Your deal dies in the meeting you’re not in.

There’s a meeting you’ll never be invited to. It’s the one after your presentation, when your contact has to explain your recommendation to people who didn’t hear it.

Take an operations manager recommending a new scheduling system, an illustrative one. She’s seen the demo, spoken to a reference and worked out where it saves her team time. Her finance director opens the proposal and asks what it costs to switch. The depot supervisor wants to know who runs morning dispatch while everyone’s in training.

Both are excellent questions. Neither was on slide four, the one with the delighted customer logos.

That’s where the deal dies. Not in your pitch. In hers.

You’re writing for the wrong person

Gartner’s research on B2B buying found a typical complex purchase involves six to ten decision-makers. The same work found buyers spend only 17% of their buying time meeting potential suppliers. Most of the decision is made in rooms you’re not in, by people you’ll never meet, using whatever your contact can carry in.

Now look at your marketing. Whose questions does the website answer? Whose do the case studies answer? Usually the person who’s already interested. The champion.

My view: most B2B marketing is written for the champion, who’s already sold. The people who can still say no get a logo wall.

That’s backwards. Your champion doesn’t need more enthusiasm. She needs ammunition. Every question she can’t answer in that second meeting becomes a reason to wait, and waiting is how plenty of B2B deals die. Not to a competitor. To nothing.

Interest isn’t the same as a defensible decision

The person who finds a supplier might be its future user, its loudest advocate or simply the one who volunteered to make three calls. Other people inherit the cost and the consequences. They can like the change and still need good reasons to put their name to it.

The Australian Government’s guide for suppliers is a useful reminder of how a careful buyer thinks. It says government buyers assess value for money, which includes whole-of-life costs, and those can include the cost of transitioning out. A private company has its own rules. But when a prospect asks what it costs to switch, “our monthly price is competitive” leaves a legitimate question hanging in a room you can’t get into.

Map what each person has to defend

A generic case study announces that another company enjoyed a successful rollout. Here’s what the operations manager actually needs to take into that second meeting.

That group is illustrative. Don’t invent a finance director because there’s a box for one. Ask your contact how a similar purchase was decided last time. Who used it, whose budget paid, who had concerns and what settled them?

A three-person business has the same problem in miniature. One partner meets the supplier, the other watches the cash, and the person who’ll use the service has an objection neither partner has thought of. They need one properly explained example and ten minutes with the right person, not four brochures.

Build pages that travel without you

A link to a precise answer is far easier to forward than a 42-slide deck with instructions to “start at slide 28”.

Name the decision in the heading: “What changes at your first depot during the switch?” Lead with the answer. Show the sequence, what the customer supplies, what the supplier owns and what’s still uncertain. Put each condition beside the claim it qualifies, so the page can be forwarded without a covering email explaining what you really meant.

This is where useful content earns its keep. “How to cost a depot changeover without double-counting labour” helps even a buyer comparing two other suppliers. That independence is exactly why it gets forwarded, and why your name goes with it into the meeting.

Don’t put the useful bit behind a form. The finance director isn’t filling it in.

What to do on Monday

1. List everyone who uses, pays for, approves or inherits your typical purchase. Check it with two recent customers.

2. Next to each person, write the decision they have to defend, in their words, not yours.

3. Match one piece of proof to each decision. Wherever there’s a gap, that’s your next piece of content.

4. Turn the three questions buyers ask most into standalone pages with the answer first.

5. Run the forwarding test. Give your last proposal to someone who wasn’t in the pitch. Ask them to write the three sentences they’d send to the person signing off: the problem this solves, why this option is credible, and what we’d commit to. Wherever they guess, fix it.

You won’t get into the room. Make sure what you’ve sent can hold its own when you’re not there.

Sources & notes

• Gartner, “Marketing-Fueled Buyer Enablement”, 2019 (typical complex B2B purchase involves six to ten decision-makers; buyers spend 17% of buying time meeting potential suppliers)

• Australian Government, Selling to Government, getting selected to supply (value for money and whole-of-life costs, including transitioning out)

• The scheduling system and buying group are illustrative.

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