The first time a buyer speaks to your business is often not the first time they have encountered it.
By the time an enquiry arrives, they may already have spent months coming across your engineers, leadership team and technical thinking through LinkedIn, project updates and industry conversations. The relationship has not started with that enquiry. In many cases, it started much earlier, in ways neither side consciously registered at the time.
Relationships Still Matter. They Just Start Earlier.
For decades, supplier relationships in the energy sector followed a predictable pattern. They began at exhibitions, client visits, industry introductions or through existing networks. Buyers met suppliers, conversations took place and relationships developed from there.
Those interactions still matter and remain fundamental to how work gets won in this sector.
But increasingly, they are no longer where familiarity begins.
Long before procurement formally begins or a business development meeting is arranged, buyers may already have spent months encountering a supplier’s people, expertise and ideas through digital channels. It might be a project manager posting updates from site, an engineering director sharing practical insight about subsea inspection, or a technical specialist explaining a complex challenge in a way that demonstrates genuine depth of knowledge. None of these are sales interactions, yet each contributes to the impression a buyer forms over time.
As we explored in our article on The Silent Stage of Procurement, much of the buying journey now happens before suppliers even realise they are being evaluated. The feed is now one of the places where that early confidence begins to form.
The buying process has not fundamentally changed. It has simply started earlier than most businesses realise.
Familiarity Rarely Arrives All at Once
Buyers rarely remember individual posts. They are unlikely to remember that a company published an article six months ago. What they often retain is something far less specific, but commercially far more significant. They recognise the business. They feel as though they have seen its people discussing relevant topics before. They have a growing sense that the engineering team understands the challenges they face, even if they cannot pinpoint exactly where that impression came from.
That is how familiarity actually develops. Not through a single piece of content, but through repeated, low-intensity exposure to useful ideas over time. Most buyers never consciously track those interactions, yet those interactions shape perception all the same.
Why Familiarity Matters Commercially
Every new supplier introduces uncertainty. Buyers are weighing technical capability, sector understanding and the likelihood that the business will become a reliable long-term partner rather than another source of project risk. Anything that reduces that uncertainty before formal engagement begins has commercial value.
Familiarity works in exactly that way. It rarely wins work on its own. But it makes suppliers feel less unknown, less untested and less risky when commercial conversations eventually begin. In sectors where projects involve significant investment, technical complexity and long-term relationships, that reduced sense of uncertainty can quietly influence who makes the shortlist before procurement formally opens.
The Feed Has Quietly Become Part of Due Diligence
Few buyers would describe scrolling through LinkedIn as supplier research. Yet that is often precisely what is happening.
Project updates, conference presentations, technical commentary and thought leadership from engineers and commercial leaders all contribute to the picture buyers build of a business long before any formal evaluation takes place. Buyers observe expertise, consistency and credibility not because suppliers are selling but because they are demonstrating how they think. Over time, that picture influences whether a business feels familiar or unknown when a requirement finally emerges.
This is one of the reasons thought leadership for energy firms has become increasingly commercially relevant. Not because a single article wins a contract, but because consistent, credible presence across the channels buyers actually use during their research phase shapes familiarity in ways that formal marketing rarely achieves on its own.
This Is Bigger Than Social Media
It would be straightforward to dismiss this as a conversation about LinkedIn strategy. It is not.
It is a conversation about buyer behaviour, and specifically about how the early stages of the buying process have changed in a sector that has historically relied heavily on personal relationships and word of mouth.
Today’s buyers are increasingly self-educating before they engage suppliers. They search websites, read technical content, review project experience, look for independent validation and encounter people through professional networks. The feed is simply one part of that wider process. The businesses gaining a commercial advantage from it are rarely those posting most frequently. They are the ones whose expertise appears consistently enough that buyers begin recognising both the people and the business behind them, before any formal conversation has taken place.
What This Means in Practice
The question is no longer whether buyers use digital channels during their buying journey. Increasingly, they do, and increasingly they are doing so earlier in that journey than most suppliers recognise.
The more important question is what they find, and who they repeatedly encounter, before they decide to make contact.
At AB Fiftyone, we help energy, engineering and industrial businesses become easier to discover, understand and trust through the channels buyers actually use during their research. Because the feed is no longer simply somewhere content is published. It is quietly becoming one of the places where buying decisions begin.
If your business has strong capability but buyers are not encountering it before they start looking, it may be time to look at why. If this sounds familiar, it’s worth a conversation.
