Why B2B Buyers Really Buy: The Hidden Buyer Journey with Scott Gillum

Why do B2B buyers really buy? In this episode of The B2B Roundtable: What Dashboards Miss, Brian Carroll talks with Scott Gillum, founder and CEO of Carbon Design and author of The Hidden Buyer Journey: How Personality, Culture, and Hidden Stakeholders Decide Your Deals. Scott spent seven years studying more than 10,000 buyers across 15 industries. His research shows that most GTM teams are good at tracking what buyers do, but they often miss the people, pressure, risk, trust, and hidden stakeholders shaping the actual decision. In this conversation, Scott explains why the real buyer journey often happens somewhere your CRM and dashboards can’t see. We discuss: • Why human-to-human selling still matters as AI and rep-free buying grow • How hidden stakeholders influence deals without showing up in the CRM • Why complex B2B buying is emotional, even when the process looks rational • How buyer confidence differs from vendor confidence • Why personality and culture shape how buying groups make decisions • Why empathy is not a soft skill in complex sales • How AI can help sellers understand buyers instead of just scaling outreach Full episode post: https://www.markempa.com/why-b2b-buye... Connect with Scott Gillum:   / scottgillum   Learn more about Carbon Design: https://carbondesign.com/ Get Scott’s book, The Hidden Buyer Journey: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H5P7YKGZ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Scott Gillum and The Hidden Buyer Journey 01:06 The human-to-human selling relationship 02:15 When the CRM tells the wrong story 04:10 The 85% of buyers missing from the database 06:14 The emotional gap in complex sales 08:03 Buyer confidence versus vendor confidence 11:28 The two-thirds rule and personality-based selling 15:16 Why empathy is not a soft skill 18:18 How sellers should adapt under pressure 20:44 Using AI to move closer to the customer 23:42 Closing thoughts About The B2B Roundtable: Most GTM teams manage what their dashboards can measure. But the breakdowns that cost real revenue often happen underneath the visible data, in handoffs, hidden stakeholders, trust gaps, follow-up, buyer confidence, and the friction buyers feel but reports don’t reveal. The B2B Roundtable: What Dashboards Miss is hosted by Brian Carroll, founder of Markempa. If this conversation was useful, subscribe for more conversations on what dashboards miss in complex B2B revenue. #B2BMarketing #B2BSales #GTM #RevenueGrowth #BuyerJourney #ComplexSales #SalesEnablement #DemandGeneration #ABM #CustomerExperience