by Christina | May 20, 2026 | 2026, Blog
This post is an excerpt taken from the upcoming book The Hidden Buyer Journey, to read more click here.
Here is a question worth sitting with: if a researcher called your customers tomorrow and asked them about their buying experience, would they mention you by name?
Not your company. Not your product.
You, specifically. By name.
For most sales professionals, the honest answer is probably no. And that’s not an indictment of their effort or their intentions. It’s a reflection of how B2B selling has been structured for the past two decades — around process, pipeline stages, and quarterly targets rather than around the human being on the other side of the deal.
Ben is the exception that proves the rule.
We Weren’t Looking for Ben
We didn’t go looking for Ben. We were conducting customer research for a private equity firm that had acquired several companies and was evaluating how to consolidate their brands. The goal was straightforward: interview existing customers, understand the strengths and weaknesses of the brand, and surface the insights that would inform the go-forward strategy.
We interviewed dozens of customers across multiple acquired companies. We were asking about brand perception, buying experience, product satisfaction — the usual territory. And then something unusual started happening.
A name kept coming up.
Not a product name. Not a company name. A person’s name. Ben.
What made this remarkable wasn’t just that customers remembered him. It was that they remembered him across companies he had never officially sold to. Ben sold products across three of the acquired businesses. But his name surfaced in interviews with customers of all of them — including ones where he had no formal relationship, no account ownership, no territory.
In years of conducting this kind of research, we had never seen anything like it.
What Ben Actually Did
When we dug into why customers kept mentioning Ben, the picture that emerged wasn’t what you might expect. Nobody talked about his pitch. Nobody mentioned his product knowledge in the traditional sense. Nobody brought up his closing technique or his follow-up cadence.
What they talked about was what Ben did for them.
The product team at one company described how Ben had worked directly with their engineering team during product design — showing up not as a vendor trying to protect a sale, but as someone genuinely invested in making sure they had the right components for what they were building. That’s not in anyone’s job description. Ben just did it.
The procurement team at another company explained how Ben had somehow created a consolidated invoice that allowed them to manage purchasing across three separate business units — something the selling company didn’t actually offer as a service. To this day, we’re not entirely sure how he pulled it off. But he did.
And a third company’s buying team simply said: “Ben actually answers his phone.”
That last one landed hardest. In a world of automated sequences, CRM-generated follow-up tasks, and carefully managed response windows, the fact that a human being picked up the phone when you called was memorable enough to mention unprompted in a research interview.
What Ben Was Actually Selling
Here’s the thing about Ben that the traditional sales framework completely misses: he wasn’t selling products. He was selling something far more valuable and far more difficult to replicate.
He was selling himself as the most reliable, knowledgeable, responsive partner his customers had.
The consolidated invoice nobody asked for. The engineering conversations nobody else was having. The phone that actually got answered. None of that appeared in a product brochure. None of it showed up in a CRM field. None of it would have been captured by any intent signal or engagement metric in any marketing platform.
All of it was what kept his name coming up in interview after interview, across companies he’d never even officially sold to.
Ben had figured out — instinctively, without being taught it — that his job wasn’t to sell. His job was to make it easier for people to buy. And in doing so, he had built something that no competitor could undercut on price, no algorithm could replicate at scale, and no automation could replace: genuine trust.
What the Research Tells Us
Ben’s story isn’t just a feel-good anecdote about a talented rep. It’s evidence of something the research confirmed repeatedly across thousands of buyers in fifteen industries.
When customers are asked what actually drove their purchase decision, the top three answers — product quality, usability, and value — are things they can only experience after they’ve already bought. Which means during the sales process itself, they’re not evaluating the product. They’re evaluating something else entirely.
They’re evaluating Promise. Credibility. Trust. And whether the business argument being made feels honest rather than optimistic.
None of those are rational calculations. All of them are emotional judgments about the person in front of them. A buyer doesn’t calculate trust. They feel it. They don’t measure credibility against a rubric. They sense it in how a rep shows up, how much they know, how well they listen.
Ben understood this without being taught it. He wasn’t operating in a machine-to-human world, sending triggered sequences to a list. He wasn’t in a human-to-machine world, entering data and working algorithm-generated queues. He was doing something far simpler and far more powerful.
He was being human, to another human.
The Question Worth Asking
The B2B industry has spent the better part of two decades building systems designed to scale the sales process — to remove the inefficiency, the unpredictability, the human variability from the equation. And those systems have produced exactly what you’d expect: a selling environment where 61% of buyers say they’d prefer a rep-free experience entirely.
Ben is the argument against that trajectory. Not because he was operating without technology or process. But because he never let the technology or process become the point. The point was always the person on the other side of the conversation.
In our research, the most effective predictor of whether a deal closes isn’t the strength of the product, the competitiveness of the pricing, or the sophistication of the marketing automation. It’s whether the buyer trusts the person making the promise.
Ben built that trust across three companies, in an organization he only officially worked for one of, with customers who remembered his name years later in a research interview nobody told them was coming.
That’s not a sales technique. That’s a human one. And in a world that is rapidly automating everything else, it turns out to be the most competitive advantage of all.
by Christina | Apr 29, 2026 | 2026, Blog
I went to a developer conference and accidentally learned something profound about human nature. It started innocently enough – the All Things AI Conference in Durham, NC had a title too good to pass up.
What I didn’t expect was to be the only marketer among 2,500 developers, nodding along as whurly, CEO of Strangeworks (one name, all lowercase), dove deep into quantum computing and AI. I was in over my head. But sometimes that’s exactly where the best insights hide.
It was until Luis Lastras, Director of Language and Multimodal Technology at IBM began talking about “small models” that I finally found something I recognized. Luis said something that struck me that I didn’t realize – and I think I’m not alone – “hallucinations are intentional.” Say what?
According to Luis hallucinations are a way for developers to learn how models work. Because the models operate autonomously they don’t filter out what they output – at least not yet. Think of letting your grandfather who lost his filter loose at a dinner party.
It’s one of things that IBM is working on. Small models validate outputs and commands at various stages in the process to reduce hallucinations.
Anyone who’s worked with AI has experienced hallucination from made up sources to statistics that are just plain wrong. But what Lastras shared was something I didn’t realize, it’s the little extra pieces of information intended to be helpful that AI tools add in that weren’t asked for in the prompt.
For example, he showed a demo of a prompt asking how many moons Mars has and the response came back with two and their names, with the added extra – the distance from Earth which was not requested.
The distance between the planets may have been right but it requires another step to validate which then triggered a fascinating article I had read over the weekend.
In a study by Elon University conducted with 500 AI users (US adults) last year, almost 70% believed that AI models are at least as smart as they are, with 26% believing that they are “a lot smarter.”
What is more concerning is that we believe that AI is thinking like humans. As the article in the Wall Street Journal article Why Even Smart People Believe AI is Really Thinking goes on to say “our cognitive biases developed to help us survive in complex social environments…evolved to view linguistics fluency as a proxy for intelligence, engagement and helpfulness as indicators of trustworthiness.”
The same tendency innate to humans that leads us to trust social creatures who must cooperate for survival are leading us to trust systems that appear to listen, understand and want to help us.
The more AI tools and bots act like humans, the more likely we are to trust them. Which brings us back to the hallucination. The more AI tools act like they’re being helpful, the more likely we are to miss that “little extra” piece of information that wasn’t requested.
The convergence of intentional hallucinations and our deeply wired human instinct to trust fluent, helpful communicators creates a perfect storm of misplaced confidence.
As AI tools grow more sophisticated and human-like, our evolutionary instincts will only make it harder to maintain the critical distance needed to catch the errors, embellishments, and unrequested additions that slip through.
The good news is that awareness is the first step. Whether it’s IBM’s small models validating outputs in real time or simply slowing down to verify what AI hands us, the antidote to a cognitive bias millions of years in the making is something refreshingly simple – a healthy dose of human skepticism.
by Christina | Apr 14, 2026 | 2026, Marketing, Sales
Back when I was a client-side marketer, I noticed a pattern slowing our team down: the habit of holding onto work until it felt perfect.
To break that cycle, I led the team through what I called the “Embrace Your Suckiness” exercise – an honest conversation about what we were each great at, and where we genuinely fell short.
Out of that came the CRAP process: Create, Refine, Act, Perfect.
The rule was simple: if you got stuck at any stage, you passed it to someone else. It increased our speed to market and later that year we won an internal award for the best performing department.
We borrowed IBM’s 70% rule – get it to 70% and go. Let the market, the audience, the world complete the other 30%. Then we refined the campaign.
Fast forward many years, and I applied that same process to a book I just finished – three years in the making.
I sent the first draft to friends and family. What came back was hard to hear after all those late nights and weekends.
But that’s exactly the point.
The people who matter most told me: “It’s good… but it’s not good enough.” Good, because they appreciated the work and effort that went into it. Not good enough, because they respected me enough to push me further.
That feedback is a gift. And it only comes from people willing to tell you what you don’t want to hear.
If you’re early in your career, here’s the most important thing I can share: Surround yourself with those people.
Not people who echo your worldview.
Not people who validate everything you do.
People who are honest – even when it’s uncomfortable.
We live in a time that makes it dangerously easy to only hear voices that agree with us.
Don’t fall for it.
Here’s the truth: Everyone is great at something, and everyone sucks at something. That’s not a flaw – that’s just being human.
You may only have 70%. That’s okay. That’s why you need the right people around you to help you find the rest.
Embrace your suckiness. It just might be your greatest strength. 💪
To learn more about The Hidden Buyer Journey click the link https://carbondesign.com/the-hidden-buyer-journey/
by Christina | Apr 3, 2026 | 2026, Marketing, Sales
After 7 years of research – analyzing hundreds of buyer journeys, profiling the personalities of thousands of decision-makers, and tracking what actually drives B2B deals – I finally finished the first draft.
Unlike other books in the sales and marketing space, this is not survey driven. We didn’t ask buyers for their preferences, we observed their behaviors in the data.
The work took longer than I ever expected, but every extra year added a layer of insight I wouldn’t trade. The 📕 title: The Hidden Buyer Journey.
Here’s what I discovered that changed everything:
● 85% of buyers influencing your deals never make it into your CRM.
● Most personas are built for selling, not buying.
● Corporate culture predicts deal velocity better than any other factor.
● Although there are a dozen or more buyers involved in the journey, only 4-5 make the deal happen.
● Reps can sabotage deals by not adjusting their style to fit the buyer’s personality.
These aren’t just interesting data points – they represent a fundamental shift in how modern B2B sales needs to be approached.
The book explains why win rates aren’t improving, why sales cycles are stretching, and why “personalization” isn’t working. More importantly, it shows exactly what to fix…and how.
I’ll be sharing more over the next few weeks. If any of this resonates with challenges you’re facing right now, follow along. You won’t want to miss what’s coming.
To learn more about the book and to reserve your copy visit https://carbondesign.com/the-hidden-buyer-journey/
by Christina | Jan 20, 2026 | 2026, Blog
Most of your best buying signals show up late in the sales cycle, but they’re invisible if the right contacts never make it into your CRM.
This problem has plagued sales and marketing organizations for as long as these functions have existed. Companies invest massive amounts in Martech stacks and sales databases, only to see them underperform – not because of the technology itself, but due to poor input.
Specifically, the issue is qualified, highly engaged contacts held tightly – like clutched pearls – by the sales force.
For years, the prevailing theory has been that sales doesn’t want marketing anywhere near its most valuable relationships. Sales executives often attribute the issue to competing priorities or a general lack of interest in “data entry.” Interpret that however you’d like.
The visibility gap
I’ve encountered this problem repeatedly when trying to map content consumption to the buying journey. Typically, we’re only able to connect 10%–15% of sales contacts to any measurable marketing engagement, such as content downloads, event attendance, or other interactions.
Recently, however, we had the opportunity to take a closer look under the hood.
A client shared their contacts, intent data, engagement data and – most importantly – sales email correspondence tied to active opportunities across more than a dozen accounts. The data covered hundreds of emails exchanged over a seven-month period. In some cases, we observed opportunities at inception; in others, we jumped in midstream and followed them through to close.
We mapped the emails chronologically and tracked every individual included in the conversations. It was only after reviewing the full arc of these communications that the real reason sales reps don’t enter new contacts into the database became clear.
Where are all these names coming from?
The first question we wanted to answer was simple: Where do these new contacts come from – and why?
What we found was remarkably consistent. As deals progress, new contacts tend to appear at three distinct points in the sales process:
- Demo requests: These typically expand the buying group by an average of seven to 10 people.
- Trial setup: This stage typically introduces an additional three to five contacts, often including stakeholders from other geographies within global organizations.
- Final presentation: Procurement and finance frequently enter the picture at this stage, and if the presentation is on-site, even more participants tend to appear.
Why don’t reps enter the names?
Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t about laziness or disinterest. It’s about focus.
As opportunities near closure, activity between the prospect and the sales rep increases – sometimes dramatically. Last-minute trial configurations, contract negotiations and master services agreements consume nearly all of the rep’s time and attention.
The excitement of a potential win – like the smell of blood in the water for sharks – puts reps into a sales frenzy. Their behavior becomes almost entirely reactive.
New contacts who aren’t directly participating in the email threads are viewed as peripheral. In practice, they become invisible. This blind spot is especially pronounced at the very moment when insight matters most.
Why enter them at all? What’s the upside?
What most reps don’t realize – given their narrow focus on closing the deal – is that these late-stage participants are often scrambling to get up to speed.
They visit the corporate website.
- They search for case studies.
- They download white papers.
- They watch on-demand videos.
Their goal is simple: become informed enough to influence the final decision.
That behavior is precisely what makes them valuable.
If – and it’s a big if – reps take the time to enter these contacts into the database, their sudden spike in activity can surface powerful intent signals.
A real-world example
In one opportunity, a CEO entered the buying process shortly before an on-site presentation. The decision came down to the incumbent vendor and our client.
That CEO searched for a specific term more than 35 times over two weeks.
Because the contact was identified, that insight surfaced. The sales team redesigned the final presentation to focus heavily on that topic and directly connect it to the client’s value proposition.
They won the deal.
The fix is cultural, not technical
This isn’t a Salesforce problem.
It isn’t a HubSpot problem.
And it certainly isn’t a marketing problem.
It’s a process and mindset problem.
The most valuable buying signals often appear late in the sales cycle, introduced by stakeholders who weren’t part of the early conversations. When those contacts never make it into the system, organizations lose visibility at the exact moment insight can influence outcomes.
Sales teams don’t need more tools – they need a clearer understanding of the upside. Capturing late-stage contacts isn’t about helping marketing run better reports. It’s about giving sales an unfair advantage: real-time visibility into what decision-makers care about most.
When those contacts are entered, intent data lights up. Content consumption becomes visible. Messaging can be adjusted. Presentations get sharper. Win rates improve.
Until organizations address this blind spot, marketing will continue to look ineffective, intent data will appear incomplete, and sales teams will unknowingly leave leverage on the table.
