Understanding Full Context in B2B Buying

The Buyer's Seat. Post #4 Vendors, welcome to the part of the process you never see. You believe the sale begins when we meet. It doesn't. You’re stepping into a process that started weeks before your name came up. Here’s what really happens once you’re in the evaluation cycle👇 1. The Rubric Is Set ↳ Success is defined before you show up. You’re not shaping priorities; you’re being scored against them. Gaps aren’t debated. They’re deducted. 2. You’ve Been Benchmarked ↳ Before we talk, you’ve already been compared to 3–5 others. Stack fit, integration lift, security posture, delivery model, all assessed. If your solution looks heavy, you’re already behind. 3. Responsiveness Is a Signal ↳ Speed matters. Relevance matters more. We’re watching how well you understand our context, not how fast you hit “send.” Clear, contextual answers build trust. Generic ones cost you. 4. Execution Is the Product ↳ Rollout. Enablement. Success. That’s what we’re buying. If your post-sale experience doesn’t deliver real value, you’re not a partner; you’re a risk. 5. Your Champion Fights Without You ↳ Internal meetings decide your fate. Every deck, email, and demo must arm your advocate to win arguments you’ll never hear. 6. Behavior Predicts the Relationship ↳ Who shows up. How fast you follow up. How you handle pressure and pushback. These aren’t soft signals; they show us exactly what working with you will feel like after the deal is signed. 7. Buyers Share Everything ↳ One failed rollout. One broken promise. One team left hanging. That story spreads faster than your best case study, and sticks longer, too. 8. We Map Cultural Alignment ↳ We watch how your team shows up, with humility, ownership, and precision. Culture leaks in every email, every meeting, every moment under pressure. If we sense chaos here, we expect it in support, billing, and delivery too. 👉 By the time procurement gets involved, the decision is 80% made. The last 20%? That’s conviction. Conviction that saying yes to you won’t come back to bite us. Because in the buyer’s seat, we’re not just choosing capability. We’re choosing what we’re willing to be accountable for. ⁉️ Ask yourself: “Would my champion bet their reputation on us?” That answer speaks louder than any demo. • Show up like a partner. • Make the lift lighter. • Win trust before you win the deal. #TheBuyersSeat

💡 In B2B marketing, the fundamental unit of purchase decision-making is the Buyer Group. In other words, getting the different members of the Buyer Group to agree on a specific vendor is what has to happen to close a deal. LinkedIn partnered with Bain & Company and NewtonX to research the main drivers of Buyer Group decision-making. We found that [1] being known across the Buyer Group of a target account and [2] being trusted by the marketplace were the most important dimensions when being bought. 🎯 81% of purchases were made of vendors that everyone or almost everyone in the Buyer Group knew on Day One. 🎯 Only 4% of final purchases that were made were of vendors/products that only the expert recommenders knew. 🎯 Buyer Group members will pay more for products that their colleagues already know (by a ratio of 3:1), because your colleagues knowing about a vendor makes it a less risky choice. 🎯 Buyer Groups will not fight for products that their colleagues don't know, even if they think that product is better (3:1) because persuading colleagues to take a risk is more difficult than sacrificing potential functionality/quality. 🎯 All other things (like price and product quality) being equal, Buyer Groups will pick a well-known product/vendor over ones that are less well-known (3:1), because less well-known vendors were harder for the group to agree on. 🎯 The further away you are from technical knowledge of the product in your Buyer Group role, the more you rely on brand factors to shape your decision-making. Legal, finance, HR and Procurement, for example, have huge influence here and are much more influenced by brand than product experts and users. We feel our findings open up a few new ways of thinking about how to be successful in B2B marketing and selling - and show the role played by brand in every live sales process. Brand is not just an investment in getting bought in the future. It is a form of decision-insurance and risk-mitigation that makes it one of the main reasons that products get bought right now. Jann Martin Schwarz Jamie Cleghorn Tom Stein Nick Primola Rob Gold Sascha E. Jackie Cutrone #B2BMarketing #BuyerGroupMarketing #B2Believe

“Asynchronous selling” is quietly becoming a key component of buying motions in B2B — whether sellers have caught up or not. Today’s buyers (yes, including enterprise) don’t want to wait for a calendar invite to make progress. They want to explore with their own team, on their own time and schedule, across time zones and without friction. That means a whole lot of the buying journey increasingly happens without a seller present in real time. The key word in that last sentence is “present”.   The best teams are designing for this reality, where buying is enabled with proactive and strategic seller expertise, guidance and support.  Self-serve ways to understand value, align internally, and answer hard questions long before a sales call happens.  Think short, role-specific video explainers; interactive demos and proof points; ROI models buyers can run and share internally; clear next steps that don’t require emailing a rep; and fast, intelligent responses when buyers do raise their hand — whether that’s at 9am or 9pm. Platforms like Consensus didn’t create this shift, but they reflect it: enabling buyers to move forward asynchronously while still capturing insight, intent and momentum for sales teams. Sellers, please don’t freak out.  This isn’t removing you from the process but rather recognizing where you are most valuable (and where buyers are better off working independently). The average B2B sellers only spends 25-30 percent of their time actively selling. Imagine what just a couple points of improvement could do to your sales team’s productivity and results. The best sellers welcome buyer enablement advances, allowing them to focus their active selling time on the interactions where they are needed most (and where they can have the biggest impact). This improves the overall process dramatically for sellers and buyers.  Reps show up later, but better informed. Buyers arrive aligned, educated, and focused on decisions instead of discovery.  Marketers can focus on and impact revenue velocity through the entire funnel. The open question for B2B teams in 2026 isn’t whether buyers prefer this model. They already do. The question is whether your go-to-market motion is designed to support a buyer who wants to make progress without waiting on you — and still feel confident choosing you when it counts. 

“Wait… where did they first hear about them?” That question came up after a buyer explained why they chose a vendor. They mentioned a few posts they had seen somewhere, but could not recall where, when, or even which ones. It was not a blog. Not a demo. Just repeated exposure over time. Digital osmosis. That moment highlights a bigger shift. Search is no longer about actively looking. It is about sensing. Many B2B teams are still optimizing for keywords like it is 2015. Meanwhile, buyers are forming opinions through LinkedIn posts, Slack threads, Substack mentions, YouTube clips, and AI-generated answers, often before they consciously enter a buying cycle. Discovery does not start with a query anymore. It starts with a feeling. This looks relevant. This sounds familiar. That early signal shapes demand long before attribution models can explain it. This week’s newsletter breaks down why discovery now happens everywhere, and what that shift means for how and where brands need to show up.

Here's a lesson I learned the hard way in my own sales career. Not all stakeholders carry equal weight and some have hidden agendas. A skeptical CFO can quietly torpedo a deal, while a procurement team can delay approval indefinitely. Being single, or even multi-threaded, in a complex sales cycle can be terminal. I used to say that business to business (b2b) sales is a fallacy. Because the reality is that businesses don't buy from each other, people do. But increasingly what I've realised is you’re not actually selling to a person - you’re actually selling to a committee (full of lots of different people, often with competing agendas) Except you rarely get access to the whole committee. And that’s where most deals fall over. It’s not just one “yes” you need. It’s six. Sometimes ten. And every one of them has the power to say “no.” Here’s what we’re seeing in the data: ❌ 70% of lost enterprise deals involve stakeholders with conflicting priorities ❌ One skeptical CIO can derail a deal from the shadows ❌ No internal champion = no internal momentum And yet, too many sales reps still sell to one person and hope for the best. If you're seeing deal slippage, ghosting, or late-stage “no decisions”… this is probably why. In my latest blog, I break down how to: ✅ Map the full buying group ✅ Build consensus with tailored messaging ✅ Equip champions to sell internally (when you're not in the room) Read the full post here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/et8vSZNR

I've been reading G2's new Buyer Behavior Report, and this stood out: Evaluation has just overtaken research as the longest stage of the B2B buying journey. First time that's ever happened. It matched exactly what we've been seeing ourselves. AI has made the early stages of buying dramatically faster. 82% of buyers used a chatbot to source recommendations in the last two years.   But the real work only begins once you actually end up on that shortlist. The report confirms that deals slow down because more people have to say yes.  I've seen the same pattern in our own research. (Link in the first comment) A typical B2B buying decision now involves 9–13 stakeholders over a buying cycle that can stretch nine months or more.  The buyer isn't really one person anymore. It's an internal champion trying to get finance, security, procurement, implementation and a few other people comfortable with the same decision.  Do I see this as a problem? No, I think it's a healthy shift. If anything, B2B buying should involve more scrutiny… not less. But that does change what marketing’s expected to do.  For years, it was measured by its ability to generate demand. Today, that's only half the job. Your content can't just speak to one buyer anymore. It has to give the internal champion enough evidence to bring everyone else along.  By the time someone speaks to Sales, they should already feel confident recommending you to the buying committee.  AI may have compressed research, but building trust still takes just as much time, if not longer. It's just moved earlier in the process… and brand is how you get there first.

If you’re using data to sell, you’re missing something. Sure, numbers matter, but they’re not the whole story. We know from Jobs to Be Done that people deal with anxiety and the habit of the present whenever they consider buying. They’re secretly thinking: “Will this work?” “If it doesn’t, will I get fired?” “I’m comfortable with the current way.” These habits and anxieties are silent deal killers. They stall decisions, create objections, and ultimately stop deals from closing. The way out? Call them out. When you address the unspoken, you bring hidden fears to the surface. Here’s what it sounds like: “You feel like this might not deliver the results you’re expecting.” “It seems like you’re worried this could disrupt your team’s workflow.” “You’re probably wondering if making this change is worth the risk.” “It sounds like you’re hesitant because things are working well enough right now.” “You’re concerned this could reflect poorly on you if it doesn’t work out.” “It seems like you’re juggling so much already, adding something new feels overwhelming.” “You’re probably thinking this is a big investment for something that might not pan out.” “It sounds like you’re comparing this to something that didn’t work in the past.” If you guess wrong; people will correct you. If you’re correct they’ll confirm. Either way you unlock more truth. Chris Voss calls this labeling. You’re demonstrating that you understand the other person, which surfaces truth. Just because you don’t call out the elephants in the room doesn’t mean they’re not there. The rule? If you feel it in your gut, call it out.

We spent $200m rebuilding our GTM for AI. One of our highest ROI plays? Champion tracking. It’s a pretty simple play, right? Everyone runs the job-change play now. The difference is in the context. Anyone can do “Congrats on the new role.” Here's the version that gets us 3-4x standard outbound. Five steps, all from one context layer: 1. Flag the movers Cross-reference your CRM and data warehouse against third-party data. Flag the differences between email domain change and company ID change. 2. Verify it via conversation recordings Run a plain-English prompt across your call data to understand the champion's involvement and any mention of a new role. 3. Research the account with AI Pull CRM history, past deal context, call notes, and named relationships into one brief. Now you know the use case and the pain points before you write a word. 4. Stack the signals This is the whole game. Job change + research on new company + previous involvement. Multiple signals beat one every time. 5. Write from the full context Not "congrats on the new role." Try: "Saw you moved to [company], aware you used [your product] in your last company to see [x result], your new team mentioned similar issues, worth a conversation?" The job change is just the trigger. The context is what books the meeting.

Research is catching up to what we can see about how B2B buying is changing. The 3rs: 𝗥elationships, 𝗥ecommendations, and 𝗥elatability factors are taking centre stage. While product features, price, or brand recognition are in decline. Research from Warc reveals that emotional factors are more consequential in B2B buying decisions than rational levers. • Recommendations from similar customers or trusted colleagues are 3x more likely to tip the balance than cheaper prices • These recommendations are also 3x more influential than products promising better performance So cultural, social signals, and emotions are shifting decision-making. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁? 2/3 of big-ticket B2B buyers are now millennials or Gen Z. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: This isn't about giving old tactics new names. It's about recognising that B2B buyers (especially younger ones) make decisions based on what their peers say and who they trust, not just specs and prices. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁? Stop treating B2B buyers like robots comparing spreadsheets. Focus on the right places to build relationships. LinkedIn (not spam), WhatsApp groups, Slack communities, industry events. Focus on getting more recommendations, and broadcasting them. Create customer communities where peers validate each other's decisions. Avoid the BS: fake testimonials, aggressive automation, undisclosed paid recommendations. Most B2B marketers still pump budget into feature comparisons. Your prospects aren't asking "what does it do?" They're asking "who else like me uses this?" Track where your best deals come from. It's not the trade show booth. It's Sarah telling James at drinks that your product saved her quarter. That's your real marketing channel now.

The deeper the workflow, the harder it is for users to articulate what they need. In B2B, users are often experts in their job, not in your product. They’ll tell you what’s broken, but not always how to fix it. They might ask for a button, when what they really need is a better workflow. Great PMs listen beyond the ask. They watch users work. They study the pain behind the request. And they design solutions that solve the root cause, not just the symptom. In enterprise products, the best insights don’t come from feature requests. They come from understanding context. #B2B #SaaS #ProductManagement #UserResearch #CustomerEmpathy #EnterpriseUX