B2B teams aren’t short on data. They can see which accounts are active and track engagement across channels. But activity isn’t the same as understanding. They still don’t know who is actually buying, how decisions are taking shape, or whether any of that engagement is building toward pipeline. 

That’s why execution breaks down. Teams are acting on data that doesn’t reflect how buying decisions form. The result is broad targeting, reactive execution, and inconsistent outcomes.  

At this year’s Forrester B2B Summit, this challenge was framed as the GTM Singularity. Buyers are making decisions before sellers enter the conversation, and account-level activity is no longer enough to guide execution.  

Across the summit, one idea stood out:  

The future of GTM isn’t about more signals. It’s about understanding real buyer behavior and acting on it.  

The shift from intent to buyer intelligence  

Intent data was built for a simpler version of B2B buying. It helped teams identify accounts that appeared active and prioritize where to focus. But account activity does not tell you if a decision is forming. B2B decisions are made across buying groups, often without direct interaction with sales. An account can look active while nothing is actually progressing.  

That gap is where execution fails. Buyer intelligence closes it. It shifts the focus from accounts to individuals, from inferred activity to observed behavior, and from signals to understanding how decisions are progressing.  

Instead of guessing where demand might exist, teams can see where it is forming and act with precision.  

Why this shift matters now  

This is not a future trend. It is already happening. Buyers are more independent. They research, evaluate, and build consensus before engaging with vendors. By the time a sales conversation begins, much of the decision process is already underway. That creates a visibility problem for GTM teams.  

If you can’t see who is involved or how a decision is progressing, you can’t time engagement, prioritize effort, or align activity to real opportunities. More data doesn’t solve that problem. It amplifies it. Only visibility into real buyer behavior does.  

What this changes for pipeline  

When teams can see how decisions are progressing, execution becomes more focused.  

Marketing prioritizes accounts where engagement is building, rather than spreading effort across all activity. Sales engages earlier, with context on who is involved and what matters.  

Effort concentrates where buying groups are actively engaging, turning observed demand into pipeline instead of chasing activity that was never moving. 

From signals to pipeline: how Sophos applied this in practice  

This shift is already playing out in real programs. In one session at Forrester, Leticia Teston of Sophos and Andy Gram showed how Sophos rebuilt its approach to generate pipeline within a single quarter.  

Sophos was generating demand, but it wasn’t converting. Buyers were engaging without progressing, SDRs were qualifying instead of engaging, and campaigns were driving activity without creating momentum, while pipeline still needed to be delivered quickly.  

The issue wasn’t activity. It was visibility.  

By shifting to contact-level buyer intelligence, the team could see where decisions were forming and who was involved. That allowed them to prioritize the right opportunities and engage earlier with context.  

The result? Pipeline delivered within a single quarter. Conversion improved because effort was focused on accounts where buying activity was already observed. And marketing and sales aligned around the same view of where demand was actually forming. 

The future of GTM is already here  

The way pipeline is built has already changed. Buyers are more independent. Decisions are less visible. GTM teams that rely on account-level signals will continue to operate without a clear view of demand. Those that understand how decisions are progressing will move earlier, prioritize better, and convert more consistently. That is the shift from intent to buyer intelligence.  

At pharosIQ, we give GTM teams visibility into where demand is actively forming, using real buyer interactions captured across our owned B2B ecosystem.  

Use it in your own systems, or let us activate it for you. 

See where demand is forming.