Why B2B Marketers Need to Know About "Opportunistic Learning"

One of the most profound developments in B2B marketing of the last quarter century has been the emergence of empowered and independent business buyers.

The proliferation of readily available online information has been the driving force behind the increased power of business buyers. Easy access to a wealth of information about almost any conceivable topic has enabled business decision-makers to find most of the information they want or need on their terms. And now, artificial intelligence is making it even easier for buyers to access information.

Information abundance has fundamentally changed how business buyers engage with potential vendors and how they make buying decisions. Overall, B2B marketers have done a reasonably good job of adapting their methods and practices to address most of these changes.

However, there is growing evidence of an important change in B2B buyer behavior that marketers have only recently begun to appreciate and focus on.

A Flawed Model of B2B Buyer Behavior

For most of the past twenty-five years, the accepted paradigm  of B2B buying has assumed that a buying process begins when a company's leaders or managers recognize that a need or problem exists and decide to address the issue in some way.

These "buyers" then gather information about the need or problem, evaluate the available options, and may or may not decide to purchase a product or service to address the situation. So, the conventional paradigm of B2B buying behavior holds that most information gathering and buyer "learning" occurs after an intentional buying process has started.

Several recent research studies have shown that this widely-accepted paradigm is not accurate in many instances.

The 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report by 6sense describes one of the most recent studies regarding B2B buyer behavior. This study consisted of two surveys of business buyers that together generated nearly 4,800 responses. The survey respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), Asia-Pacific (14%), and the UK and Ireland (20%).

The respondents to the 6sense surveys evaluated an average of five vendors per purchase, and they filled four spots on their vendor shortlist at the very start ("Day One") of their buying process. They also said they purchased from one of the four vendors on their Day One shortlist 95% of the time. In addition, 97% of the respondents said they had prior experience with at least one of the vendors on their Day One shortlist.

Earlier studies have produced similar findings. For example, in a 2022 survey of business buyers by Bain & Co. and Google, 80% - 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of the respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor that was in their initial consideration set.

A 2021 survey of business buyers by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International also illustrated the importance of the vendor preferences that B2B buyers bring into a buying process.

In this study, the survey contained several questions about a recent purchase and asked the participants to reflect on the vendor they ultimately selected (the "winning vendor") and on a vendor they considered but did not select (the "losing vendor").

The researchers divided the purchase journey into three stages and defined the "Pre-Decision stage" as ". . . the time between when they had selected a supplier (for a given product/service category) and when the 'trigger' occurred that prompted them to actively begin searching for and deciding on a new supplier."

The survey findings revealed that the mental impressions of vendors held by buyers during the Pre-Decision stage exerted significant influence on purchase decisions. For example, survey respondents were more then twice as likely to say they were very familiar with the winning vendor versus the losing vendor before their active buying process began. Respondents also said that during the Pre-Decision stage, they had a higher level of pre-existing trust and confidence in the winning vendor than in the losing vendor.

Enter Opportunistic Learning

These results clearly demonstrate that most business buyers do not begin a buying process with a "blank slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

These pre-existing opinions develop because information has become so abundant and readily available that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they have formed anything close to "buying intent" or started an intentional buying process.

I call this type of information consumption opportunistic learning, and it occurs because humans are naturally programmed to seek rewards. We all have a mental radar system that is constantly scanning our environment to identify reward opportunities.

In a business setting, our radar system is always scanning our environment to identify information that may help us improve our company's performance and/or advance our career.

Opportunistic learning has important implications for B2B marketing, and some marketers have started to recognize its significance. The research findings discussed above show that reaching opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become involved in a buying process.

Making an impact on opportunistic learners requires marketers to use a particular approach to marketing messaging, and in my next post, I'll discuss the kind of messaging that's needed to connect with opportunistic learners.

Image courtesy of onewaystock.com via Flckr (CC).

How CMOs Can Cultivate Strategic Influence

Many marketing pundits and practitioners now believe the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have.

Marketers often describe this loss of influence in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix. They frequently observe that in many companies, the marketing department is responsible for running promotional campaigns and programs, but has little influence over product, price, and place.

More broadly, many marketers complain that senior marketing leaders often don't have a meaningful role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.

Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these situations exist at many companies.

Virtually all marketers agree that rebuilding the strategic influence of the marketing function is important, but it's not always clear how this goal can be achieved.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the ultimate solution is for the CMO* to be seen as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor intelligence the company's senior leaders need to formulate a sound business strategy.

However, this level of trust doesn't develop overnight. Therefore, a critical question for the CMO of an organization where the marketing function has little influence on business strategy is:  "How can I begin building this level of trust?"

The short answer is that the CMO should identify the elements of their company's business strategy that are based on inadequate information about markets, customers, or competitors and begin providing that information to other senior company leaders.

To execute this approach, a CMO needs to perform three tasks.

Describe the Strategy

The first step is to describe the major components of their company's business strategy. Every company's competitive situation is unique, so every company's business strategy will also be unique. However, all complete strategies will address a core group of issues that are common to most companies.

For example, a complete strategy will describe how the company segments the market for its products or services and identify the company's target market. The strategy will also describe how the company's products or services will deliver value to customers that is superior to the value provided by competitors.

A complete strategy will also describe how the company will price its products or services and why its current pricing levels are competitive in the relevant market.

The goal of this step is for the CMO to develop an accurate and detailed description of the elements of their company's business strategy that collectively determine competitive success.

Identify Sources of Information

The second task the CMO must perform is to identify the information that was used to make the choices embodied in their company's business strategy.

For example, what information did company leaders rely on to define the company's target market? What data or information did they use to determine what the company's primary customer value propositions should be? How did they determine what new product or service features or capabilities to develop and bring to market?

The goal of this work is to enable the CMO to identify areas where more accurate or comprehensive information about relevant markets, customers, and competitors will enable company leaders to make more informed strategic choices.

Share Strategy-Critical Information

Once CMOs have identified the areas of greatest need for better insights about markets, customers, and/or competitors, they can begin to gather relevant information and share that information with other senior company leaders.

The most effective way to share this information will largely depend on the nature and quality of the CMO's relationships with the other senior company leaders, particularly their CEO.

Most CMOs will probably want to avoid any suggestion that they are criticizing their company's current business strategy. Instead, CMOs should position their work as providing information that may be useful and valuable during the next strategy development cycle.

This low-kay, indirect approach is primarily intended for situations where a company's CMO is not playing a prominent role in the development of the company's business strategy. When they have strong relationships with other C-level executives, CMOs can use a more direct and aggressive approach.

The approach described in this post will require a fair amount of work, and it won't always produce immediate visible results. But, the long-term payoff more than justifies the effort.

When a company's CEO and other senior leaders view the CMO as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor insights that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the CMO's views and perspectives.

*****

*In this post, I've used the term "CMO" to mean the senior marketing leader in a company regardless of the specific title that individual holds.

Image courtesy of SMcD22 via Flickr (CC).

NetLine's Latest Data Reveals How Business Professionals Actually Consume Content

Source:  NetLine Corporation

NetLine Corporation recently published its "2026 State of B2B Content Consumption & Demand Report." NetLine has been conducting this research for ten years, and its annual reports have consistently provided a wealth of real-world insights about how business professionals actually consume marketing content. 

NetLine operates a content syndication platform, and the 2026 report is based on data from 7.2 million content registrations on the platform in 2025. The NetLine research is particularly valuable for two reasons.

First, it captures the real-world content consumption behaviors of business professionals. The data used for the NetLine report was not derived from surveys or interviews, but rather from actual engagements with B2B marketing content.

And second, the report is based on first-party data. The business professionals who use the NetLine platform voluntarily share information about themselves and the organizations they work for in exchange for access to the content resources available on the platform.

For these reasons, the NetLine report provides detailed information about the business professionals who are consuming B2B marketing content and the actual consumption behaviors of those professionals. I encourage you to review the full 35-page report.

Content Consumption Declined in 2025

Overall B2B content consumption fell 8.6% in 2025 compared to 2024, as measured by registrations on the NetLine platform. However, NetLine's data shows that total demand for B2B gated marketing content has grown 57.6% since 2021.

Content consumption by C-level executives increased in 2025, up 4% year-over-year. In 2025, C-level executives accounted for 14.5% of the total demand on the NetLine platform.

Demand for content about artificial intelligence continued its dramatic growth in 2025. The explosive growth began in 2023 when demand for AI-related content increased 6.6x compared to 2022. In 2025, demand for such content grew 28.5% year-over-year.

Most Popular Content Formats

The ten most requested content formats in 2025 were:

1. eBooks
2. Cheat Sheets
3. Guides
4. White Papers
5. Research Reports
6. Articles
7. Tips and Tricks Guides
8. On-Demand Webinars
9. Live Webinars
10. Playbooks

NetLine noted in its report that six of the ten most popular content formats saw year-over-year declines in registration volume in 2025. Registrations for eBooks, the most popular format, fell 16.7% last year, but they still accounted for nearly half (48.8%) of all 2025 content registrations.

Among the ten most popular formats, on-demand webinars had the largest increase in demand in 2025, with the number of registrations growing by 46.2%

The Consumption Gap Widens

One of the most useful insights provided by the NetLine report relates to the consumption gap, which is defined as the time between the moment a content resource is requested and the moment it's opened for consumption. This data point is important because it provides a guide for timing follow-up contact with potential buyers.

In 2025, the average consumption gap was 47.7 hours, up from 38.5 hours in 2024. The consumption gap has varied over the years. Before 2024, the largest gap recorded by NetLine was 33.3 hours in 2021, and the smallest was 27.1 hours in 2018. The lesson here is that you should wait at least two days before you try to follow up with people who have requested your content via NetLine. 

Purchase Timing

Overall, the B2B professionals using the Netline platform in 2025 were 17.7% more likely to indicate they would probably make a purchase within the next 12 months, compared to 2024. The purchase time frame that saw the largest year-over-year increase was 6 - 12 months, which grew 78.6% in 2025.

Content Consumption and Buyer Purchase Intent

For the past few years, NetLine's research has revealed correlations between the content format a potential buyer chooses to consume and purchase timing. In the 2025 report, NetLine identified five content formats that are more likely to be associated with a buying decision within the next 12 months - trend reports, playbooks, case studies, newsletters, and infographics.

One format that is notably absent from this list is eBooks. Despite being the most frequently requested type of content in 2025, eBooks were not strongly associated with shorter-term purchase intent. This shouldn't be surprising because most eBooks are designed to appeal to potential buyers who are in the earlier stages of their buying journey.

Surveyed CEOs Paint a Mixed Picture of CMO Performance

Source:  Boathouse Group, Inc.

Surveyed CEOs gave their CMO high marks for alignment with CEO and business objectives, effectiveness at building cross-functional relationships, and understanding company financials. But, on the critical business issues of strategy and growth, the reviews were more mixed.

That's the central message of "The Boathouse Fifth Annual CEO Study" by Boathouse Group, Inc., a marketing agency based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About the Study

Boathouse has been conducting this research since 2021. The fifth edition (2026) of the study is based on a survey of 150 CEOs at U.S. companies. Survey respondents led companies having annual revenue that ranged from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of the respondents were with companies having more than 1,000 employees. Respondents were affiliated with companies operating in 16 industry verticals, with healthcare being the largest cohort (19% of all respondents).

The survey was conducted January 6 - 26, 2026.

The primary goal of this research was to capture the perspectives of CEOs regarding their CMO and their company's marketing organization. The 2026 survey also included questions about how CEOs shape strategy and about their investment in, adoption of, and objectives for artificial intelligence.

The Boathouse study has two obvious limitations. First, the study is based on a survey with a relatively small number of respondents. And second, Boathouse does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all CEOs. Therefore, the quantitative survey findings cannot be "projected" to all CEOs.

Where CMOs are Performing Well

Most of the CEOs surveyed by Boathouse were positive on several aspects of their CMO's performance. For example:

• 79% of the survey respondents said their CMO shows a strong commitment to the CEO and Board of Directors. That was up slightly from 76% in the 2025 survey.

• 72% said their CMO understands their company's financials, up substantially from 61% in the 2025 survey.

• 85% said their CMO builds trust within their company, down only slightly from 87% in the 2025 survey.

In addition, 59% of the surveyed CEOs said their CMO understands their company's business goals, and 70% said the metrics used by marketing are fully (12%) or mostly (58%) aligned with their company's primary business metrics.

Mixed Reviews on Strategy

 The CEOs participating in the Boathouse survey gave mixed reviews to their CMO when it comes to strategy.

First, the good news. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the survey respondents said their CMO leads (8%) or actively contributes to (60%) the formulation of their company's strategy. This finding suggests that many CMOs have successfully won a seat at the strategy table.

However, just under 20% of the surveyed CEOs gave their CMO a grade of "A" on strategy. That was down from nearly 35% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The survey report doesn't provide an explanation for the declining percentage of "A" grades, but it may be due to rising expectations. As more CEOs include their CMO in the strategy development process, some will have high expectations for the quality of the CMO's contribution.

The Good and Not-So-Good News on Driving Growth

The CEOs surveyed by Boathouse also gave mixed reviews to their CMO (and their marketing organization) on driving revenue growth.

The survey findings clearly show that CEOs view growth as a critical business issue. Thirty-two percent (32%) of the survey respondents identified "growth performance" as the area of their business where they feel most personally exposed or vulnerable as CEO. The next highest percentage (21%) was for "competitive threats."

CEOs also see growth as the primary mandate of their marketing organization, with 65% of the survey respondents citing "drive sales growth and/or grow market shares" as marketing's top priority.

The good news is that 59% of the surveyed CEOs indicated they are "confident" in marketing's ability to make a "meaningful" contribution to growth.

The not-so-good news is that only 13% of the survey respondents said they are "very confident" that their marketing organization can demonstrate the incremental lift provided by marketing investments.

While a general feeling of confidence is good, it may not be sufficient to persuade CEOs to prioritize marketing spending when difficult capital allocation decisions must be made. So, CMOs and other marketing leaders must keep working to provide credible proof of the financial impacts of their marketing activities and programs.

[Research Round-Up] Notable Insights from the 2026 Edition of "The CMO Survey"

Source:  "The CMO Survey"

(This month's Research Round-Up focuses exclusively on the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." This research has been conducted since 2008, and it consistently provides valuable information about marketing spending, practices, and trends.)

The findings of the 35th edition of "The CMO Survey" were published near the end of last month. "The CMO Survey" is directed by Dr. Christine Moorman and is sponsored by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte, and the American Marketing Association.

From 2008 through 2024, the survey was conducted semi-annually. In 2025, the research shifted to an annual survey.

The 2026 survey results are based on responses from 308 marketing leaders as U.S. for-profit companies. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (65.0%) were affiliated with B2B companies, and 97% were VP-level or above. Respondents worked at companies operating in 15 industry sectors. The 2026 survey was conducted January 7 - January 29, 2026.

In addition to overall response data, "The CMO Survey" provides response data by four economic sectors (B2B product companies, B2B services companies, B2C product companies, and B2C services companies), 15 industry sectors, company size, and percentage of online sales.

The data discussed in this post is based on the responses of all survey participants unless otherwise indicated. The percentages and other numerical values in this post are the mean of applicable survey responses, also unless otherwise indicated.

A Tale of Economic Concern

Concerns about the health of the U.S. economy echo throughout the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." In every edition of the survey, the researchers have asked participants to rate their optimism about the U.S. economy on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most optimistic. The 2026 survey respondents put their level of optimism at 56.8.

To place this optimism rating in context, the rating given by respondents in the June 2020 edition of the survey (at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic) was 50.9. The lowest optimism rating ever given in the 18-year history of "The CMO Survey" was 47.7 in both the February 2009 survey (during the "Great Recession") and the February 2013 survey.

There was little difference in the level of optimism expressed by marketers at B2B companies and those at B2C companies.

Economic concerns seem to have had a substantial impact on marketing budgets. The marketing leaders participating in the 2026 survey reported that marketing budgets represented 9.0% of total company revenue. That was down from 9.4% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The 2026 survey respondents also reported that marketing spending increased by only 1.7% over the 12 months preceding the survey. That was the slowest growth of marketing spending since 2021.

Economic uncertainty also appears to have prompted changes in some marketing priorities. When participants in the 2026 survey were asked how they are changing their customer targeting strategies in response to recent changes in economic conditions, the most frequently selected change - chosen by 43.7% of survey respondents - was "increase our focus on building loyalty / retention of existing customers."

The percentages of B2B marketers who indicated they were making this change were very similar - 43.3% of marketers in B2B product companies and 42.0% of those in B2B services companies.

It's noteworthy, however, that about one-third of B2B survey respondents said they were making no change in their customer targeting strategies, compared to only 26.5% of all survey respondents.

Other Notable Findings

Here are a few other findings from the 2026 survey that I found notable and interesting.

Importance of Marketing Capabilities and Talent - Survey respondents viewed their marketing capabilities as critical to their company's business success (5.9 on a 7-point scale), and 34.5% of the respondents said that "having the right talent" is the most important factor for driving future revenue growth. But . . .

Spending on Training & Development Is at a 9-Year Low - Survey respondents said they currently devote only 3.8% of their marketing budget to training and development. This is the lowest percentage seen in "The CMO Survey" since the February 2017 edition of the research.

Use of Generative AI - Survey respondents said their company is using generative AI technologies in 22.4% of its marketing activities, up from 15.1% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

*****

"The CMO Survey" does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all marketers. So the survey findings cannot be "projected" to all marketers. Nevertheless, "The CMO Survey" provides valuable insights about the current state of marketing, and I recommend that you read the full survey report.

Why CMO Candidates Should Uncover and Confront Mismatched Expectations

A recent post at LinkedIn described a situation that occurs far more that it should. The post author wrote that he had been contacted by a CEO who was planning to replace his CMO because "marketing isn't working." The CEO asked if the post author could recommend someone for the job.

By asking a few questions, the post author identified several circumstances that were contributing to the CMO's perceived underperformance. While all these circumstances were important, one was particularly significant. The post author wrote:

"She [the current CMO] had made smart budget calls six months ago, killed low-performing channels, and shifted spend. But pipeline from these decisions won't land for two more quarters. And she's being judged on the lagging output of a strategy she already replaced."

After his conversation with the post author, the CEO decided to address the problematic circumstances and stick with the current CMO, but this isn't the typical outcome. More often, CEOs decide to "fix" their "marketing" problem by replacing their senior marketing leader, which usually leaves the real problems unresolved.

A Revolving Door of Senior Marketing Leaders

The short tenure of chief marketing officers has been well documented. According to the most recent research by Spencer Stuart, the average tenure of CMOs at S&P 500 companies in 2025 was 4.1 years, down from 4.3 years in 2024. CMO tenure is even shorter if we include a wider range of companies.

Marketing academics have attributed the high level of churn among senior marketing leaders to a variety of factors, but most of the "involuntary" churn ultimately results from mismatched expectations.

When the CEO and the senior marketing leader have mismatched expectations regarding the role or performance of marketing, the odds of developing a long, mutually-satisfactory relationship are not good.

Dealing With Mismatched Expectations

The story recounted at the beginning of this post illustrates what can happen when a CEO and a senior marketing leader have different expectations regarding when marketing programs will produce desired results.

Making these mismatched expectations visible before accepting a marketing leadership position with a new company can help a marketer avoid beginning a relationship that has little chance of long-term success.

So, if you're a candidate for a senior marketing leadership role, there are four questions you need to answer before you accept a job offer.

• What are the most important results your prospective CEO expects to see from marketing within the first 12 months that you're in the job?

• When does your prospective CEO expect to begin seeing those results?

• Are your prospective CEO's expectations for beginning to see those results realistic given the economic and competitive conditions in the market(s) the company serves and the resources (budget, people, technology, etc.) you will have available to conduct marketing programs?

• If you determine that those expectations aren't realistic, can you persuade your prospective CEO to modify his or her expectations to make them more realistic?

The answers to some of these questions can be obtained during the interview process, while others will require you to perform some research. The amount of research needed won't always be trivial, but neither is it out-of-line with the importance of the career decision you're making.

If you're a candidate for a senior marketing leadership role, you probably have several years of marketing experience. Therefore, you should be able to use your experience, combined with a moderate amount of research, to come up with a reasonable approximation of how long it will take sound marketing programs to deliver various kinds of results.

For example, suppose that your prospective CEO says that pipeline contribution is the marketing result he deems most important and that he would expect increases in pipeline contribution to begin within 3 or 4 months after you start work.

If you're confident that you can deliver increases in pipeline contribution within 4 or 5 months, this would not be a huge mismatch of expectations. On the other hand, if you judge that it will take 6 to 8 months for your marketing programs to begin having a meaningful impact on the pipeline, this would be a significant mismatch of expectations that should be addressed during the interview process.

There are several other issues where mismatched expectations can undermine the relationship between a CEO and a senior marketing leader. I'll cover some of those issues in a future post.

Top image courtesy of Heather Paul via Flickr (CC).

"Buyability" Isn't Really New, But It Is Really Important

For the past several months, I've been following developments relating to a research and thought leadership initiative launched by LinkedIn in collaboration with Bain & Company. The goal of the initiative is to identify what causes a B2B buying group to purchase a particular company's offering.

This initiative has been led primarily by Jann Schwarz, the Senior Director, Marketplace Innovation & Strategy at LinkedIn, Mimi Turner, the Head of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn, and Jamie Cleghorn and colleagues at Bain & Company.

The researchers at LinkedIn and Bain have coined the term Buyability to describe what business buyers need to believe to have the confidence to make or recommend a purchase.

A survey of 750 B2B buyers conducted by the initiative's researchers identified five main factors that business buyers need to feel confident about. When the researchers analyzed the survey results, they found that the most important factor buyers identified is to feel confident they can defend their decision if the purchase goes wrong. This was slightly more important to buyers than feeling confident the product or service they recommended could do the job.

These research findings strongly suggest that an essential element of Buyability is that business buyers must perceive a prospective vendor's product or service to be a "safe" choice.

Buyer Risk Aversion Isn't New

The bias of business buyers toward "safe" purchases is not new. It has been discussed frequently in the B2B marketing literature for many years.

For example, in his 2009 book, The BuyerSphere Project, Gord Hotchkiss emphasized the importance of buyer risk aversion in the B2B buying process. He wrote:

"B2B buying decisions are usually driven by one emotion - fear. Specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by eliminating risk . . . The importance of risk aversion on the part of the buyer cannot be overstated. It's the essence of B2B buying. To state it in plainer terms, '99% of B2B buying is about covering your butt.' "

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) (now part of Gartner) and Google also pointed to the importance of buyer risk aversion in their popular 2013 white paper, "From Promotion to Emotion:  Connecting B2B Customers to Brands." CEB and Google observed that B2B buying often exhibited greater emotionality that B2C buying and offered this explanation.

"B2B purchases entail personal risk - far more than most B2C purchases. B2B purchase stakeholders fear:

• Losing time and effort if a purchase decision goes poorly
• Losing credibility if they make a recommendation for an unsuccessful purchase
• Losing their job if they are responsible for a failed purchase" (Emphasis in original)

Unbalanced Incentives Cause Buyer Risk Aversion

Most business buyers are predisposed to favor "safe" purchases because of unbalanced incentives. Most buyers perceive that they will receive only minimal rewards (tangible or emotional) if they recommend buying something that works well, but they also believe they can significantly damage their career if they recommend a purchase that goes badly.

As a result, most buyers are inclined to choose what they perceive to be the safest solution that meets basic performance requirements, rather than one that appears to be "better," but more risky.

Buyability Has Great Potential

So, the buyer risk aversion component of the Buyability model isn't really new, but that doesn't diminish the importance or the potential value of the LinkedIn/Bain initiative.

The initiative has already generated a significant amount of interest in the B2B marketing community, and several industry organizations - including, among others, WARC, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the International Advertising Association (IAA) - are supporting the initiative, which should further increase interest among B2B marketers.

In addition, during a recent presentation, Jann Schwarz and Mimi Turner stated that they are now beginning the work needed to operationalize the Buyability model. This probably means they will soon be providing examples of actions that B2B companies can take to nurture a perception of safety in the minds of their potential buyers.

While we await these examples, the research already done by the initiative's leaders makes three things abundantly clear.

• The most influential factor for building a B2B buyer's confidence in purchasing from a prospective vendor is having previous personal experience with the vendor.

• The second most powerful confidence-building factor is recommendations from colleagues or from similar customers with similar needs and use cases.

• Negative feedback from a buyer's colleagues or peers in the buyer's network, or from other similar customers will usually stop a deal in its tracks.

These research findings suggest that, when performance and cost factors are generally equal, what influential third parties say about you becomes critical for making potential buyers feel confident enough to do business with you.