There has been a shift in how B2B businesses go to market over the last couple of years. From relying on mostly disconnected off-line outbound tactics for lead gen to a more integrated and balanced approach that combines digital with human touches throughout the buyer journey. The onset of Covid certainly accelerated investments in digital marketing. It also made organisations rethink how and where to deploy their sales resources to design buyer journeys that serve their customers better. Many of our respondents noted that where you inject your sales touches often depends on what stage in the buyer journey the prospects are at. For example, it’s costly and inefficient to use human beings - usually in the form of cold outreach - to raise brand awareness. But it’s vital to loop them in at the later stages of the sales process. As Jennifer Smith - Director of Global Marketing Technology at Sage notes, “We meet our customers’ needs best when we retain the human touch.” The sentiment, perhaps unsurprisingly, is supported by over 60% of our panel respondents who noted that humans will continue to play an important role in the modern B2B buying journey, albeit at different stages of the process.