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I was putting together a deck for some upcoming workshops I’m conducting locally in the Raleigh, NC area this fall (If you’re local, come join!) and came across the same old outdated boring “sales funnel” graphic we’re all used to.

You’ve seen it.

Big wide top, narrow bottom, arrow pointing down. It is supposed to emphasize that you have a large number of people at the “top of funnel” and eventually they get weeded out as they move their way through to becoming a client.

But, as my mind wandered off on some random tangent, as it so often does, a question appeared that I had to sit with…”Is this actually how people buy in 2026?” or even more important, “Is this how businesses are still thinking about selling?”

The answer was clearly NO.

Because I was experiencing something different in recent years.

→ Buyers have interest and then go dark and then come back.

→ One decision maker turns into 4.

→ And your clients become your sales team, whether you’ve primed them to be or not.

Nothing about a funnel explains that. A funnel only goes one direction. Once someone falls out, that’s supposed to be it.

In the words of Kevin O’Leary, “They’re dead to me.”

But that's not how buyers actually behave anymore. And once I started pulling the research, I realized it's not even close.

Gartner says buyers now complete 70% to 80% of their buyer journey before they ever talk to a business. Forrester's research lands in the same range. There’s always nuance but it’s a good rule of thumb.

Gartner goes even further. Buyers spend only 17% of their total buying journey meeting with potential vendors. When they're comparing more than one vendor, that number drops to 5% or 6% with any single rep.

Here's what opened my eyes wide.

92% of B2B buyers already have a vendor in mind before research even starts.

41% start with only one.

Let that sink in!

Most of the "selling" already happened before you even knew the deal existed.

There's an old framework I still think about all the time, Chet Holmes's Buyer's Pyramid. At any given moment, only about 3% of your market is ready to buy right now. Another 6% to 7% are open but not looking. The rest, somewhere around 90%, either aren't thinking about the problem, believe they're not interested, or genuinely aren't.

However, most outreach is written for that top 3%.

We’ve all read it and we’ve certainly all created it. All the content centers around the assumption that the buyer knows they have a problem and is ready to solve it today.

→ That pitch does nothing for the other 97%.

But, those people will be buyers at some point, and remember, 92% of buyers already have a vendor in mind when they are pursuing a solve.

The funnel assumes people move one direction and don't come back.

That was already a stretch before AI made research even faster. Now, with how much digging buyers do on their own and how fast things move, priorities might shift constantly, sometimes before they've talked to you, sometimes while they're mid-decision with you.

The flywheel fixed some of that. HubSpot's version, built back in 2018, at least got customers feeding back into growth instead of exiting the system for good. But it's still built around your actions. Attract, engage, delight.

→ You're still the center of it.

But that shouldn’t be the case.

So I built something else.

There are five stages that your buyer can sit at, at any given time, with the problem you solve.

They orbit around the problem, whether they know you or not, and how close or far they sit from the problem determines what they need from you.

The way you present the content may look totally different per the markets you serve but each stage does need to hear different things to get them thinking differently at different moments.

Here are the stages…

This is the “Things are fine” stage. They could be exceptional or just tolerating something for the time being because it’s working. This is where most of your market lives most of the time, and it's the stage almost every founder ignores because there's nothing to "sell" here. But, you’re just planting a flag for later.

Content ideas:

This happens when something in their world breaks the pattern. New leadership, a rough quarter, a shift in the market. You can't manufacture this. You can only be positioned well when it happens, which means showing up with "here's what this usually means" content right when someone starts questioning the status quo.

Content ideas:

This is when someone inside the account starts seriously looking. This is usually where it gets complicated and consensus from multiple people, with multiple opinions, starts muddying the process. However, the founders who excel at this stage are able to speak to each role differently. Finance wants ROI. The end user wants workflow. IT wants to know it’s secure and how it’ll fit into the entire system architecture.

Content ideas:

This is the stage that real budget and real people get committed. This is also where most deals, unfortunately, die. But, it’s not that you lose the deal to a competitor. You lose it to indecision. They end up doing nothing. What appeared as a priority got pushed off for something more urgent. So, you have to be able to understand their problem and why it needs to be solved now. Then, you lead your champions on that journey to get buy-in and make a decision.

Content ideas:

They bought and they are getting real value and, if you help make it easy, they’ll tell everyone they know about the experience. That's what pushes someone else's Operational into a Ripple. They were fine until they heard someone else doing better. That’s how this works. It doesn't happen by accident, you have to build the mechanism to keep the orbit flowing. And, the more clients you keep happy, the more momentum there is out there in the universe for your business to get known faster.

Content ideas:

ORBIT is a new way of thinking about the buyer, not from your perspective but from the perspective of the problem. Because, most likely the problem you solve will ebb and flow over the years. Sometimes it’s #1 on the priority list, other times it’s an afterthought.

The rub is that you never know what can make a ripple that starts them on the path to explore a fix.

So, while only 3% of the market is buying at any given time, the other 97% could move at any given time.

You want to be the one they think of when they do.

Orbit gives you a different way to think about where your buyers are at on their journey.

The consistent content and goodwill you put out into the orbit, the more likely you’ll be the one they think about when it’s time to solve this problem.

But, one big caveat, Trigger doesn't just point in one direction.

Outward, it's the accelerant. Someone's success becomes the exact thing that knocks another company out of Operational. That’s what you’re going for.

But it also points back at the same customer. Their satisfaction slides them right back into their own Operational state. Problem solved, they stop thinking about it. They’re fine, for now.

Here's the part that should make you a little uncomfortable. A quiet, happy-looking account isn't automatically a safe one. If your delivery or your customer success slips even a little, that same customer doesn't make a scene on their way out. They just go silent. And wouldn’t you know it but that’s precisely when the competitor they weren’t even thinking about swoops in and knocks them back into orbit.

The orbit never stops moving.

Neither should your attention to the people already inside it.

Pull up the last five things you sent or published, an email, a post, whatever it was.

Ask yourself who you were actually writing to.

Was it someone in “Operational” who doesn't think they have a problem yet? Someone in “Bridge”, getting pulled in three directions by their own team? Someone in “Invest”, trying to get budget approved?

If everything you've written lately is aimed at the same 3% who are ready today, that's your gap.

Pick one stage you've been ignoring and publish one piece of content for it this week.

Reply and tell me which stage you picked. I read every one.

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