Sales cycles are getting longer. Win rates against ‘no decision’ are climbing. The instinct is to blame the buyer for going dark, but the real issue is that the industrial buyer journey has evolved past the channel’s ability to support it.
Craig Martin is President of C3 Team, a strategy and marketing agency that works with industrial manufacturers on growth, brand, and digital engagement. In this piece, he makes the case that the gap between how buyers want to purchase and how manufacturers sell is widening. Closing it requires more than a better CRM.
In the current industrial climate, a troubling metric is quietly making its way into boardrooms: Sales cycles are lengthening while win rates against “No Decision” are climbing. The common diagnosis heard in sales leadership reviews is that the buyer has become “unavailable” or “ghosted” the team.
At C3, our market observations suggest a different, more systemic reality. The buyer hasn’t disappeared; they’ve simply evolved beyond the industrial channel’s current sales motion. We are witnessing a widening Friction Gap—the distance between how an industrial buyer wants to purchase and how manufacturers and distributors are currently equipped to sell.
For the C-suite, this isn’t just a sales hurdle; it is a revenue velocity problem.
The Rise of the Industrial Buying Committee
The “lone wolf” decision-maker is dead. In today’s manufacturing environment, a $50k+ purchase rarely sits with a single manager. It now involves a complex Buying Committee, each with competing KPIs:
- Operations: Focused on uptime, integration, and ease of maintenance.
- Safety & Compliance: Focused on risk mitigation and regulatory standards.
- Procurement: Focused on supply chain continuity and contract lifecycle.
- Finance: Focused on EBITDA, capital efficiency, and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
The Strategic Failure: Most industrial sales motions are built for only one of these personas (usually Operations). When the other three stakeholders don’t see their specific concerns addressed in your content or proposals, the deal doesn’t get “rejected”—it simply stalls in a state of internal misalignment.
Digital-First is Not Human-Free
There is a dangerous executive assumption that “going digital” means replacing people with portals. This is a false choice. In the industrial sector, digital tools should be used to remove the administrative friction (tracking, technical specs, inventory), which in turn “earns” your team the right to provide High-Impact Human Intervention.
The role of the modern salesperson has shifted from information provider to consensus builder.
If your sales team is still spending 80% of their time on technical specs that are available
online, they are an expensive friction point, not a value-add.
Repairing the Industrial Buyer Journey
Repairing the industrial buyer journey is not a task for the marketing department alone; it requires cross-functional accountability. To close the Friction Gap and accelerate revenue, leadership must prioritize three areas:
- Radical Channel Alignment: Manufacturers, reps, and distributors must speak a unified language. If your channel partners can’t articulate your value proposition as well as your top VP, you have a friction problem.
- Information Symmetry: Ensure that the data your sales team provides is a seamless extension of the buyer’s digital research—not a repetitive “start from scratch” experience.
- The “Path of Least Resistance”: Simplify your customer engagement process. How many steps does it take for a customer to get a custom quote or a technical validation? If the answer is “it’s complicated,” you are losing market share to more agile, “low-friction” competitors.
Final Thoughts, the C3 Perspective
The modern industrial buyer is not avoiding you. They are avoiding the complexity, repetition, and misalignment that has come to define the traditional industrial sales motion.
At C3, we believe that in an era of product parity, the experience is the differentiator. Companies that prioritize “ease of doing business” over “volume of sales activity” will be the ones that capture the next generation of industrial loyalty.
Reduce the friction, and the buyer will not only re-engage—they will accelerate.
By Craig Martin, President C3 Team
C3 Team is a business strategy + marketing agency that helps manufacturers achieve above market growth through connected solutions specializing in Business Strategy, Brand and Digital Engagement. We partner with manufacturers to align marketing and sales functions, uncover growth opportunities, and implement connected solutions that deliver revenue impact.
Let’s Connect: marketing@c3cteam.com
The friction Craig describes shows up in different ways depending on where you sit in the channel. Manufacturers feel it in stalled deals. Distributors feel it in customers who research online but never call. The common thread is a buying process that has moved faster than the sales motion supporting it.
If this matches what you are seeing in your market, it is worth examining where the friction sits in your own customer engagement process.
Let’s Connect: clabow@channelmkt.com
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