5 Must-Know B2B Sales Prospecting Stats for Small Businesses

Patrick McFadden • June 13, 2018

 How many attempts does it take to break through to busy buyers?

What offers are most accepted?

Do cold meetings convert to new business?

This new benchmark report,  Top Performance in Sales Prospecting , uncovered the answers to these critical prospecting questions. But for small business owners, you have another set of problems when it comes to B2B sales prospecting: limited time, attention spans, and resources.

This article will highlight 5 must-know stats for small businesses and how you can address these challenges.

#1. Problem Solving The Secret to Your Prospecting Success

62% of buyers want to hear from sellers when they are actively looking for a solution to solve a problem

There’s something to be said for a thorough, extensively understanding of your buyer’s world. When you’re taking the time to  address the problems your prospects see and feel before offering your solution,  there is little chance the activities you’re implementing to attract and convert them won’t resonate.

Insight into the problems prospects are having is key because very few people want what you sell. That’s not a blow to you or your business or your solutions. I’m sure all are remarkable. People want what they believe they will  get, achieve, relieve, dodge, or acquire  based on buying what you sell.

So, your job is to understand the problems prospects are trying to solve and match your solutions to those very specific problems.

The truth is people start the buying process on their own terms today via the internet, and  people aren’t searching for your solutions, but they search every single day for ways to address problems  they see and feel.

Small business owners that create their content, build their website and execute SEO practices around problem-solving will get in the pathway of their ideal client at a much earlier point – the point at which you can build the kind of trust needed to make your solution the obvious choice.

When prospects are looking to fix a specific problem, it’s important to tailor your message to specific problems they might have (do your research and you can find out).

#2. Meeting Acceptance and Connection

65% of buyers accept a meeting or otherwise connect when they find content on the best practice methodology based on the provider’s area of expertise

Let’s face it — organizations large and small have a problem standing out in our modern landscape. Products and services are largely undifferentiated to buyers, and trust is at rock bottom, especially for unfamiliar brands.

This sets the expectation for every organization to develop a set of foundational principles that their organization is built upon. Then turn each of those steps into the building blocks for creating a message for how their approach, process or method to solving their prospects and customers problem is unique.

This point of view and methodology must run through every element of content you create for generating awareness, educating, building trust, converting prospects and retaining customers. It’s the basis of your organizations presentations, newsletters, tradeshow material, special reports, whitepapers, webinars and speaking.

When you create and nurture a meaningful package of principles you also start to build a methodology that your prospects, can begin to understand, share and extend.

One of the greatest differentiators in business is your ability to lead through a consistent and valuable point-of-view and  methodology  that attracts prospects over the long haul.

You must be inspired to turn your way into THE way!

When you produce content around your point-of-view, you stand a much greater chance of building the credibility and expert status that comes from holding a unique approach, process or method to solving your prospects and customers problem.

You don’t need or even want everyone to agree with your point of view, but you must be inspired to build it.

#3.Why Your Buying Process Should Focus on Value, Not Services

96% of buyers ultimate purchase decision is influenced when a provider focuses on the value they can deliver to them

Today, giving value and offering insight is the game. If you’re a small business owner, marketer or salesperson, your perceived value is what allows you to take your game to the next level.

Now, don’t view the words value and insight to mean statistics or half way introductions – it’s about tipping the scale in your favor (leverage) – the kind that can build trust, attract new business, create more opportunities and shorten sales cycles.

So what are the companies that are bringing in new customers and growing their sales doing that’s different?

They’re narrowly focused on value creation and insight. In fact,  74% of B2B buyers choose the salesperson who was first to add value in their buying process.

Today, no matter what your business does it will sink or swim based on the value (perceived or otherwise) and insight it creates in a buyer’s life. Many firms default to adding features to products and services as a way to address value, and generic statics as a way to address insight, but the research shows the real impact in value creation and insight comes from strategically finding ways your business can deliver these two elements within the buying process.

The beauty of understanding value creation and insight at the strategic level, you can filter it into every tactical decision. This is where the most profitable work is done for organizations. When a market comes to value what you have to offer as the “obvious” choice you’re on your way to a premium pricing. Buyers will pay dearly for value and insight that helps them get more of what they want out of life.

Demonstrate “Value-Add” Behaviors  – Showing up in person is one way (and a powerful way) for business owners and salespeople to show they are invested in the buying process, but there are other ways for you to add value in any interaction. I’ve identified four behaviors that send a strong message to buyers that you are invested in their success and adding value at every interaction:

  • Responsiveness:  Follow up in a thorough, accurate, and timely manner – both before and after meetings.
  • Preparation:  Do the required preparation work for the meeting (e.g., getting up to speed on the business, delivering what was promised based on prior meetings/conversations, etc.).
  • Listening skills:  Ask insightful questions and actively listen to understand the issues and challenges driving the buyer’s needs.
  • Knowledge:  Demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of solutions and services, and relate them to the buyer’s current business strategy and needs.

#4. Insight Over Information

92% of buyers ultimate purchase decision is influenced when a provider provides valuable insight related to my industry or market

I firmly believe that any business owner, or salesperson that attempts to work with an organization, regardless of size, can greatly increase the value they bring to an engagement by helping a customer or prospect analyze their own customer journey.

Provide value-added advice and insight by researching every stage of the customer journey an organization uses to interact with and move its prospects to customers.

What do they do to create awareness, educate prospects and customers, build trust, sample their offering, convert prospects to paying clients, and generate referrals?

#5. First Impressions Matter

82% of buyers look up providers on LinkedIn before replying to their outreach efforts

In business interactions, first impressions are essential. But the truth is we all don’t sell the same way we used to, and buyers certainly don’t buy the same way they were accustomed to. This means the way we make first impressions has changed.

Today’s prospects and buyers are invisible until they’re ready to purchase. They don’t call up a company and ask for a brochure or wait for a salesperson to come calling. They do their homework using search engines, ask their network online for suggestions and essentially create their own brochure.

Much of what you have to do to make a great first impression on a prospective buyer is create and publish content on LinkedIn.

That’s just the reality of a first impression today as prospects now turn to search engines and social networks when they need to solve a problem and they search online proactively gathering information. Your profile and content must show up there.

People have come to expect to find information about any product, service, company, individual, cause or challenge they face by simply turning to the search engine and social network of their choice. So, if they’re not finding content that you’ve produced that provides them that information, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t be found to make a first impression.

Content is now one of the top networking, marketing, and branding tools in the business world — reinforcing first impressions. Small business owners and entrepreneurs alike, aspire to use content to exhibit their brand, value proposition and facilitate lead generation in their business.

As a small business owner you can’t ignore the importance of well-crafted, SEO optimized and high-quality content that is easy for search engines to find and index, easy to share, attract links, creates a searchable and archivable body of work on a subject and will never be seen as inorganic by Google. Content can reinforce your brand image or establish critical perceptions in a potential customer’s mind. Read more on How to Create a LinkedIn Profile that Generates Leads

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
More Posts