Do prospects watch your videos before a sales call?

One of our clients, a tech sales coach named Peter Ahn, told us something we now build our whole business around. His prospects show up to calls having already watched his videos. Sometimes they open with something he said a year and a half earlier.

"It makes it feel like these people know you before they even speak to you."

That's one person's experience. So I wanted to know if the wider buyer data backs it up. It does, with one honest gap I'll get to.

Buyers decide a lot before they talk to you

6sense surveyed about 4,000 B2B buyers for its 2025 Buyer Experience Report.¹ A few numbers stood out:

• Buyers first contact a seller about 61% of the way through their buying journey.
• 94% have already ranked a preferred vendor before that first contact.
• That early favorite wins 77% of the time.
• 79% of first contacts are started by the buyer, not the seller.

Where the first sales conversation happens

61%: on their ownSearching, asking peers, asking AI, watching, reading. Picking a favorite.

Then: youFirst conversation with a seller.

Read that from the seller's side. By the time someone books a call with you, they've usually picked a favorite already. If it's you, the call feels easy. If it isn't, you're the comparison quote.

Most buyers would rather skip the rep

Gartner's 2026 survey found that 67% of B2B buyers prefer a buying experience without a sales rep, up from 61% the year before.²³ In the same 2026 survey, 45% said they used AI during a recent purchase.

Buyers also use about seven different sources of information, and 69% turn to sales reps to check what AI told them.⁴ Forrester puts a typical business purchase at 13 people inside the company plus 9 outside influencers.⁵

If you're a coach or consultant, you are the product. So "research without a rep" really means research about you, without you. The only question is what they find.

What builds trust during that research

The 2026 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report surveyed more than 1,100 executives in seven countries.⁶ Here's what they said about the ideas companies publish:

76%say it helped their buying group judge whether a vendor understood their needs

52%say it helped their buying group pick the vendor

59%of final decision-makers say weak or missing thought leadership helped get a vendor dropped

56% vs 14%trust you more when you show you understand their challenges, vs. showing how strong your product is

That last number is the whole game for an expert. Buyers don't trust you because of a list of credentials. They trust you when they can see you get their problem.

One more finding from the same report: among decision-makers who shared a company's ideas, 89% did it privately, by email, direct message, work chat or in meetings. Your best video doesn't just get watched. It gets forwarded inside the buying group, to people you'll never meet.

So, do they watch your videos?

Here's the honest gap. None of these studies asks, "Did you watch the seller's YouTube videos before the call?" I couldn't find a single primary study that measures it.

What we do know is where that research happens. YouTube is the second most-visited website in the world, and Google's AI Overviews cite it more than any other site.⁷⁸ We broke those numbers down in our post on the "second largest search engine" claim.

And we know what happens when a buyer does find your videos. They show up already warm, like Peter's prospects quoting a video from 18 months ago.

How to find out for your own business

You don't need a study. You need to ask.

1. Add one question to your booking form: "What did you watch or read before booking?" Leave it as free text.
2. Ask on the call: "How did you find me?" Write down the answer, word for word.
3. Track it every month, next to the number of calls booked. For our clients, calls booked and where they came from is the first number we look at. Views come later.

Within a few months you'll know which videos are doing the selling. Make more of those.

What to make for the 61%

If buyers do most of their homework before they talk to you, your videos should be the homework.

• Answer the questions they ask before they'd ever email you. How you work. What it costs to get the problem wrong. How you think about the decision they're facing. Your prospects don't watch your newest or most entertaining video. They watch whatever answers their question.
• Show how you think, not what you sell. Remember the 56% vs 14%.
• Give them enough to judge you. A 20-minute talk tells a buyer far more than a 30-second clip. Peter's best video was a 20-minute talk to a room of founders.
• Make it easy to forward. A clear title tells the next person in the buying group why they should watch it. Here's how we package videos.

The goal isn't views. It's a sales call that starts with "I watched your video about..." instead of "So, what do you do?"