Dismantling B2B

In October 2026, a technology company paid me $10,000 for an introduction to a school district that needed Wi-Fi infrastructure work.

I didn't take a sales call with the company paying me. There was no discovery meeting, no hour-long presentation, and no elaborate attempt to persuade someone that they had a problem.

The school already had a technology requirement. The supplier wanted school contracts. My job was to establish whether the opportunity was genuine, whether the supplier was relevant, and whether bringing the two together was worth paying for.

A payment arrived through Stripe at approximately 11:30 that night.

I recorded the investigation and transaction, including the correspondence, the offer, and the payment.

Now, the $10,000 was payment for an introduction. It wasn't evidence that the supplier had subsequently won the school contract. Those are two different transactions, and confusing them would defeat the entire point of this investigation.

But it established something interesting.

A company had paid five figures without going through the sales process that so many people regard as mandatory.

And that raises a question.

What, exactly, was the sales call supposed to accomplish?

The ceremony of selling

Most people entering B2B are handed a process before they're taught how a transaction actually happens.

Find prospects. Generate leads. Qualify them. Book meetings. Run discovery calls. Present an offer. Handle objections. Follow up. Close.

Each step has its own software, vocabulary, specialists, and performance metrics.

An enormous industry has grown around helping companies become better at performing these activities.

But there's an assumption buried inside the entire arrangement.

That the activities themselves are what cause people to buy.

Think about this.

A company conducts 30 discovery calls and acquires five customers. Someone concludes that discovery calls are necessary because all five customers participated in one.

But what if those five companies had already decided to purchase the service before the meeting?

What if the meeting merely confirmed that the supplier was suitable?

What if the transaction would have happened through an email exchange, a written proposal, or a direct introduction?

We cannot establish causation simply because one event preceded another.

And yet, that's exactly how many business practices become unquestionable.

Somebody succeeds using a particular process. The process becomes a framework. The framework becomes an industry standard. Eventually, people stop asking whether every part of it was responsible for the outcome.

They begin treating the process as a law of commerce.

I've become increasingly interested in separating the two.

Which activities create the conditions for a transaction, and which activities merely take place while those conditions are being established?

A sales call can be useful. Sometimes extraordinarily useful.

But usefulness is different from necessity.

And necessity is the claim I want to investigate.

What buyers are actually doing

In March 2026, Gartner published research reporting that 67% of surveyed B2B buyers preferred a sales-representative-free experience.

That alone should raise a few questions about processes that insist every buyer must speak to a salesperson.

But the more interesting finding appeared in another Gartner report, published two months later.

The research found that 69% of surveyed B2B buyers preferred validating AI-generated information with a salesperson.

At first glance, those findings seem contradictory.

Buyers prefer avoiding sales representatives, but also want to speak with them?

I don't think the contradiction is particularly mysterious.

A buyer who already understands a product might prefer purchasing without arranging a meeting. Another buyer, facing a complicated technical decision, might want to speak directly with someone who understands the implementation.

They aren't necessarily asking for the traditional sales process.

They're asking for enough information and confidence to make a decision.

And those are very different things.

Sometimes the uncertainty can be resolved by showing evidence. Sometimes by explaining the price. Sometimes by providing references, answering technical questions, or clarifying contractual responsibilities.

And sometimes a conversation really is the best way to do it.

The error is assuming that the same procedure must be used regardless of what the buyer already knows or needs.

An equally interesting finding comes from 6sense's 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report.

In its survey of nearly 4,000 buyers, 95% reported ultimately choosing a supplier that was already on their shortlist at the beginning of their buying journey. The preferred supplier before initial sales contact went on to win roughly four out of five deals.

Consider what that suggests.

Much of the important work was happening before the first sales conversation.

The buyer had recognized a problem, researched alternatives, developed preferences, and formed an opinion about which supplier could solve it.

Then the meeting happened.

This is survey evidence, not an experiment proving that sales meetings have no influence. Some buyers do change their minds, and the results won't apply identically to every market.

But the findings challenge the assumption that persuasion during a sales call is always the primary source of a transaction.

The buyer often arrives having already done considerable work.

Which means we ought to investigate that work instead of focusing exclusively on the meeting that follows it.

A business doesn't begin with your offer

Here's something I've noticed throughout my own work.

Many businesses begin their sales process with themselves.

They decide what service they want to sell, create an offer around it, identify a market that might purchase it, and then devote considerable effort to convincing people that the offer is worthwhile.

The question guiding their research is essentially:

Who can I persuade to buy what I have?

I became interested in reversing that question.

What are companies already trying to accomplish, and who can help them accomplish it?

The difference is more substantial than it first appears.

Suppose a nursing home has been paying external staffing agencies for years. It needs qualified nurses to cover shifts that its permanent staff cannot fill.

This is not a theoretical market created by a marketing agency.

The nursing home has an operational requirement. Money is already changing hands because of that requirement.

And in the United States, some of that commercial activity leaves a public record.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publishes Payroll-Based Journal staffing data, including nursing hours supplied by employees and external contract staff.

Those records provide evidence that facilities have used outside staffing.

Of course, historical staffing records cannot tell us whether a particular nursing home needs additional agency nurses today. That requires further investigation and direct confirmation.

But they provide a much better starting point than blindly approaching facilities and asking whether staffing happens to be a problem.

In another recorded investigation, I used this information to identify nursing homes, investigate their staffing requirements, and approach agencies capable of supplying the relevant roles.

The commercial offer was an introduction to a qualified nursing-home opportunity.

The fee was $8,000.

The customer paid.

Again, no sales call was necessary for me to sell that introduction.

And again, the important observation isn't that a call was avoided.

It's what took its place.

Evidence of previous spending. An actual requirement. A relevant supplier. Clear terms. And sufficient confidence for someone to pay.

The customer wasn't paying for my enthusiasm, presentation skills, or ability to deliver a motivational speech about their business.

They wanted access to a commercial opportunity that matched what they already sold.

So I sold them that.

Where the transaction actually happens

Let's remove the sales vocabulary for a moment.

What must happen for a commercial transaction to occur?

Someone must want an outcome strongly enough to exchange something valuable for it.

Someone else must be capable of providing that outcome, or providing something that helps achieve it.

Both parties must understand what is being exchanged, accept the terms, and have sufficient confidence that the agreement is worthwhile.

Everything else deserves examination.

A sales presentation can establish confidence. A demonstration can establish technical suitability. A discovery call can reveal requirements that would otherwise remain unknown.

But none of these activities is universally necessary.

They are ways of resolving particular uncertainties.

And I think the market keeps mistaking uncertainty-reduction mechanisms for laws of commerce.

Take the discovery call.

If I'm trying to sell an expensive operational system to a company whose processes I don't understand, a conversation may be necessary to determine whether the system fits.

But suppose the buyer has already described the requirement in detail. I know what they need, I can provide evidence of a suitable solution, and both parties can evaluate the terms in writing.

What, precisely, must be discovered on a discovery call?

Perhaps something important. Perhaps nothing.

The answer should determine whether the call happens.

The process itself shouldn't be the unquestioned starting point.

Or consider the sales proposal.

Some businesses produce enormous documents explaining their company's history, methodology, values, credentials, and every possible advantage.

There are situations where this information matters, particularly in formal procurement.

But in other situations, the buyer wants to know four things: whether the supplier can fulfill the requirement, how much it costs, how soon it can happen, and what happens if something goes wrong.

A fifteen-page presentation might provide those answers.

A concise email might provide them as well.

The medium is not the transaction.

The same applies to follow-ups.

Following up can be necessary because people become busy, priorities change, and legitimate opportunities don't always receive immediate attention.

But following up doesn't manufacture the underlying reason to purchase.

Its usefulness depends on whether the buyer still has a reason to care.

A message that reminds someone of the opportunity, clarifies a relevant issue, or provides new evidence performs a commercial function.

An empty reminder merely adds another message to their inbox.

In each case, the question remains the same.

What uncertainty or obstacle is this activity actually removing?

If we cannot answer that, why are we performing it?

The part AI changes

There's another development that makes this investigation especially interesting.

For much of business history, discovering what organizations were doing required significant manual effort.

People had to search industry publications, examine company websites, investigate government records, study procurement notices, read job advertisements, and connect pieces of information scattered across dozens of sources.

Much of that work can now be accelerated with large language models, scrapers, and relatively inexpensive software.

I use these tools in my own business.

Not because a language model magically knows what everyone wants.

It doesn't.

An AI-generated list of companies is not evidence that those companies are ready to buy anything.

And a company's recent hiring announcement isn't proof that it needs the exact service someone is trying to sell.

These are signals. They create reasons to investigate.

The important change is that we can examine far more commercial activity, compare it against available suppliers, and identify promising situations with considerably less manual labor.

A company posts a procurement requirement.

A manufacturer announces an expansion.

A business begins recruiting for an operational capability it doesn't currently possess.

A nursing home reports using external staffing.

Each event tells us something.

But what it tells us must be interpreted carefully.

An expansion might suggest future construction requirements, but it isn't confirmation that the company is seeking a particular contractor.

A job posting might reveal an internal capability gap, but it doesn't mean the company wants to outsource that work.

The investigation isn't complete until the suspected requirement has been tested against reality.

This is where I find large language models especially useful.

They can help us discover and connect information. Humans can then verify whether those connections correspond to actual commercial opportunities.

The technology compresses the research.

It doesn't eliminate the need for judgment.

And it certainly doesn't create desire out of nothing.

What the $10,000 payment proves, and what it doesn't

I want to return to the school district example because there's an important distinction here.

The payment proves that one company was willing to pay $10,000 for a specific introduction without taking a traditional sales call with me.

It doesn't prove that all buyers behave this way.

It doesn't prove that the school eventually hired that company.

And it doesn't prove that a subsequent conversation between the school and the technology supplier would be unnecessary.

Installing network infrastructure for a school involves technical requirements, procurement rules, contractual obligations, scheduling, and implementation risks.

Those things don't disappear because I can sell an introduction through email.

They belong to another part of the transaction.

My customer paid for the introduction. The supplier and school would still have their own decisions and responsibilities.

And that's a crucial distinction.

We should identify exactly what is being sold before deciding what process is required to sell it.

An introduction is not the same product as a completed infrastructure installation.

Likewise, a software subscription is not the same transaction as a customized enterprise implementation.

Different transactions carry different uncertainties.

Different uncertainties require different ways of resolving them.

It would be absurd to replace the doctrine that every business needs sales calls with a new doctrine that no business should ever use them.

I'd merely be exchanging one unquestioned rule for another.

I have no interest in doing that.

What interests me is determining, transaction by transaction, which activities are genuinely necessary.

My recorded deals demonstrate that certain traditional steps can be removed while payment still occurs.

They are evidence against universal necessity, not evidence that the steps are universally worthless.

That's a much more useful conclusion.

The business hiding in the middle

This investigation eventually led me toward what I now call a connector business.

The premise is that commercial value doesn't exist exclusively in producing or delivering something.

Sometimes it exists in discovering that two parties have a reason to transact, establishing that the reason is genuine, and bringing them together.

A company wants access to a particular kind of customer.

Another company is actively looking for a particular kind of supplier.

Neither party necessarily knows the other exists.

Someone who discovers the opportunity, verifies its relevance, and makes the connection can provide something valuable.

That person doesn't necessarily need to manufacture the product, perform the service, or employ the people who ultimately deliver it.

The value is in identifying and connecting an existing commercial opportunity.

There are obvious limits.

An introduction must be genuinely useful. Buyers and suppliers need to be accurately represented. Payment terms should be clear. And the person being introduced must have a real reason to participate.

Simply collecting contact details and declaring them opportunities creates very little value.

But when those conditions are met, the middle of a transaction becomes a legitimate place to build a business.

That's what I've spent the last several years investigating through myoProcess.

And increasingly, I'm interested in what happens when software makes these connections easier to discover, evaluate, and organize.

Because the underlying question isn't limited to connector businesses.

It applies to commerce itself.

What remains when the rituals disappear?

Imagine examining every activity in a company's sales process and asking one question.

If I removed this step, what would actually prevent the buyer from purchasing?

For some activities, the answer would be obvious.

Remove the information needed to assess technical compatibility, and the buyer may be unable to proceed.

Remove the contractual protections required by procurement, and the transaction may become impossible.

Remove the evidence that a supplier can perform the work, and the risk may become unacceptable.

Those activities serve identifiable purposes.

But other steps might survive the examination for no reason beyond familiarity.

The buyer books a call because the company's website requires one.

The salesperson conducts discovery because every deal begins with discovery.

A presentation is delivered because presentations are part of the sales process.

A prospect is moved through stages in a CRM because the organization has constructed a system in which every buyer is expected to travel the same path.

Some of these activities may be helpful.

But their presence tells us very little about whether they caused the transaction.

To discover that, we'd need to compare what happens when they are present, absent, or replaced with something else.

That's the investigation I intend to continue.

I'll keep examining actual markets, recording transactions, publishing the evidence I can make public, and questioning my conclusions when the results contradict them.

Sometimes the traditional process will prove its value.

Sometimes a particular step will turn out to be essential.

And sometimes a transaction will happen without any of the elaborate procedures we were told were necessary.

I'm interested in all three outcomes.

Because the objective isn't to eliminate salespeople, meetings, presentations, or any other familiar part of business.

It's to understand why people buy, what prevents them from buying, and which actions genuinely change the outcome.

The market keeps mistaking uncertainty-reduction mechanisms for laws of commerce.

And the only way to discover which is which is to investigate the transaction itself.

That's what I intend to keep doing.