Why B2B Buyers Struggle to Make Decisions and How to Help Them

In B2B sales, there's perhaps no situation more frustrating than watching a promising opportunity dissolve into endless delays and eventual silence. After what seemed like productive conversations and genuine enthusiasm, your once-engaged prospect retreats into the digital ether, leaving you wondering what went wrong.

Have you ever considered that you're finding it difficult to sell because your buyers are finding it even more difficult to buy?

Analysis of over 2.5 million sales conversations reveals that between 40% and 60% of deals end in "no decision" despite customers expressing intent to purchase. In many of these cases, stalling isn’t due to a lack of need or budget, or even down to problems with the supplier’s process. So what’s really going on?

The analysis reveals a nuanced situation. In 44% of cases where "no decision" was the outcome, customers preferred to maintain the status quo. However, in 56% of cases, the main culprit was customer indecision.

In other words, the researchers conclude, customers are driven less by FOMO (fear of missing out) and more by FOMU (fear of messing up). This helps explain why providing more features or better pricing can fail to move deals forward. The issue isn't about the solution itself, but about helping stakeholders work through their indecision.

Why B2B Buyers Struggle to Make Decisions 

The roots of buyer indecision lie in the increasing complexity of B2B purchasing. Multiple studies have shown that the buying process now includes significantly more participants compared to a decade ago. According to Gartner, a typical complex B2B purchase involves an average of 11 stakeholders. In some cases, this number can rise to around 20.

Gathering input from a diverse group of stakeholders can enhance decision-making and help head off potential missteps. However, as anyone involved in any committee can tell you, as the number of people increases, getting everyone to agree becomes increasingly challenging.

Each participant brings their own priorities and concerns to the table. Consciously or subconsciously, they are all being influenced by a number of factors too, including:

• Organisational Friction: Different departments have competing priorities or concerns that need reconciliation, making alignment and decisive action challenging.

• Career Risk: Purchase decisions can make or break careers, leading stakeholders to seek safety in consensus, which often results in delays or inaction.

• Implementation Fear: Past experiences with difficult relationships, rollouts, or failed projects cast long shadows over new decisions, creating hesitancy.

Overlapping responsibilities and interpersonal issues can further complicate matters.

In other words, what might look like resistance at first glance is often masking deeper personal and organisational dynamics. These dynamics aren’t just logistical; they’re deeply emotional, shaping how stakeholders perceive risk and responsibility. This can slow decision-making, lead to defensive decisions, or halt the process entirely.

Understanding the Emotional Journey

It is worth saying that hesitation and uncertainty is something everyone goes through when facing significant change. While change is inevitable, it doesn’t mean that it is easy.

The Kübler-Ross Change Curve was originally developed to describe how people cope with loss. Its insights into the emotional stages people experience when facing significant change have been extrapolated to changes in the workplace. Could it also provide insight into the stages individual members of a buying committee might go through when considering major business decisions? 

After all, B2B decisions aren't purely rational. When we consider what's at stake, these highly-consequential decisions represent significant organisational change.

Denial: Decision-makers often dismiss the need for new solutions or major changes, even when facing clear evidence of problems. They might cling to existing suppliers or systems, despite declining performance or rising costs. Or say things like "our current solution works fine" or "we can handle this internally," reflecting a natural resistance to disrupting established processes. This period is marked by delayed engagement with the issue and reluctance to even evaluate new options.

Anger/Resistance: This stage emerges when stakeholders can no longer deny the need for change but feel frustrated by the implications. It can be particularly challenging because it can manifest as aggressive pushback against proposed solutions or hostile questioning of vendors. Buying committees might express concerns about budget impacts, implementation challenges, and potential disruption to operations to stall a decision.

Bargaining: Stakeholders might begin negotiating with themselves and others about the scope and pace of change. They might start exploring compromise solutions, request extensive pilots, seek to phase implementations, or seek to maintain elements of the status quo alongside new solutions. This stage extends the sales cycle as customers attempt to minimise perceived risks and disruptions.

Depression/Confusion: This represents a critical turning point when stakeholders face the full reality of needed changes and their implications. However, despite recognising the need for change, buying committees struggle to move forward. They might experience "FOMU" (fear of messing up) or become overwhelmed by options and information, leading to decision paralysis.

Acceptance: This stage marks the transition to productive evaluation and decision-making. Stakeholders can begin to actively engage with potential solutions and focus on value, rather than just risks. This is when buying committees can finally move beyond their fears and start to feel more positive about that change they need to make.

Does any of this sound familiar from your negotiations? These aren't irrational responses - they reflect the natural human reaction to the stress and uncertainties of significant change. 

It’s important to recognise that the journey through change isn't linear - people may cycle back through stages or experience them in different orders. B2B purchasing also enjoys the additional complexity that multiple stakeholders can be at different stages simultaneously. This misalignment leads to stalled decisions and frustrated vendors who don't understand why their clearly superior solution isn't being embraced.

While the Change Curve helps us understand and anticipate emotional responses, we need a complementary framework that bridges the gap between recognising these reactions and actively supporting stakeholders through them.

A Framework for Enabling Change

Understanding how buyers are feeling at any stage in the process is one thing, but how do we translate this into actionable marketing strategies that help buying committees move forward?

Success comes from addressing both the emotional and practical aspects of decision-making. Rather than trying to shortcut the process, push past doubts with rebuttals, and arrive at a premature commitment, we need to consider how we’re helping people to process the change they’re going through.

While the customer journey helps us to understand buyer needs and create a clear pathway to action, the ADKAR model offers another layer. 

ADKAR is a goal-oriented approach focused on understanding how organisations and individuals navigate complex changes. It helps us to think specifically about the change we need our prospects to undertake. Each letter represents a milestone that must be achieved for change to take place. When aligned with strategic marketing and automation, this framework helps organisations:

• Orchestrate an experience that guides stakeholders from awareness to action, using timely, relevant content that addresses their specific concerns.

• Give buyers control over the process, helping them to self-evaluate, diagnose, and educate themselves on different options.

• Build consensus by helping different stakeholders understand not just their part, but the bigger picture.

• Reduce perceived risk through social proof and clear implementation pathways, making it easier for them to say "yes.".

• Maintain momentum with automated nurture streams that keep engagement high.

Let's explore how this works at each stage.

Awareness

The goal here is to help potential buyers understand why change is necessary, including articulating the nature of the change, why it’s needed, and the risks of staying with the status quo. In practice, this might mean using data, case studies, and storytelling to make the need for change compelling to all stakeholders.

• Communicate early and often across multiple touchpoints (website, email, social media, sales conversations).

• Focus on both business outcomes and personal wins for key stakeholders.

• Directly address common objections and anxieties in your content marketing.

• Build relationships inside target accounts, nurturing internal advocates who can build buy-in more effectively than external messaging alone.

But what if stakeholders aren't just uninformed? What if they're in active denial about the need for change, or the scope of change required? 

This requires us to shift our content strategy from education to "perspective-shifting" pieces that challenge assumptions without being confrontational. Think thought leadership that reframes industry challenges, research reports that highlight emerging risks, or diagnostic tools that allow prospects to self-discover gaps.

Marketing automation and retargeting can help deliver content progressively, using engagement signals to gauge readiness for more direct messaging. The key is to build awareness while respecting the need to process change gradually.

Desire

Moving beyond awareness, we then need to create a conviction that change is worth the effort. This involves engaging each stakeholder to find out their personal motivations—whether that’s risk mitigation, improved efficiency, or being seen as an innovator—and framing the benefits in a way that speaks to these motivations.

• Frame benefits in terms of personal value for each decision-maker and show how your solution helps them achieve their individual goals.

• Create opportunities for early engagement through interactive tools, assessments, or pilot programs that let prospects shape how your solution could work in their context.

• Help internal champions build consensus by providing them with role-specific content they can share with different stakeholders - make it easy for them to advocate on your behalf.

• Balance opportunity and risk in your messaging - while highlighting positive outcomes, include market data and competitor analysis that shows the cost of maintaining status quo.

However, for buyers who are resistant, benefit-focused marketing misses the mark. You can't sell possibilities to someone who feels under attack.

Instead, marketing needs to create psychological safety. This might mean running facilitated discussion forums where leaders can voice concerns openly, or developing hyper personalised account-based campaigns that acknowledge specific challenges before introducing solutions. By meeting stakeholders where they are emotionally, we can gradually shift the conversation from threat to desirable opportunity.

Knowledge

At this stage the motivation for change is established, but the practicalities are still lacking. Knowledge here isn’t just about product specs; it’s about real-world applications and understanding the broader context of how a new solution fits within the organisation.

• Develop flexible learning resources that help buyers understand not just your product, but how to successfully implement change in their organisation - think implementation guides, best practices, and role-specific training materials.

• Create a searchable knowledge base of product documentation and use cases that buying committees can explore at their own pace and share internally.

• Offer diverse content formats - video demos, interactive tools, written guides, webinars - recognising that different stakeholders consume information differently and need various ways to understand your solution. 

With stakeholders beginning to engage with solutions, you might think you’ve cracked the nut. However, this is where bargaining might start to take hold. Buyers might try to minimise their risk by looking for compromises. Rather than pushing back, smart organisations lean into this instinct for control.

Modular content and flexible learning pathways let stakeholders set the pace of their journey. Think scalable demos that stakeholders can explore independently, or implementation scenarios they can customise to their comfort level. This controlled exploration builds confidence naturally, while respecting each stakeholder's need to find their own way forward.

Ability

The gap between understanding and action is where many change initiatives falter. Even committed stakeholders can become overwhelmed when facing practical implementation. The key is momentum - starting small but starting immediately.

Supporting this transition means breaking down barriers to first action. Simplify processes and reduce perceived obstacles. Help stakeholders see how the change will unfold in their day-to-day operations.

This might mean offering pilot programs, hands-on demonstrations, or step-by-step implementation plans that make the thought of transition less daunting. 

• Offer readiness assessments and planning tools that help organisations identify and address potential skill or resource gaps.

• Proactively identify common barriers and provide clear solutions - whether that's integration support, migration assistance, or change management resources.

• Build feedback loops into your process with regular check-ins and progress tracking.

• Provide dedicated customer success resources. Having a trusted advisor who understands their business context can help build confidence.

When you make progress feel tangible and achievable, you convert intention into action. This is where you shift from selling change to enabling it.

Reinforcement

The journey doesn't end with a signed contract. Each stakeholder's journey follows its own timeline, and progress can easily reverse without proper support.

The focus here is on transforming initial change into lasting transformation - ensuring your solution becomes an integral part of how your clients do business. 

• Celebrate customer success through case studies, awards, and recognition programs, making champions feel valued while providing social proof for prospects.

• Implement robust success metrics tracking and regular business reviews that demonstrate ongoing value and ROI - help clients measure and communicate the impact of their investment.

• Ensure clients can maintain momentum. Provide comprehensive post-sales support through self-service resources, knowledge bases, and readily available expert help.

• Build early warning systems to identify drop offs, allowing your team to proactively intervene with additional support before small issues become big problems.

Creating lasting change means building trust that the decision was the right one. The goal is to make the new approach–your approach– feel not just acceptable but entirely natural.

Transforming How You Support B2B Decisions

The complexity of B2B purchasing isn't going away. If anything, buying committees will continue to get larger as decision-making becomes more collaborative. Stakeholder concerns will be more diverse. Understanding this challenge through the lens of human psychology reveals a path forward.

Success comes not from pushing harder against resistance, but from helping stakeholders navigate their practical and emotional journeys with confidence. When we acknowledge that fear of messing up often drives our buyers emotionally while making business decisions, we can build marketing approaches that truly serve our customers' needs.

This means moving beyond sales enablement to also focus on buyer enablement. It means creating systems of support that recognise where each stakeholder is in their journey and providing them with exactly the right mix of personalised support to move forward.

At 1827 Marketing, we help organisations develop marketing strategies that respect the human side of B2B decision-making. Whether your buyers are stuck in denial, wrestling with resistance, or ready for change, we can help you build approaches that turn understanding into action.

Ready to explore how this could work for your business? Let's talk about transforming your approach to B2B marketing.