Everyone's telling you AI is the great equalizer. More outreach, more content, more sequences, more touchpoints. Scale everything.

And we all listened.

Here's what nobody told us: our buyers noticed.

Forrester's January 2026 State of Business Buying report dropped a stat that should change how every enablement team thinks about AI. Twenty percent of B2B buyers say AI has made them less confident in the research they're doing. Among procurement professionals, that number jumps to 28%.

But here's the part that should really get your attention. Those same buyers aren't abandoning AI. They're using it more than ever for their own research, their own vendor evaluations, their own shortlisting. They just don't trust it when you use it to talk to them.

They want AI for themselves and authenticity from you.

That's not a complaint. That's the shape of the market now.

Think about what that demand actually requires from your team. Buyers are voting with their data: AI is fine for their competitive advantage. It makes them smarter, faster, more informed. But when AI shows up in the seller experience — in your outreach, your proposals, your sequences — something in the buyer's brain registers that as a shortcut. As effort they're not making. As a relationship your company isn't actually investing in.

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So you're stuck with a choice your competitors are making too: scale AI engagement and slowly watch buyer response flatten, or invest the time in genuine human connection at moments that matter. Those are the only two options the market is currently offering. And every week the decision gets harder because the gap between them keeps widening.

This tension isn't theoretical. Forrester's data proves it's real. And it's reshaping who wins in B2B sales.

I've been writing about AI in enablement since 2024, when I introduced the AI Task Type Framework to help practitioners figure out which tasks AI should handle and which should stay human. That framework was about internal enablement work. Content creation. Admin. Research.

What I didn't see coming was that the same logic would need to extend outward, to every single touchpoint between your team and the buyer. And the data now says it's not optional.