Business Buying (B2B) Isn’t Always Complex, But Your Strategies Might Be Failing Because You Think It Is
- william wright
- Mar 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 25
Some research reports suggest that the complexity of business buying has escalated, shifting from a streamlined decision-making process led by a few executives to a collaborative, possibly convoluted effort involving multiple departments and stakeholders.
However, not all business purchasing follows this path, some business decision-making may be complicated or convoluted but not all business buying is 'complex' and some is likely to be pretty straightforward. Understanding the distinction between simple, straighforward, convoluted, complicated, and complex buying is essential for commercial strategists and marketers.
The Expanding Web of Decision-Makers
Interesting research from Raconteur reveals that 94% of businesses involve more than six people in purchasing decisions, with 21% reporting more than 16 individuals participating in major investment choices. Much of this so called 'complexity' arises from cross-departmental influence, where finance, IT, HR, operations, marketing, and sales all weigh in - even in areas outside their traditional expertise.
It's suggested that this expanded 'decision-making' matrix presents both challenges and opportunities. On one hand, risk is distributed across multiple people, ensuring a more balanced decision. On the other, this dilution of accountability and risk-responsibility can slow down processes and possibly make it unclear who truly holds the final say. Either way there are pros and cons to increased size is the 'buying counsel' or decision-making unit.
About the research - Raconteur survey,(13 Jan 2023) of 1100 senior decion-makers in UK businesses with more than 250 employees, 41% say between six and 10 people are involved in the average purchase. Almost a thiord (32%) say it is 11 to 15, while a fifth (21%) think more than 16 people row in. In just 6% of those surveyed say it is five or fewer.
However, the Raconteur research is focused on large businesses, 250+ employees, according to the Department of Business and Trade, that's about 8,250 businesses, 0.2% of the business population, where employment in large businesses was 11.1 million (40%) and share of national turnover £2.5 trillion (48%)
Collaboration, Buy-In, and Risk Management
Arguably much of the shift to group-based purchasing decisions in larger businesses is largely a response to risk management concerns. The financial, governance, operational, and reputational risks associated with large-scale procurement decisions have increased, especially with digital transformation and compliance pressures. As a result, large businesses prefer a collaborative decision-making approach to distribute responsibility, ensuring no single individual bears the full weight of a decision are more likely a failed investment.
However, while risk-sharing can enhance decision quality, it can also lead to decision paralysis or conservative choices that stifle innovation. Too many decision-makers can slow the process and result in lowest-common-denominator decisions—choosing the safest option rather than the best one.
The Illusion of B2B Decision-Makers
One of the biggest misconceptions in business buying is assuming that all stakeholders involved in a buying process are actual decision-makers. Many are merely informed or consulted rather than being responsible for final approval. In larger businesses, the real Decision-Making Unit (DMU) is often separate from broader "Buyer Councel" or purchasing committees. This means that while many individuals have a say, only some actually influence decisons, and, only a select few truly decide.
Understanding this hierarchy is critical for effective sales and marketing efforts. Rather than attempting to persuade every person involved, companies must focus on identifying and influencing the true decision-makers and their key influencers—those with actual influence, authority and accountability. In some businesses these people may be pretty obvious, in others some are hidden.
The challenges of group decsion-making
In group decision-making, heuristics—mental shortcuts or rules of thumb—play a crucial role in simplifying complex choices, but they can also introduce biases and inefficiencies. When multiple stakeholders are involved, groups often rely on common heuristics such as consensus bias (assuming the majority opinion is correct), authority bias (deferring to the highest-ranking person), or availability bias (prioritizing easily recalled information over objective data).
While heuristics help streamline discussions and accelerate decision-making in high-stakes, high-pressure environments, they can also lead to overreliance on past experiences, risk aversion, or groupthink, where dissenting opinions are suppressed in favor of maintaining harmony. Effective decision-making in collaborative buying processes requires balancing heuristic efficiency with rigorous analysis to avoid costly misjudgments.
Buyer Decision Gatekeepers: How First-Stage Filters Shape (and Shrink) Available Choices
First-stage filtration points serve as critical gatekeepers in decision-making, swiftly eliminating options that fail to meet predefined qualification criteria. In business procurement these gateways are common, this might include budget constraints, compliance requirements, technical specifications, or vendor credibility.
By applying these filters early, organisations prevent decision fatigue, they streamline and simplify the decision-making process, ensuring only viable, high-potential options proceed to deeper evaluation.
While this simplifies decision-making by reducing cognitive load and analysis time, it also introduces the risk of prematurely discarding innovative or unconventional solutions that might have delivered superior long-term value. The challenge for marketers is to position their offerings within these qualification thresholds to avoid being filtered out before real consideration even begins.
Some advice from Rory Sutherland:
"Study complex things, not just physics and maths"
Chris Williamson interview with Rory Sutherland, How your Brain Gets Tricked By Clever Marketing
Framing complex decision-making
While the number of people in the Buying Counsel or Decision-making Unit may be a complicating factor, it's perhaps not the best indicator of business decision-making complexity. A better approach, or at least an alternative perspective, is to understand and contextualise the environment and potential response to a range of decision-making alternatives using soemthing like The Cynefin Framework:
Clear (Simple - rules based - best practice) - In the clear (simple) domain, decisions follow straightforward, best-practice-driven processes with predictable outcomes. These are purchases where qualification criteria like compliance and governance policy act as firm first-stage filters, eliminating unsuitable options early. Often, even through the decison-making processes may be convoluted and time consuming decisions fairly straightforward.
Complicated (expert analysis - good practice) complicated decisions require expert analysis but still operate within a logical, cause-and-effect structure. A company investing in ERP software may need consultations with IT, finance, and operations teams, but decision-making still follows structured evaluation frameworks.
Complex (exploratory - emergent or exaptive practice) - complex decisions are where outcomes are unpredictable, and past experiences may not provide clear answers. This is typical in large-scale digital transformation projects, market disruptions, implementation of first-time innovations, or high-stakes procurement decisions involving multiple departments with competing priorities. Here, traditional qualification filters may not apply, as businesses navigate emerging insights, stakeholder influence, and risk-sharing dynamics.
Chaotic (cause and effect disconnected - novel practice) - In chaotic decision-making, urgency and crisis dominate—such as cybersecurity breaches, supply chain failures, or regulatory upheavals. The priority is immediate action, not long deliberation.
Using frameworks like this may suggest that most business buying in business is far from complex, not even complicated, even in large buisnesses, although some clearly is. The framework promotes a far mor nuanced approach to understanding the context and complexity of decision-making. Effective strategies and marketing needs to align and respond to the needs and behaviours in each of these states and of course be aware that the states can change.
But what about the other 99% plus of businesses
According to the latest goverment statistics, there are 5.5 million UK private sector businesses, the vast majority have less than 250 employees, in fact in 74%, it's just one person, an individual decision-maker:
1.4 million (26%) businesses had employees and 4.1 million (74%) did not employ anyone aside from the owner(s)
there were 5.45 million small businesses (with 0 to 49 employees), 99.2% of the total business population
there were 37,800 medium-sized businesses (with 50 to 249 employees), 0.7% of the total business population
total employment in SMEs was 16.6 million (60% of the total), whilst turnover was estimated at £2.8 trillion (52%)
employment in small businesses was 13.0 million (47%) and turnover £1.8 trillion (36%)
employment in medium-sized businesses was 3.7 million (13%) and turnover £0.9 trillion (18%)
These smaller businesses have much smaller 'Buyer Counsels', (if any), and much smaller Decision-Making Units, sometimes, in fact quite often, according to statistics, just one individual. Their buying options are limited by available, affordable solutions, resource and time. They have quite a different set of considerations and constraints. Their behaviours are likely to be different, perhaps, quite often individual choices.
However, the complexity or not of their choices and decisions can be framed in the same or a similar way to that suggested above.
Conclusion
Judging complexity using the number of people in a 'Buying Cousel' or Decision-Making group simply isn't nuanced enough, it may be a contributory factor in some circumstances, but not in all. Assuming all business buying is inherently complex is a flawed argument, it simply isn't. Business buying is done by individuals and groups, not soley by groups.
It's the context, true decision-making complexity and behaviours of both individuals and groups that should matter most to commercial strategists and marketers, not oversimplified, generalisations like B2B and assumptions of universal complexity.
Commercial strategists and markers need to focus on understanding complexity, decision-making and behavioural science and the trade offs that are made between value-add and risk mitigation. We need a much more nuanced understanding of the context within which individual and group decisions are made throughout the customer journey.
For all marketers, regardless of their current allegiances to B2B or B2C it's time to explore market opportunities through a new common and far more nuanced lens, that of customer journey based context, choice, decision-making and bahavioural complexity.
Footnote: the customer journey reflects the customers path from initial concept or idea through to benefit realisation and beyond, it's not the 'buying cycle' or typical customer experience from awareness to acqusition (although it may include many of these, from time to time, with different vendors)
Useful sources:
How Your Brain Gets Tricked By Clever Marketing - Interview by Chris Williamson with Rory Sutherland - a great and wide ranging chat about choice architecture, how to think like Darwin, advice to cultivate creativity...
What is decision making - McKinsey, March 2023 - summary of the nature of effective decision-making, deligation and bias.
A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making - Harvard Business Review. Dave Snowden’s Original Work on Cynefin – Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. 2007
Gartner’s B2B Buying Journey Reports – Research on group decision-making and the modern B2B buyer
Why making business decisions is harder than ever - Raconteur, Clara Murray, Jan 2023
Understanding the complexity of decision-making, Part 2 - Medium, Dr. Ross Wirth, Jan 2023
Thinking, Fast and Slow.- Kahneman, D. 2011. – A foundational book on heuristics, biases, and decision-making
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. – Thaler, R., & Sunstein, C. 2008 How subtle framing impacts decisions
A mindless approach to complex decision-making - Deloitte, Manshreya Grover, Sep 2022
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