There are two distinct categories involving buying decisions: the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage internally to get stakeholder buy-in for change and for going outside their status quo for a solution and the solution-choice issues.
We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle the former at all:

Sales people get confused when I suggest they can’t ’understand’ the buyer’s needs if they approach a sale with this outcome. Without everyone on board who will lend their voice to a possible solution, buyers cannot understand it themselves. And using the sales model, we can’t help: we’ll never understand what’s going on behind-the-scenes as they figure out who should be involved, what must be [...]

For decades, salespeople scrunched their faces when I mentioned “how buyers buy”. I heard comments like: “I know what they need.” or “I understand exactly how they buy: price, price, price.”
But sellers only close 7%  of their prospects (and far, far less if using marketing automation).
If you understand how buyers buy, why do you have less than a 40% [...]

Would you buy a house without discussing it with your wife or family? Would you even know all of the buying criteria without their input?
Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?
Would you choose a web designer without [...]

Around 85% of a buyer’s pre-purchase, back-end decision issues get addressed privately, outside of the seller’s purview, and a seller has no place at the table. Here is where we lose our sales – as buyers manage the internal politics, and the strategic/change issues – not because our solutions aren’t relevant or because we haven’t done a good job selling.
The [...]

When you think about your numbers (closing percentages, total calls, etc.), and consider the objections, the price issues, the delayed sales cycles, the excuses, and those who just, well, disappear, don’t you realize these same problems have been cropping up, um, forever? And that whatever you seem to be doing to ‘correct’ the issue doesn’t seem to [...]