What if Everything You Know About Pipeline is Wrong
From "urgency creation" to "archaeological excavation"
If you've been following along, you know I've been calling out the hollow advice plaguing B2B sales. Today, let's tackle the biggest performance of all: pipeline acceleration.
Pipeline Acceleration is “Sales Theater”
Picture this: You, as a Rep, are frantically sending "follow-up" emails, scheduling "alignment calls," and asking your prospects what they need to "fast-track the decision." Meanwhile, your buyer is navigating an internal approval process that was mapped out months ago, involving stakeholders that you did not even know exist.
Welcome to sales theater - the elaborate performance where Reps act like they're accelerating deals while buyers follow their own predetermined timeline.
In this theater, everyone has their role:
Reps perform urgency.
Managers demand velocity.
Prospects nod politely.
But the real decision-making happens backstage, in conference rooms and email chains you'll never see.
The uncomfortable truth? Most of what we call "pipeline management" is just an elaborate show designed to create the illusion of control over something we barely influence.
The Performance vs. Reality
Let's examine what's actually happening behind the curtain.
The Script: "What do we need to do to close this quarter?" "Can we expedite your decision process?" "I'd like to escalate this internally for you."
The Reality: Research reveals that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a “Rep-free” sales experience. When three-quarters of your audience actively wants to avoid your performance, you might be starring in the wrong show.
But here's the data that really exposes the theater: B2B buyers spend only 17% of their time meeting potential suppliers, while dedicating at least 45% of their time to research and approximately 38% to internal meetings and coordination activities.
B2B buyers spend only 17% of their time meeting potential suppliers,
That means for every hour a buyer spends with you, they spend more than two hours without you - debating, aligning, and navigating internal politics that you're not part of and may not even be aware of.
Here's a moment that made this painfully clear to me: I was invited to what I thought would be a focused call to present our proposal and address a few final questions. I had mapped out the buying team, prepped carefully, and felt in control. Then the meeting started - and 19 people from the customer organization were on the call. Legal. Security. Procurement. Marketing. Operation. People I had never heard of, yet they all had a voice. That's not a sales meeting. That's a political summit.
The complexity gets worse when you dig into the stakeholder reality. B2B customers are deeply uncertain and stressed. With virtually infinite information available on any solution, a swelling raft of stakeholders involved in each purchase, and an ever-expanding array of options, customers are increasingly overwhelmed and often more paralyzed than empowered.
You're not dealing with a single decision-maker you can charm into urgency. You're navigating a maze of competing priorities, internal politics, and organizational inertia that no sales technique can overcome.
The Illusion of Control
Here's the part that makes sales theater so seductive: it feels like you're doing something important.
All that activity - the calls, the proposals, the "urgency creation" - generates a sense of momentum. Managers see busy Reps. Reps feel productive. Everyone believes they're "working the pipeline."
But according to Gartner research, 74% of B2B tech buyers found the buying process complex; only 27% reported achieving a high-quality deal. Notice that? The complexity isn't about your sales process. It's about their buying process.
Your frantic performance doesn't simplify their internal complexity. It just adds noise to an already chaotic process.
When Sales Theater Became the Norm
This wasn't always the case. Twenty years ago, sales Reps controlled the information flow. Buyers needed you to understand products, pricing, and capabilities. In simple deals with single stakeholders, urgency creation actually worked because the decision-maker was sitting right in front of you.
But three forces fundamentally shifted this dynamic:
Digital Information Access: Buyers now research extensively before ever talking to sales. They arrive more informed than the rep in many cases.
Organizational Complexity: What used to be simple purchases now involve multiple departments, compliance reviews, and committee decisions. The "economic buyer" became a buying committee.
Information Overload: Instead of needing more information, buyers are drowning in it. They need curation and navigation help, not more sales pitches.
Many sales techniques we still teach were designed for a world where Reps controlled information and faced single decision-makers. Applied to today's complex, digitally-enabled buying environment, these techniques become theater - elaborate performances that feel productive but miss the mark entirely.
What's Really Happening Backstage
While you're performing "pipeline acceleration" on the main stage, here's what's actually happening in the buyer's world:
Organizational rhythms that follow their calendar, not yours. Budget cycles. Personnel changes. Strategic priority shifts. Competitive evaluations you're not even aware of.
By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. This is because 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience – a preference that climbs to 44% for millennials.
When nearly half of millennial buyers actively want to avoid your performance, your ability to "accelerate" anything approaches zero.
The Archaeological Truth
Stop thinking of your pipeline as a machine you operate. Start thinking of it as an archaeological site you're excavating.
You're not creating deals - you're discovering buying processes that were already in motion. The buyer has been researching, discussing internally, building consensus, and navigating budget cycles - all without you.
And let’s be honest: this idea of “creating the need” sounds powerful in sales training, but it rarely matches reality.
How many Reps today truly represent something so new, so disruptive, that no one has heard of it?
In most cases, the problem already exists, the tools are already in place, and the customer is already experimenting with something similar.
You’re not inventing demand - you’re uncovering dissatisfaction.
You’re not “creating the need” - you’re clarifying it, reframing it, or revealing the cost of ignoring it.
The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can stop performing disruption and start practicing relevance.
B2B sales organizations must take a more situationally aware approach, tuning engagement skills and tactics with empathy for, and personalization to, a prospective buyer’s current state.
Breaking the Fourth Wall*
Time to stop the performance and focus on what actually matters:
*In theater, the "fourth wall" is the invisible barrier between performers and audience. Breaking it means stopping the performance to acknowledge reality directly - which is exactly what we need to do with pipeline theater.
Before your next major deal or quarterly forecast, run this diagnostic:
The S.T.A.G.E. Framework for Sales Reality Check
S - Script vs. Situation: Are you following a predetermined sales script, or reading the buyer's actual situation? If you're asking the same discovery questions regardless of context, you're performing.
T - Timeline: Whose timeline are you operating on - yours or theirs? If your urgency doesn't align with their organizational calendar, you're in theater mode.
A - Audience: Who's really making the decision - the person in front of you or the 19 people you've never met? If you can't map the real stakeholders, you're performing for the wrong crowd.
G - Goals: Are you trying to accelerate their process or influence their criteria? Acceleration is theater. Influence is strategy.
E - Evidence: What evidence do you have that your "urgency creation" is actually working? If buyers keep pushing dates or going dark after your "alignment calls," the evidence speaks for itself.
This framework helps you distinguish between productive sales activity and elaborate performance art.
When 17% Must Move Mountains
Here's the paradox that changes everything: Because you only get 17% of their attention, every interaction must be exponentially more valuable than your competitors'. Your scarcity makes you MORE critical, not less.
Think about it: If buyers spend 83% of their time in meetings you'll never attend, discussing criteria you don't know, using frameworks you didn't provide - then those internal conversations will determine your fate. Your job isn't to accelerate their timeline. Your job is to influence their criteria.
This means abandoning the comfortable mediocrity of generic presentations. Stop delivering the same slide deck that's already on your website. Stop pitching features your competitors also have. Stop asking "What would it take to move forward this quarter?"
Instead, become the Rep who:
Questions industry orthodoxy. Challenge assumptions everyone else validates. If the entire market says X is the priority, help them see why Y might be the real risk. Give your champions controversial intelligence they can't get from your competitors.
Arms your internal advocate. Remember, your champion has to sell your solution in rooms you'll never enter. They need ammunition - frameworks, questions, and insights that make them look smart and make your approach seem inevitable. Don't just present to them; prepare them to present. (More here: Who needs a champion?)
Delivers insight, not information. Information is abundant. Insight is scarce. Anyone can explain what their product does. Few can help buyers understand what they should be thinking about that they're currently not.
When your access is limited to 17% of their process, generic value proposition theater becomes suicidal. You need to be so uniquely valuable that your influence echoes through their entire 100%.
Final Curtain
Your pipeline isn't a race track - it's an archaeological dig. You're uncovering buying processes that have their own timeline and logic.
The sooner you drop the performance and accept this reality, the sooner you can focus on activities that actually matter: finding more deals and navigating them more skillfully.
Because in complex B2B sales, the best performers aren't the ones putting on the biggest show - they're the ones who understand that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is get off the stage entirely.
What's your experience with sales theater? Have you found yourself performing urgency while buyers follow their own timeline? Reply and let me know - I read every response and often feature the best insights in future posts.
Sources:
Buyer Preference Research: 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience; 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience, climbing to 44% for millennials.
Gartner B2B Buying Behavior Research: 74% of B2B tech buyers found the buying process complex; only 27% reported achieving a high-quality deal.
B2B Customer Uncertainty Study: Research showing B2B customers are deeply uncertain and stressed, with virtually infinite information available, swelling stakeholders involved in purchases, and ever-expanding array of options leaving customers overwhelmed and often paralyzed.
Digital Channel Projection: By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.
Buyer Engagement Research: B2B sales organizations must take a more situationally aware approach, tuning engagement skills and tactics with empathy for buyers' current state.
Information Quality Study: Nearly 90% of buyers agreed that purchase information they encounter is generally high quality - believable, relevant, backed by data, supported by expert analysis, and conveyed compellingly.
https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-new-sales-imperative
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-sales-should-know-about-b2b-buyers-in-2019
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-sales-should-know-about-modern-b2b-buyers
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