B2B buying is starting to look less like a funnel and more like an operating system.

Buyers are still comparing vendors, weighing risk, and building internal consensus. But now AI agents, self-serve commerce, digital procurement, and answer-led research are becoming part of how that work gets done.

That changes what sellers and marketers need to build.

It is not enough to create more content, more nurture tracks, or more sales activity. The better move is to make the buying environment easier to navigate, easier to trust, and easier for both people and AI systems to understand.

The next bottleneck is not attention alone. It is whether the path from awareness to action is easy to navigate once buyers and AI systems both start doing more of the evaluation themselves. If the environment is cluttered, trust drops and momentum leaks out before sales ever have a chance to help.

That is why Roku Ads Manager is worth a look. It gives B2B teams a more practical way to build visibility on streaming TV while keeping the route to consideration cleaner and easier to follow.

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

This edition is about what happens when B2B buying becomes more agent-led, more self-directed, and more digital by default. Agentic commerce needs cleaner product data, decision environments need better buyer context, and modern B2B ecommerce needs to support longer cycles without making the experience feel slow.

Deals get harder when your buying experience only works for one kind of buyer.

Today, the buyer may be a procurement lead, an internal champion, a finance stakeholder, a department head, or an AI assistant helping compare options before the first sales call.

That means the buying journey has to work for humans and systems.

“The buyer journey does not need more stages. It needs clearer answers, cleaner data, and fewer moments where confidence breaks.”

Your team becomes easier to understand, evaluate, and buy from, whether the first touch comes from a person, a procurement workflow, or an AI agent working in the background.

Agentic commerce is not just a new shopping interface. It changes how B2B buyers discover, evaluate, and complete purchases across existing channels. An AI agent may need to understand product fit, check inventory, apply contract pricing, confirm order history, route fulfillment, and support post-purchase questions. See full article.

If AI agents are helping buyers compare and purchase, unclear data becomes a revenue problem. A rep may never get the chance to fix confusion if the system cannot understand what you sell, who it is for, or how a buyer should act.

Pick one product or solution page and check whether an AI agent could answer five basic buyer questions from it: what it is, who it is for, what it works with, what it costs or requires, and what happens after purchase.

The funnel is too rigid for how B2B buyers actually make decisions. Buyers do not move cleanly from one stage to the next. They research, compare, pause, revisit the problem, bring in stakeholders, ask new questions, and build confidence in loops. See full article.

Sales teams inherit the confusion that marketing does not resolve. When buyers cannot define the problem, compare options, or align internally, deals stall. A stronger decision environment helps buyers achieve greater clarity and fewer unanswered questions.

List the five questions buyers must answer before they can say yes. Then map one useful asset, proof point, or sales conversation to each question. If any answer is missing, that is where the momentum is probably breaking.

B2B commerce is much bigger than software. It includes wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, agencies, logistics partners, and platforms that support other businesses. The common thread is complexity: longer sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, bulk orders, payment terms, procurement steps, and customer-specific relationships. See full article.

A slow digital experience can make even a strong offer feel harder to buy. Sales should not have to compensate for basic friction in ordering, product discovery, account setup, or follow-up. Better digital commerce gives reps a cleaner starting point.

Walk through your buying process as a customer. Check the product page, account flow, quote request, checkout or demo path, payment terms, and follow-up. Mark every step where the buyer has to wait, guess, or ask for information that should already be clear.

Most teams do not need another funnel report. They need a clearer view of how accounts actually move through messy buying journeys.

Factors.ai helps B2B teams track account activity, identify intent signals, connect marketing touchpoints to the pipeline, and understand which companies are showing real buying behavior. For this edition, that matters because buyers are no longer moving in a straight line. The goal is to see the decision environment more clearly, not force every signal into an old funnel stage.

Try Factors.ai here

FTC disclosure: Not sponsored. No affiliate relationship.

Rigid funnels are not the only thing breaking. The systems underneath them are breaking too. If customer data is messy, handoffs are inconsistent, or the team cannot see the buying picture clearly, it gets harder to create the kind of low-friction environment modern buyers actually respond to.

That is why Attio is worth a look. It gives teams a cleaner way to manage customer data and relationships so the buying path is easier to understand and support.

Attio is the AI CRM that keeps you ten steps ahead.

Ask Attio anything. Where should I focus? What deals are at risk? Search, update, and create across your customer data.

Ask more from CRM. Ask Attio.

Try Attio for free

Use this when a buyer is still comparing options and needs clarity, not pressure.

Subject: Helpful context on [decision]

Hi [First Name],

I know decisions around [problem/category] usually involve a few moving parts, so I wanted to make the comparison easier.

The main questions teams usually need to answer are: what needs to change, who needs to approve it, what risk has to be reduced, and what the buying process needs to support.

Happy to send a quick checklist if that would help.

[Your Name]

The funnel was built for a cleaner buying story than most teams actually live with.

Today’s buyer journey has more loops, more stakeholders, more digital steps, and more AI in the background. That does not make sales less important. It makes clarity more valuable.

The move now is simple: make the answer easier to find, make the product easier to understand, and make the next step easier to take.

See you next time,