More than 40% of B2B deals stall when buying groups can’t align internally
More than 40% of B2B deals stall because buying groups can’t align internally, a figure Edelman cites on its 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report page. Edelman and LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report argues that “hidden buyers”, internal influencers inside buying groups who rarely show up in the sales cycle, are a major source of deal friction and upside. Demand Gen Report’s July 8 news brief about the report highlights the operational implication for go-to-market teams: content must be designed for the stakeholders who evaluate and influence, not only the “visible” decision-maker. For revenue leaders, the shift is moving thought leadership from a brand program into an instrumented, deal-support asset tied to multi-threading, opportunity stage progression, and consensus building.
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Key facts, context, and what it means.
Key takeaways
More than 40% of B2B deals stall due to internal misalignment (as cited by Edelman), so the benchmark that matters isn’t content engagement, it’s whether opportunities gain additional internal contacts and advance stages faster after content exposure.
“Hidden buyers” are a workflow problem: if they are discovering and evaluating content like target buyers (per Edelman and LinkedIn), then routing, tagging, and governance for sales-ready assets must assume off-chart consumption.
Edelman says hidden buyers can advocate for new or lesser-known brands at the final decision, which suggests procurement-facing and IT-facing enablement content belongs in competitive evaluations, not just top-of-funnel campaigns.
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More than 40% of B2B deals stall because the people inside the customer organization can’t align. Edelman cites that figure on its 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report page, pointing to internal misalignment in buying groups as a primary source of lost time and lost momentum in enterprise sales cycles.
Edelman and LinkedIn describe “hidden buyers” as internal influencers who may never take a vendor call but still shape the final decision. Demand Gen Report’s July 8 news brief about the report makes the implication explicit: marketers need to tailor content to those hidden buyers, not only the stakeholders who appear on the org chart in the CRM.
For operators who run revenue systems, content ops, or sales enablement, the “hidden buyer” problem is a measurement and workflow problem, not a trend. If internal alignment is stalling deals at that scale, then thought leadership needs to work like a deal-velocity lever tied to multi-threading and risk reduction, and it needs to be instrumented like one.
Hidden buyers turn “content performance” into a deal-risk metric
Edelman and LinkedIn’s report, now in its seventh year and based on insights from nearly 2,000 global professionals, treats hidden buyers as active participants in discovery and evaluation, even when sellers can’t see them (according to Edelman). Most enterprise teams still optimize content to visible engagement signals like webinar registration, the click, or the MQL conversion, even though those signals may not reflect who is shaping the decision.
If hidden buyers are consuming and evaluating independently, webinar registrations, clicks, and MQL conversions can mislead. A piece of content can look “underperforming” in the marketing dashboard while still shaping the internal narrative that decides whether legal, security, finance, or operations will support the purchase.
When the buyer group is the bottleneck, the best content KPI is stage progression, not page views.
Edelman also argues that hidden buyers value thinking that informs or challenges their perspective, and that they are not mere box-checkers (according to Edelman). Operationally, that suggests the bar for enterprise thought leadership is closer to an internal enablement memo than a product explainer: clear points of view, trade-offs, and decision criteria that an internal champion can reuse.
Challengers can win late, but only if content is built for internal advocacy
A second implication in the Edelman and LinkedIn framing is competitive. Edelman says hidden buyers can push for brands that are new or less well known when the group reaches its final decision, helping narrow the advantage incumbents often hold. In other words, content can still influence outcomes late in the process, as procurement and risk teams weigh switching costs and vendor credibility.
Demand Gen Report summarizes the same theme in plainer terms: “David can still beat Goliath” with strong insights, aligning with the report’s claim that well-crafted thought leadership can sway internal influencers (according to Demand Gen Report’s coverage of the report). For enterprise marketers and enablement leaders, that is a prompt to treat thought leadership as competitive collateral that can be activated inside an account, not just broadcast to a market.
This is especially relevant for sellers in categories where the buying group is fragmented across IT, operations, and finance. In those deals, the “hidden buyer” is often whoever owns the integration work, the risk register, or the operational change plan. The report does not enumerate roles, but it emphasizes influence that is real even when participation is not visible (according to Edelman).
Instrument thought leadership to track stage progression
Edelman’s cited misalignment rate positions thought leadership as a point of control for consensus, not awareness. But turning a report insight into an operational tool requires instrumentation. The key question becomes: did content change the shape of the opportunity, not only the activity around it?
- Map content to the buying-group tasks that cause stalls: internal alignment, risk review, and decision criteria. Edelman’s framing of misalignment as a stall driver gives a rationale for content specifically designed to build consensus, not just generate interest.
- Redefine influence measurement at the opportunity level. Track whether opportunities gain additional internal stakeholders after content exposure, and whether time-in-stage changes. This matches the report’s focus on hidden, off-cycle influence (according to Edelman and LinkedIn).
- Build a “hidden buyer” distribution plan. If hidden buyers discover and evaluate content like target buyers (per Edelman), assets need controlled re-share paths: sales enablement packaging, account-specific landing pages, and governance for what can be forwarded internally without a seller present.
- For competitive evaluations, include late-stage thought leadership in the deal room. Edelman’s point about lesser-known brands gaining advocates at the final decision suggests a practical play: procurement-ready narratives on switching risk, implementation approach, and operating model impacts, not just ROI claims.
Thought leadership that can’t be forwarded inside a customer’s company is only half finished.
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