Happy Triple Threat Thursday!
Here’s one Signal to notice, one Spark to try, and one Shift to consider.
This week’s theme: Buyers aren’t disappearing. They’re just harder to win because their friction filter is sharper.
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
Buyers are reallocating spend, not simply reducing it.
Many consumers report caution and financial pressure, yet spending hasn’t collapsed. KPMG’s Consumer Pulse identifies a “make it count” mindset where buyers reduce spend in some categories and splurge in others.
Even higher-income consumers are trading down to discounters and off-price retailers. They continue to buy premium, but only when the value story is unmistakable.
McKinsey’s consumer research points to the same dynamic: soft sentiment, mixed spend, and sharper value discrimination.
Why it matters:
Marketing and sales teams that assume a simple “up or down” budget move will misread the real shift. Buyers are reallocating, not retreating.
What to do this week:
Sort the last 60 days of deals into: trade up, trade down, and trade away.
Draft one message for value-seekers and one for selective premium buyers.
Ship both versions in at least one campaign before Friday.
The buyer isn’t shrinking. The buyer is sorting.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
Try the Hidden Friction Analyst GPT
Find the three places in your funnel where good prospects quietly freeze.
Teams often rely on surface metrics to judge funnel health. Meetings booked. Demos completed. Proposals sent. But the real truth sits in the quiet moments. Buyers pause. They ask for clarification. They stop advancing even though interest is strong. That is friction, and it rarely shows up on any dashboard.
The Hidden Friction Analyst GPT helps you surface those patterns fast.
How to run it this week:
Collect the last 30 to 60 days of inputs. Include call transcripts, chat logs, email threads and lost deal notes.
Upload everything into the GPT: Hidden Friction Analyst
Ask it to identify the friction patterns that interrupt buyer progress and where they occur in the funnel.
Review the one page brief and choose one fix to implement before next week.
Why it works:
You are not guessing why deals wobble. You are seeing where buyers get stuck and clearing the path so the demand you already earned can move forward.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
Default belief: We need more leads.
Better lens: You need less friction.
Across both product and service businesses, buyer research shows longer journeys, heavier information loads and more uncertainty. It is not a demand problem. It is a confidence problem. Buyers stall when the process feels harder than the payoff.
Recently I worked with a services company that was convinced they had a pipeline issue. Volume looked fine. Interest was strong. But deals kept slowing down in the same place. When we reviewed the conversations, the pattern was obvious. Prospects understood the value of the engagement, but the path into the work felt vague. Scope. Roles. Timeline. Ownership. Too many assumptions.
The fix was simple. We clarified the sequence of the first 30 days and tightened how the engagement model was explained. Close rate moved without touching top of funnel.
Why it matters:
When people feel risk sensitive, ambiguity carries more weight than price. Confusion multiplies. Momentum fades. More leads will not solve that.
How to apply it this week:
Ask your sales team: Where does the buyer slow down?
Choose one stage where interest quietly turns into hesitation, whether that is discovery, scoping, proposal or onboarding.
Improve one part of that moment. Clarify the steps. Simplify the choices. Rework: how you explain the path forward.
Revenue is not created at the top. It is preserved in the middle.
💡 Operator Insight
Last week I worked with a revenue team convinced their close rate drop was a top of funnel problem. They wanted more campaigns and more outreach.
But when we reviewed the last 20 deal transcripts, the real pattern was clear. Buyers were not objecting. They were not comparing competitors. They were not challenging the offer.
They were confused.
Each time pricing and implementation came up, the buyer hesitated. Same line over and over:
“Can you walk me through that again?”
The team kept answering the question. No one stepped back to ask why the question appeared in almost every call.
We rebuilt the offer explanation. Clear tiers. Clear path. Clear rationale.
Close rate improved within two weeks.
Confusion is friction disguised as interest.
📚 What I’m Reading
🔗Companies Are Using AI to Make Faster Decisions in Sales and Marketing
Teams are moving from slow, reflective decision cycles to faster, AI supported reflex decisions. The advantage now goes to the operators who adjust in real time, not the ones who plan the longest.
Insight: Speed of adjustment now beats size of plan.
🔗B2B Buyer Behavior Trends 2025
B2B buyers are navigating longer paths, heavier evaluation and more internal debate. Most stalls happen not from lack of interest, but from an unclear or overloaded process.
Insight: Simplicity is now a competitive advantage.
🔗High Income Americans Go Bargain Hunting and Shake Up Retail
Even affluent consumers are trading down and scrutinizing value. Premium still sells, but only when the story is clear, specific and unmistakably worth it.
Insight: Premium requires proof, not assumption.
📈 The Takeaway
When buyers are selective, your advantage is simple. Find where they stumble. Remove the friction. Let your existing demand work harder.
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn.