They showed up late and in a hurry

What do Molly Ringwald, Dan Levy, Amy Porterfield & a world record have in common? They'll all be at GURU Conference 2026. 100% Free. 100% Virtual.

If you're obsessed with marketing like we're obsessed with marketing, GURU is the must-attend conference of the year. We'll be covering all things email marketing: B2B, B2C, newsletters, deliverability, email design, AI & more.

You can expect to walk away with new email strategies, the very latest digital trends, and how to step up your email performance. But don't worry, we also like to have fun. This year's theme is rom-com, so there will be DJs, meet-cutes, and a cutest pet contest. (Start prepping your dog's headshot now.)

Don't miss out. Join us Nov 12th & 13th for the largest virtual & free email marketing conference, powered by Constant Contact.

Yes! I Want to Register!

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Tuesday - which means it’s time for The Lifecycle Brief! There’s been a theme over the past two weeks in my work: the handoff between marketing and sales.

It comes up again - and again - and again.

Layer that with AI search and how much of top-of-funnel research happens in places we can no longer track effectively. It becomes a huge mess and has an impact on the handoff.

What could go wrong? 👀

Let’s dive in.

Buyers have always done their research and homework before pursuing a sales conversation. However, with AI leading search, buyers now spend months researching on their own before walking into a sales call. This means that they skip steps in the vetting process, which affects the lead qualification steps for a company.

This has an impact on marketing because pages, sessions, and sources that are associated with the contact look like they appeared completely out of nowhere, while the contact goes straight into a sales conversation.

Dreamdata actually reported that 81% of the B2B customer journey now takes place before the pipeline begins, up from 70% the year prior.

Total journey length has also extended from 211 days to 272.

Because of the additional research done at the top of the funnel, SQL to closed-won has shortened from 62 days to 52 days, and MQL-to-SQL conversion also changed from 107 days to 92 days.

The problem is that everyone assumes a shorter sales cycle means marketing can step back once the lead is handed over. But the data seems to suggest the opposite.

69% of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with sales reps, according to Gartner. In other words, the seller is no longer the primary source of information and is more in a confirmation role. This is good for building confidence with buyers during key moments.

The data that marketing can gather will help understand what research on the website the prospect did to help understand how to better confirm information. The feedback loop and the handoff have never been more important.

Here’s what is currently captured vs. not. 100% fill-in rate means it’s auto-generated, and 0% means you need a process to do this.

What the portal captures (contact.csv):

Where it stops (deal.csv):

Sales can see how long a deal took and how healthy HubSpot thinks it is, but has no record of how the buyer arrived.

The speed you can't measure (contact.csv):

Contacts jump from Lead straight to Client. Dreamdata says MQL to SQL takes 92 days on average, and this portal could not tell you whether its own number is 92 days or 9.

Supporting gaps on the contact:

🩷 LinkedIn ads hit 121% ROAS as B2B buyer journeys stretch to 272 days
PPC Land's breakdown of Dreamdata's benchmarks. One useful nugget: 9.4% of MQLs include at least one organic Company Page impression in their journey, rising to 15% at the SQL stage and 17.9% for closed new business deals.

🧡 Gartner survey finds 69% of B2B buyers turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights
Reps remain the most important information source when buyers are researching a business problem, identifying a preferred supplier, securing internal support, and finalizing the purchase.

💛 Gartner sales survey finds 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience
Gartner also notes 70% prefer a completely digital, self-service buying experience.

💚 Forrester's 2026 Buyer Insights: GenAI is upending B2B buying
The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, and procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles, engaging from the start of the process.

💙 The B2B Buyer Experience Report 2025
Based on nearly 4,000 buyer responses, the buying cycle shortened from 11.3 months to 10.1 months, and a review of the study noted that buyers initiated contact with sellers earlier in the buying process.

TLDR Marketing is the free daily brief that 330K+ growth marketers, performance marketers, and CMOs actually read. The most interesting stories in marketing, curated and summarized in 5 minutes.

Subscribe for free

With the changes in AI search, the research happening at the top of the funnel, and with marketing and sales needing to work together more, we’ve decided to dive into better strategies and processes regarding this handoff. That’s our plan for Q4!

Buyers spend about 220 days doing their homework and around 50 days with sales. The CRM is the only place where those two halves can meet, as long as the research travels with the deal. It historically only lives at the contact level, but since buyers are coming in more educated, it’s important that those two elements talk to one another.