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:

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% [...]

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 [...]

Science, sales, negotiating, and the prison system – not to mention neuromarketing, neurosciences, and decision making sciences – have a base-line belief  that there is a ‘rational’ way to recognize choice -  rationality assumed when the ‘appropriate information’ is available to decide with.
In other words, when choices are made that go against what the world [...]

The field of marketing automation would like to get the right data, at the right time, to prospects who sign up on contact sheets.

Depending on the selling approach you’re using, you are closing between .6% – 7% , regardless of size of solution or industry.
These numbers are far lower than they need to be: so long as your primary focus is on making a sale and you focus on needs assessment and solution choice (factors which are the buyer’s final considerations), and ignore the [...]