Most lost sales don't go to the competition. They die because the buyer decided living with the problem is easier than solving it.

A buyer who's been tolerating a problem for months or years has already built workarounds, adjusted expectations, and normalized the cost.

That 'pain tolerance' is our actual competition - the status quo.

No amount of us promising rainbows and unicorns will overcome that inertia if the pain of staying feels less than changing things.

We keep assuming the prospect already knows how much the problem is costing them, but there's often unaware because the cost accumulates in places they're not tracking.

We're trying to sell a cure to someone who's forgotten they're sick.

We think being positive and aspirational is what motivates buyers. And in certain contexts it does - but only once they've already committed to solving the problem.

But before that commitment exists, outcome-selling is just noise.

The Cognitive Marketer

The premier B2B Marketing Podcast brought to you by KEXINO - https://kexino.com/

Find out more about us at these places:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kexino

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Gee Ranasinha public speaking website: https://gee-speaks.com

We've spent the last decade obsessing over what we sell, while ignoring how people actually buy from us.

When revenue numbers disappoint, our de facto reaction is to blame plausible external factors.

We reach for these explanations because they don't require us to look at our own contribution to the current situation, which should probably tell us something.

The underlying logic of how we actually engage buyers probably hasn't been seriously pressure-tested in at least a decade.

The Cognitive Marketer

The premier B2B Marketing Podcast brought to you by KEXINO - https://kexino.com/

Find out more about us at these places:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kexino

Instagram: https://instagram.com/wearekexino

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Kexino

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@wearekexino

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/kexino.com

Gee Ranasinha public speaking website: https://gee-speaks.com

Which page is your homepage?

When someone types a query into Google, or into AI, the algorithm goes looking for whichever page most closely matches what that person's looking for.

It could be a blog article on our site written 3 years ago. Something so old and located so deep that we’ve probably forgotten it was still there.

But the visitor lands there directly, with no preamble, and we have no say in it.

This has been true for as long as there’s been search, and most businesses still haven’t really factored this into their information architecture maps, sitemaps, UX, or content strategy.

In effect our homepage isn’t (just) the homepage. EVERY page is the homepage.

The Cognitive Marketer

A B2B Marketing Podcast brought to you by KEXINO - https://kexino.com/

Find out more about us at these places:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kexino

Instagram: https://instagram.com/wearekexino

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Kexino

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@wearekexino

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/kexino.com

Gee Ranasinha public speaking website: https://gee-speaks.com