Stop designing for the champion

The uncomfortable number behind stalled B2B deals is that a large share of qualified opportunities (by some estimates 40 to 60%) are lost not to a competitor but to no decision at all. The buyer was interested. The product was good enough. The group simply couldn't reach the confidence to move.

If you accept that buying is a group reaching shared confidence rather than an individual being convinced, the practical question is the one most strategies skip: what do you actually do about it? Here's where I'd start and the first move is to stop doing the thing nearly everyone does.

The mistake hiding in plain sight

Most ABM and marketing strategies over-index on the champion. Find the supporter, arm them, trust them to carry the deal. But champions are often the weakest point in the chain, not the strongest. They rarely hold the authority to decide. They face internal resistance you never see. And they struggle to translate value across functions that measure success differently.

So even a fully convinced champion watches the deal stall because:

Deals don't move forward when the champion is convinced. They move forward when the group is aligned.

Design for the group, especially the harder-to-convince stakeholders, and the champion becomes far more effective. Design only for the champion, and you've built your strategy around the person least able to close the gap.

A framework for the group, not the individual

Once the group is the unit you're working with, four stages give you something to actually do.

1. Understand the buying group. Not personas, not segments, the real people in the decision. What is each trying to achieve, what does failure look like for them personally, and where do they influence others? The shift that matters: every stakeholder holds a different definition of success and a different perception of risk. Miss that and you can't move the group.

2. Diagnose the doubt. This is where most teams stop short. You're looking for where confidence breaks, not just where objections are raised....ROI credibility, integration risk, personal accountability, internal politics, procurement pressure, change fatigue. The loudest objection is rarely the most dangerous one. The real blockers tend to be quieter, and more influential.

3. Equip with confidence. Knowing the doubts, ask what this group needs to believe to move forward and what proof makes that belief credible. Buyers don't need more assets. They need tools to win the argument internally: an internal pitch deck, an ROI case, a comparison narrative, a risk-mitigation summary. One test sorts enablement from clutter could your buyer use this to convince someone else? If not, it isn't enablement.

4. Facilitate consensus. Even convinced individuals stall if the group isn't aligned. So work the process: which conversations need to happen, who must be aligned before the key meeting, which objection will surface first, what needs to exist before that conversation can. This is where marketing creates disproportionate impact no longer supporting sales, but orchestrating the decision.

What this means for ABM

None of this is anti-ABM. It's what ABM should grow into. The move is from account targeting to buying-group understanding; from personalisation to internal relevance content the buyer can use inside their organisation, not just content addressed to them; and from campaigns to decision enablement. The goal stops being engagement and becomes progression.

Where to start

Take one live opportunity. Ask where confidence is most likely to break, which stakeholder is least convinced and why, what belief needs to shift for the group to move, what proof would make that believable, and what tool would help your buyer carry it internally. Then build one asset for that not a campaign, not a content plan. One targeted intervention.

We've spent years optimising how we sell to buyers. The unlock is helping buyers sell internally: align their own organisation, reduce their own risk, reach a decision together. Because in complex B2B, you don't win when you convince someone. You win when the group decides.