A short brief for owners who sell considered services
Chosen before the call.
The four stages a B2B buyer goes through before they contact anyone. And where most owners are absent from every one of them.
You have answered every question your buyers ask. A hundred times, in rooms. Never once where a buyer or an engine could find it.
94%
of buying groups had already ranked their preferred vendors before making first contact with any of them.
6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 4,000+ buyers
77%
of the time, they went on to buy from that preliminary favourite.
6sense, 2025 Buyer Experience Report
Your buyers do this too. Before they know your name.
Inside the brief
Twelve pages. One idea per page. Read it on the plane.
Frame
Your buyer starts with a problem, not a supplier. Who the engines name, and why.
Validate
They go looking for a person, not a page. The trust test every buyer runs.
Socialise
Your case has to travel without you. What gets forwarded and what stays closed.
Contact
By the time they reach out, the decision is mostly made. How to read the signal.
Then two pages on what it takes to be present at all four stages, why it stalls inside most businesses, and what it looks like when someone runs it for you. Every figure is sourced.
About the author
Gerard Doyle is co-founder of Fractal, a Brisbane marketing agency. Fractal finds which audiences, messages and channels produce customers for a specific business, then builds the system that does it repeatedly.