Inside the Q4 Industrial Buyer Pulse: Confidence, Budgets, and ChangeInside the Q4 Industrial Buyer Pulse: Confidence, Budgets, and Change

Inside the Q4 Industrial Buyer Pulse: Confidence, Budgets, and Change Transcript:

Jeff White: So welcome to the Q4 Industrial Buyer Pulse from Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing mate? 

Carman Pirie: All is well. And yeah, look, folks, today what we’re trying to do is really just peel back the curtains a little bit of the Industrial Buyer Pulse to give you a sense of what the findings were in Q4 and peel the layers back a little bit, to see what’s underneath some of that data or what we are seeing. 

Jeff White: Yeah, tell us a bit about the structure of that and how you framed that up. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. So this started back in about halfway through 2025. So we’ve done the Q3 edition and then this most recent one in Q4. So it’s really intended to be a bit of a brief snapshot, if you will, of what the current sentiment of industrial buyers is, somewhat writ large across supply chain plant managers, executive team members, as well as engineering. How are they feeling about buying confidence? How bullish are they about the quarter ahead? And how are they researching and evaluating suppliers and making decisions? What tools are they using? We’ve partnered with IMR research out of California to conduct this field work. And in this recent edition, I believe it was 258 folks that we’ve interviewed, so typically spanning both the US and Canada, of course more respondents are from the US. So that’s really what the buyer pulse is all about. And we do track some consistent questions wave over, wave. Four of the 12 questions that we ask basically do not change every wave just so we can track some of those core measures of things like buying confidence. But then there are other questions that we introduce into each that are unique and give us some unique insight into what buyers are thinking and how they’re making decisions.

Jeff White: Very cool. Let’s dive into some of the questions that may be one of the ones that carried over from the previous report that we’re tracking kind of quarter over quarter. What highlight would you like to pull out there to get started? 

Carman Pirie: Look, the budget confidence measure has not changed a lot. It’s still quite bullish at a 0.48 confidence index. And that’s on a scale of plus one being as confident as you can be. A negative one is as un-confident, as you can be. And zero would be neutral. So a 0.48 is showing quite strong buyer confidence, which is to suggest that people are looking at the quarter ahead saying budgets are going to go up, money’s going to be released, we’re going to be buying.

And Jeff, I guess the biggest surprise out of that is just all of the other macroeconomic reporting that we’re seeing. Manufacturing overall in the last week it was reported, I think lost something around 60, 70,000 jobs in 2025. That in combination with the tariff headwinds people may think, oh, the confidence would be eroding. And it doesn’t seem to be, I think that’s the surprise. If there is a headline out of that component of the research. 

Jeff White: Interestingly, Canadians were more optimistic than Americans overall, which kind of squares with how things are going, macroeconomically right now. But at the same time, we’re also facing more tariff issues. 

Carman Pirie: Fair, yeah. But some of the job growth numbers, for instance, have been a little bit more positive north of the border in the last number of months. So I suppose, maybe there is some connectivity there. But yeah, overall it paints a picture of a surprising amount of resilience around buyer confidence. I just wouldn’t have thought coming into Q4 that we’d still be seeing it. 

Jeff White: Yeah. And it’s good news for suppliers. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. While there are some employment headwinds and other things that we’re seeing, it doesn’t necessarily seem to be a cooling activity as broadly as you might think. Again some of the PMI numbers and things of that nature are not particularly great lately either. This is just one measure of many. 

Jeff White: Yeah, for sure. A lot of the spending priorities that we’re seeing are driving that buyer confidence. We expect those to tend towards those automation and production equipment things.

So what else are we seeing there around, where people are looking to spend their money this year? 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, it showed a pretty broad base actually. Because even the largest category for investments that was indicated was automation, robotics but still the lowest is QA and test inspection.

Jeff White: Still 31%. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, exactly. So when asked, which areas were most likely to see increased spend? It was fairly broad in the response, but we are seeing automation, robotics, and production equipment rise a little bit more to the top. I don’t think you can draw too much from that unless you’re an automation robotics provider or production equipment, if that’s your business, then you should maybe be a little bit more excited about it or know that. Those things are going into a bit of high gear. But I don’t think it necessarily means that if you’re not in those areas, that you shouldn’t be cooling your jets because that’s not what the data shows. 

Jeff White: No. There’s clearly a desire to purchase in just about all categories.

Carman Pirie: And it shows that, maybe this is connected to what we’re talking about from a labor force perspective. In that we are looking to manufacture more. We’re not necessarily looking to do that with more people. We’re looking to do that via more automation, more robotics. 

Jeff White: Yeah. And of course that will come up again later when we talk a bit about AI. What’s making people decide to move ahead with a particular supplier? What are the triggers that accelerate a green light?

Carman Pirie: Yeah. That was one of the cool questions of this bit of research we were looking at and a decision you want to make. It’s not like we’re saying what creates a green light from a red light, right? We’re more like, this is something an organization wants to do, but what makes them make that final decision, sign on the line that is dotted, and actually get it moving and make that investment.

ROI surface as number one. Actually supplier guarantees or delivery guarantees surface as number two on the list as of green light triggers, which I mean, in some ways the idea of, okay can you do it? Yes. What is the price? Okay, we understand. How much can you prove to me that you’ve done it for others, that’s not new.

The idea of case studies or ROI driving a level of acceleration of a deal is not surprising. I wanna talk a little bit, and maybe we’ll go off script here for a while, about what’s on the lowest end of this, which is executive mandate came in at a whopping 3%.

Jeff White: Which is counter to what we hear from a lot of buyers and manufacturers, is that they think that they need to have executives in order to move a project forward.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. And there’s also these bigger notions of… probably the biggest example that actually has come true in some way is safety. When it comes to workplace safety, industrial safety, the idea that has to start at the top and be a corporate priority is something that’s talked about often, and frankly I think, has surfaced as a main priority for a lot of executives. They do hold that up. It’s in some ways, one of the measures most directly attached to the plant floor that they care most about. In some outside of production targets and things that actually make the money. But, yeah, it’s funny because everybody wants their product or their thing to also occupy that space in the executive’s mind and then be mandated from the executive top down as something they ought to do. 

Jeff White: Create a culture of something.

Carman Pirie: Of whatever, right? We want a culture of quality. We want a culture of speed, who knows, but we’ve all heard it. And what I thought was so interesting is that, first off, I think as we imagine that it’s very hard to get to a place where something is as important as say, safety might be to people. And even if you could get to that executive mandate stage I guess I would argue can you get there with whatever it is you sell and then the research shows that the destination may not be worth the squeeze here.

It may not be a great place to be since it’s the least motivating green light trigger. 

Jeff White: Yeah, and if you’ve been pursuing that and trying to get to the C-suite because you think it’s the only way your deal’s going to get done, maybe you might want to refocus on some case studies that prove your ability to do that.

I want to dig into something ’cause we asked a related question in the Q3 buyer pulse around the differentiation provided by supplier guarantees or things like that. So I find it interesting because in that report it wasn’t necessarily seen as a differentiator, but clearly what we’re seeing here with 29% importance to people, it still matters. You still have to have that in order to potentially help drive a deal through. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Some of the Q3 research more pointed it out. It is nuanced, there’s no question, but I think it was pointed a little bit more, indicating that people weren’t that concerned about on time delivery. Like they weren’t expecting that their suppliers were going to miss delivery, right?

So as opposed to during COVID, we saw a lot of concern about whether delivery times would ever get met. I guess what we extrapolated from that is in some way if people aren’t that concerned about it or are not facing those spheres, then guarantees may not be that motivating.

Jeff White: Yeah, exactly. I just find it interesting how there’s some crossover there and, maybe it doesn’t necessarily suggest that there’s absolute alignment between those two types of how you think about that and how you value it at different stages in the buying process.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. One is talking about a bit of a fear-based motivation where others’ acceleration is maybe just different. If we look at the pre-contact shortlist, this is one area that we have continued to research quarter over quarter. And this was pretty much indicated the same, about 83% of respondents say they placed at least one supplier on a shortlist before speaking to them live, a change from 82% in Q3.

Jeff White: So clearly this is a thing, and to me, it’s only been three months since the previous report, but to me this is one of those things that kind of blows your mind a little bit that something is happening before you even know you’re in the race and how can you as a manufacturer ensure that you are getting shortlisted before you receive contact? 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. To ensure that you’re short-listable pre-contact.

Jeff White: Exactly. 

Carman Pirie: Because it’s gonna happen. So whether or not you’re short-listable is really the question.

Jeff White: And what are the factors that determine that?

Carman Pirie: Yeah, everything from, can they actually find out information about what it is you sell online in a reliable way and an up to date way. Depending on your business, there’s lots of ways obviously, that you can become short listable. But it does fundamentally mean if it’s happening pre-contact, it’s happening more digitally than it is via a salesperson relationship. And I think that’s the thing to be most mindful of. But when that conversation did actually happen, we asked the question: what was the first point of contact then? 

Jeff White: Yeah. And I think the Gen Zs and millennials in the audience are probably not going to like the answer. 

Carman Pirie: It changed a little bit, like depending on who you’re speaking to. I’m not sure that we would’ve assumed that plant managers and those more operational roles would be as driven to email as they indicated, because they seem like people where handshakes and pressing the flesh actually matter more. In some way however, that is the truth. And I think maybe it speaks to a bit of the asynchronous reality of their world. They can’t necessarily meet with people all the time. 

Jeff White: Not in the same way that an executive might be able to. Yeah. Potentially. 

Carman Pirie: Whereas the executive in those types of roles indicated a preference for phone based communication. Okay. That’s a piece that the millennials probably don’t like to your point.

Jeff White: And I think too, it certainly speaks from a traceability and an accountability perspective. You need to be tracking inbound calls as well. You need to be ensuring that these things are being recorded into your CRM so that you have the ability to actually attribute a particular piece of revenue to when that relationship started, and when the lead showed up. Via phone or via email and that those things are actually being recorded as well. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about it through okay, if our phone or email based communication is actually, post short-list, but pre-contact, how do we script it differently? What experience would we want to deliver there?

Jeff White: How do you curate that? Yeah. 

Carman Pirie: And can it be… Can there be different threads, different journeys that you expose to executives versus other members of the buying committee or what have you, that kind of more align with these preferences? The research doesn’t point to a one size fits all answer. If you were to download the paper and dig a little bit more deeply into the data, you may then begin to imagine how you may shift some of those nurturing sequences or alter some of those customer journeys to better reflect these communications. 

Jeff White: And not just the communication preferences, but understanding just how well equipped that buyer is going to be when they finally do reach out. Keep in mind that you may have already been placed on a shortlist, which means that people most likely have used your digital presence to get a quote or check timelines on delivery or anything like that using digital tools. So there’s a whole bunch of other things that could happen before somebody even shows up, makes that phone call, sends that email. But you need to be ready. 

Carman Pirie: The knowledge of the competition may well be different and more advanced. There are a lot of things to consider there. I think when we hear about the 80 percent being shortlisted pre-contact, if you’re being a bit cynical, you might say, yeah, but these are all incumbent suppliers, right? Like they’ve already done business. Like they’re pre-contact, yeah. But they always do business with them or they’re already, the standard spec for instance, for that particular thing. So that’s why we wanted to ask about it. In this bit of research, what are you doing as an industrial buyer? How frequently are you choosing new suppliers? So we ask people in their most recent significant purchase, basically who won. Was it an incumbent supplier or was it new? This data surprised me.

Jeff White: Yeah. I thought incumbents would’ve had a much harder time. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. We had 33% choose a new supplier in their most recent significant risk. One third. And I would’ve thought the power of incumbency would be much stronger than that. 80, 90% kind of thing going to pre-established suppliers.

Jeff White: I think what I saw there was a message of hope, for people looking to break into relationships or break into enterprise deals that maybe they weren’t able to do before. Like you got a solid third of a chance. That you could do this and the differentiation as we talked about in some of the other areas here may be the thing that tilts the balance in your favor. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. That was exactly my takeaway. Because I would’ve thought it would be, incumbents would have faced a harder time. So yeah, it’s not as uphill a battle as I would’ve thought, which was I guess good for them. Or maybe bad news for the big guys that are generally incumbents, I don’t know. But anyway, interesting to consider. And even in established categories it’s important to remember that there are new people winning deals. It’s not always going to the established providers. 

Jeff White: Let’s talk about how we’re enabling buying in a digital manner, because this is still very interesting. We had a similar question in the Q3 2025 report, this notion of who’s using AI to do research. Who? Who do you think? Yeah, it’s everybody. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. I think that’s why we started this question because frankly we thought it would be, the answer would be lower. And we would watch it grow. 

Jeff White: Yeah. 

Carman Pirie: I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up dropping this question from waves at some point. Because it’s basically coming out to almost a hundred percent of industrial buyers acknowledging that they’ve used AI to research suppliers for major purchases? 

Jeff White: It’s up 7% in one quarter from 85 to 92. Yeah. And in Canada it’s 99% and a hundred percent of C levels use it. So who’s left? 

Carman Pirie: The data does show that the usage on the plant floor with managers that are closer to the plant floor, is less. I’ve kicked this around with some of the data analyst folks that have worked through the responses to this and one of the curiosities that they have is they wonder if there’s a less willingness for those more frontline managers to admit to using AI. I don’t know if that power dynamic’s strong enough to actually surf it to come through in the research or not, but it’s about the only strong explanation they would have. 

Jeff White: I think it still feels like you’re trying to read into it and it is really hard to be sure why, managers are lagging at only 83% compared to a hundred percent of C level. 

Carman Pirie: but still only 83.

Jeff White: It’s like saying I only find results via organic search. 

Carman Pirie: It just shows it’s here, it’s now AI is happening for supplier research. So if most marketers are in the business of trying to be found when somebody’s researching a supplier, it’s absolutely critical.

Jeff White: So you need to be, your content needs to be machine readable. If you’re not familiar with what schema is, talk with your web developer. Have it implemented across your site so that all of your products are marked up using appropriate schema. This way they can be found by machines. Content that’s in Q&A type format. Let’s be honest, a lot of that hasn’t necessarily changed from how we did content 15 years ago when inbound was still new. Like you’re answering questions via blog posts at that time, and Google search was finding you. Now it’s the same thing. It’s just you’re not talking about topics at a high level. You need to get more precise with your content in terms of how you answer the question.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I think probably, I don’t know… I feel like in some ways, maybe the more accurate way to say it… because I think folks that claim that optimizing for AI is basically about leveraging the same best practice that you use for optimizing for organic. 

Jeff White: Oh I didn’t necessarily mean that.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, no, I know, and I wanna just distance myself from it a little bit because I think there are differences. But there are similarities and learnings from one that port to the other. Like it’ll look pretty similar. And you’re right, the notion around focused answers to specific questions, even answer first communication is really rewarded by AI. That’s something that I don’t know we would’ve thought about in the same way. For example, a search optimized blog post? No. Whether or not the answer comes in the first paragraph or not, it’s irrelevant. In fact, some of that long form content… 

Jeff White: Was worse than reading a recipe website.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. So there are differences, but I think we can learn from lessons from one application to the other.

Jeff White: It’s a bit of a tangent, but do you think that kind of content strategy still rewards creativity. 

Carman Pirie: Sure. Creativity is just such a broad thing, right? There could be lots of creative things done on that destination page that aren’t rewarded at all. But it doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be ways that like, I don’t think it’s just about being a machine back to the machine, if that makes sense. 

Jeff White: I think there’s still opportunities for it. It feels like maybe with the lessening of usefulness of social platforms the potential for creating something that’s truly different and out there and not necessarily aligned with. Getting found. Maybe it’s more difficult for it to spread socially. I don’t know. Anyway, we can leave this out if it doesn’t make sense. 

Carman Pirie: It’s not that it doesn’t make sense. It’s just, I don’t know that I have a disagreement with you on it. One of the areas that this quarter’s research looked to dive into further was as we look at DIY, that digital self-service that industrial buyers are doing, can we quantify that? But can we wrap our arms around what are the types of things that they’re doing in digital DIY in some ways? What are the things that they may be doing pre-contact to put us on that short list or what have you. So that we can begin to align marketing and sales investments, digital investments around those jobs to be done. And that was an area where there were some interesting findings. Yeah. 

Jeff White: One of the things that’s truly interesting about it is that on average. Buyers did at least two of these things before involving sales. So that could be checking inventory online. They could be getting a price quote online.

Carman Pirie: Those are the two biggest ones actually that inventory check or price slash lead time, like really do over index. I think it’s important for people to know. 

Jeff White: Absolutely. The next one down though, at only a few points behind 41% A CPQ, a special configuration of a product or a solution. These are not basic tools, but the fact that 40% of buyers have used one of these. If you don’t have one and your competitors do, that could be the difference. That could be one of the things that gets them shortlisted.

Carman Pirie: I don’t know if you agree with me here, Jeff, but one of the things I thought was strange was that the compliance document downloads and like a CAD download we’re kinda middle of the pack. And those are arguably more commonly found across industrial websites, I would suggest hard working and so more people have them. I would’ve just thought it would be a little bit more surface of the top of the behavior. So not to say that it’s not important, it just surprised me that people seem to really be craving those more advanced digital experiences and reporting that they’ve recently used more advanced digital experiences. So if you’re looking at your web presence saying I don’t have any of those things, but my competitors do. They’re getting used. 

Jeff White: Absolutely. And if they’re not finding out if you have inventory, they’re finding out if your competitors have inventory. Exactly. But yeah, those considering more digital tools is not necessarily going to be a bad thing as part of your strategy.

Carman Pirie: And begs the question over, if you’re a salesperson looking at this, you’d be saying yeah, when do I come in to play? So we looked at that as well, what are the human required steps in the digital in that buying process that maybe has a number of digital components as well? So when asked which steps still require human contact from the supplier for them to proceed confidently? Some interesting findings there as well. Yeah. 

Jeff White: In a lot of cases, and a lot of these are rated, these top three are within a few points of each other. They’re looking for validation that what they’ve configured is accurate and viable and actually the solution to what they’re looking for.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I’ve done the online configuration or what have you, but I need final verification from you personally that this is stage. 

Jeff White: They’re looking for pricing in terms.

Carman Pirie: Makes sense. Yeah. 

Jeff White: And they want to know at this stage, do you have the documentation around compliance and quality and all of that, that needs to fit into their systems.

Carman Pirie: So painting a picture really of a compliance check in some way, almost coming a bit after the fact. 

Jeff White: So maybe that speaks to why it’s not such an important piece as part of the pre-sales contact, but comes later because they wanna make sure that what they’re choosing is the right thing and then they want to make sure that it’s compliant.

I think one, the most interesting finding… maybe not the most interesting finding here, but certainly one of the most interesting findings is that. Less than 1% of people said that. No, I don’t need to talk to a salesperson at all. What I got digitally is enough.

Carman Pirie: Yeah I think you’re right. That’s, I don’t know if that’s surprising to me though, because I think for most of the things that these buyers are buying still does require a level of human assurance, connected to that though is where that other human is. Are they in person in front of you or not? And so many sales teams see the in-person visit as the gold standard, and they really feel like buyers want to see them in person. Onsite assessments ranked dead last in terms of something that does need to happen.

So 23% or so said, I need somebody, an expert, to come on site and make sure that this will work or do an onsite assessment. So I’m not saying it’s not important, I’m just saying the thing that many salespeople would suggest is the most important thing, their relationship, and they go on site, they do that work. Maybe some of that is transitioning to more digital based relationships where a video call is just as fine or what have you. Showing an evolution in buying behavior. For sure. 

Jeff White: Yeah. 

Carman Pirie: And it’s also interesting to think about when you’re designing these customer journeys, being more intentional about where the human handoffs are.

Jeff White: Yeah. 

Carman Pirie: And even connecting digital components to the journey with, like you can imagine, a CPQ process where you get the final output. And then as part of that a meeting with an application engineer is automatically booked at the conclusion of that digital process, so we know that there’s a human contact that’s required here as part of this journey. So let’s build it in intentionally.

Jeff White: And train, sales engineers or others who are capable of having both that interaction with somebody, but also with the extensive product knowledge that’s expected of somebody at that stage. 

Carman Pirie: Jump into the supply chain health and risks. The last section of the research.

Jeff White: So we asked people to let us know what their top three or up to their top three logistics related challenges caused the most disruption to their operations in the past quarter. High freight costs are still coming in pretty high, 54%. And of course, customs and border delays. I think that’s all tied to both tariffs and other issues certainly providing some risks too. 

Carman Pirie: Showing that the supply chain, like logistics related challenges, are reasonably broad based. There’s no one thing that’s weighing on them dramatically more than others. It really paints a picture of these supply chain logistics people navigating a very complex world right now. And there’s a lot of things that they need to be mindful of at once. 

Jeff White: Absolutely. But I think one of the things about it is that geopolitical risk, for example, only came in at 9%. And I think that speaks to a supply chain that is continuing to go about its business and things are still getting done even though it may seem like there’s a lot of turmoil, globally. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s important to note especially, Venezuela and others, when you think about geopolitical risks, it’s easy to watch the news and then people get a little obsessed by it or thinking that it applies to them and their specific industry, maybe more than it actually does. And, the landscape more broadly is that people are tending to work around these things. And yes, at least concerning things that we asked about geopolitical risk, only 9%, where the port and rail congestion was a concern of 33%, that’s a little more closer to home and real. 

Speaking of closer to home though, I think that is probably from the supply chain piece. The thing that stood out most from this quarter for me is just how embedded, near or reassured supply has been in the last 12 months. So when we looked, when we asked about taking, what share of critical spend has been shifted to near or reassured suppliers in the last 12 months the 49% selected 10 to 24%.

So half of respondents said, between 10 to 24% and then it had a typical bell curve a bit. Distribution over on the other side of that. It shows that it’s happening and it’s broad based, but it’s also measured. I think that’s important to know. I think it’s important to know that, if you’re one of those suppliers that is concerned about maybe being displaced by a nearshore option or reshore option you’re not completely outta the game. I do think it does point to this happening broadly and therefore there’s broad based interest in it.

So highlighting it in your messaging a little bit more if you have reassured a meaningful percentage of your supply chain, that may be something that your buyers care about as well. So it’s baked into the planning cycle. Like this notion of reassuring isn’t a speculative thing, it’s happening.

This has been a fun conversation. I’ve enjoyed kinda kicking around some of the findings and research here. And we didn’t go through every question that we covered in the download. We saved some for sure. But we covered a good chunk of it and I hope people will check it out.

I think it’s really interesting, a snapshot into how industrial buyers are feeling coming into the end of the year, and it gives you a lot of information to help you plan 2026. A number of the questions in this quarter’s research were really designed to help you inform your work in the early part of the year as you’re thinking about where your growth goals may take you. So do check it out.