B2B buyers aren’t ghosting you because they’re not interested. They’re ghosting you because your sales process makes it hard to say yes.
Marketing buyers are facing increasing pressure when making buying decisions. They have more stakeholder involvement, tighter budgets and a greater need to justify every investment.
But many sales representatives don’t take this into account. They push product over relevance, rely on one contact, and leave champions to do the internal selling.
For sales leaders, this means:
- Deals stalling or vanishing unexpectedly
- Low rebook rates after weak delivery handover
- Poor conversions after good initial meetings
If your team is losing deals, the problem isn’t a lack of value – it’s friction. When buyers aren’t supported through the buying process, they won’t say yes.
The status-quo isn’t an option. It doesn’t just risk this quarter – it leads to rep churn, weakens your team’s ability to perform under pressure and undermines scalable growth.
The highest performing sales leaders make it easy for their teams to sell more, so how can you supercharge your team and turn them into high performers?
At our EN Summit, we asked our buyer panel to provide insights into which sales behaviours helped or hindered their decisions.
What a modern B2B buyer doesn’t want
1. Lack of transparency and difficult-to-find information
Insights from Anya Slowenko, Senior Marketing Manager at Aircall for the UK and Ireland
- A lack of transparency is a big issue when making a buying decision
- Being upfront about pricing early on in the process, also matters. It means we’re not wasting anyone’s time if it’s completely out of budget or not aligned with our audience
- When I am forced to dig for information on benchmarks, case studies and audience outline results to then present to stakeholders, it’s much, much, harder to position this and get a yes. It lengthens the buying cycle and gives me less confidence in the buying decision
2. Poor post-sales experience
Insights from Laura Fleming, Event Strategy and Experience Director, EMEA at Pax8
- If it’s our first experience with your company, make sure the whole process is a positive one
- I will be coming to an event judging every aspect of it and making sure it is up to the standards I want my brand to be present at
- Signing me up is one part, but you need to ensure you’re handing me over to someone who is easy to work with
- Poor communications and event experience meant I never worked with that company again
3. Don’t treat the buyer like a lead
Insights from Felicia Asiedu, Marketing Director for Cvent Europe
- When a salesperson makes me feel like a lead, I’m probably not going to buy from them
- Constant hounding and sense of urgency makes me feel like I’m just another lead. If we had built a good enough relationship, they wouldn’t need to do that
What helps a modern B2B buyer say yes?
Top-performing reps reduce friction, support internal buy-in, and de-risk decisions. Buyers can trust these teams to help them make the right decisions.
So, what strategies can sales leaders teach their sales reps to do differently?
1. Slow-burn approaches
Insights from Felicia Asiedu
- One rep let me know about an upcoming event they were running, with a list of potential buyers who were going to be there. They weren’t pitching and pressuring me, just providing context
- It coincided with our company thinking about doing smaller, more focused meetings and this rep’s approach led to us having a conversation about how it would work if we did attend the event- they aligned to my needs
2. Personalise your buyer’s priorities
Insights from Anya Slowenko
Sales teams standout when they:
- Understand what mine and my company’s priorities and goals are, what we are trying to achieve, and wanting to get out of this
- Working with me to tailor a package or creating a proposal about a longer-term play to help meet those objectives, it feels like you’re listening to me. You understand what I need to prove, and you are going to help me get there
3. Build a reputation that sells for you
Insights from Laura Fleming
- Having a consistent reputation and being valued within your industry or community is a big factor
- When we’re launching new conferences, we talk to our sales teams and partners first. They understand the space and we ask them where we should be. We then go out to people to discuss factors like budgets and scheduling
- If I ask our partners about an event, and they don’t think it’s suitable, then I won’t go
How to lead a team that buyers say yes to
B2B buyer behaviour is changing fast and traditional sales management isn’t enough.
Unless your sales team understand how to reduce friction, build internal confidence, and de-risk buying decisions, deals will continue to stall – draining revenue.
Gartner research shows that just one poor manager can cost millions a year in lost deals and talent churn. In contrast, strong sales leaders improve win rates by 27%, accelerate deal cycles, and boost team quota attainment by over 30%.
Great sales leaders know this. They coach their teams to become high-impact reps, that buyers trust to guide, not pressure them.
At Flume, we help leaders build these high-performing teams.
Our Sales Leadership Excellence programme is designed to help sales leaders build high-performing, buyer-centric sales teams that drive fast, predictable revenue growth.
These outcome-focused programmes are built for transformation, not just training.
Sales leaders will gain a flexible toolkit to create a cohesive, engaged and focused sales team and dramatically improve sales performance.
These include:
- Coaching & Sales Innovation
- Best practice sales planning
- The secrets to a driven team
Ready to lead differently? Book a strategy call and start driving high-performance
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