomes easy to find? Do third parties reinforce the position the organization wants to own? The answers matter more than a separate production schedule for every channel.

Employees Can Reinforce the Promise

Some of the most credible evidence may already exist inside the organization. The 2026 Public Relations Global Network survey on brand influence found that 68 percent of respondents viewed employees as one of their brand’s most trusted messengers. More than half said people have very high or extremely high trust in employees.

That trust will not come from distributing approved talking points and asking employees to repeat them. Employees become credible advocates when they understand the organization’s promise, see it reflected in their own experience and have useful ways to share what they know. A project leader discussing an outcome, a recruiter explaining culture or a subject-matter expert offering practical insight can provide proof a campaign cannot manufacture.

Internal and external communications need to reinforce one another. When employees hear one story and customers encounter another, credibility weakens. When the experience matches the message, employees can show that the brand is more than a public claim. The leadership question is whether employees are simply informed or truly equipped to represent the organization with confidence.

Global Reach Still Requires Local Relevance

The same principle applies when an organization enters a new market. CSA Research’s global consumer study found that 76 percent of online shoppers preferred to buy products with information in their native language, while 40 percent said they would not buy from websites in other languages. Although the research focused on consumers, it underscores a broader truth: entering a market is not the same as understanding it.

Translation changes words. Effective localization also accounts for cultural expectations, media dynamics, regulatory issues, stakeholder priorities and the way trust is earned in a specific place. A message that sounds persuasive at headquarters may feel generic or tone-deaf somewhere else. Technology can make multilingual content faster, but it does not replace local judgment.

That is one reason S&A Communications values its relationships through the Public Relations Global Network. Independent, owner-led agencies bring local knowledge to an international strategy while keeping the organization’s position consistent. Global reach works best when the message is understood and trusted in the market where it must work.

Communications Helps People Decide

Taken together, these points show why communications affects far more than awareness. It shapes how easily buyers understand an organization, whether an internal champion can build support, which providers appear credible before an RFP, what AI systems and search tools surface and whether independent sources reinforce the story.

That means the work should not begin with a request for more content or another campaign. It should begin with the questions creating friction. What does the organization need to be known for? Can buyers find credible evidence of that expertise? Does one clear story work across the buying group? Do owned, earned and human sources reinforce one another?

An outside communications partner can help leaders see the organization from a buyer’s perspective. Internal teams know the business deeply, but that closeness can make familiar language, missing proof and inconsistent touchpoints harder to spot. An independent review can show where expertise is getting lost, where buyers are being asked to work too hard and where communications can make the path to confidence clearer.

By the time a prospect schedules a meeting, some of the most important judgments may already be in place. Organizations that treat communications as part of the buying process can shape those judgments earlier, support them with credible evidence and carry confidence into the sales conversation. The advantage is entering that conversation after the organization has already given people meaningful reasons to listen.