Claude skills · Research
27 named methods and studies, from MEDDICC to the Mom Test, each with its source, its evidence type and the skills that use it.
How buyers decide
Why deals stall, who really decides and what to ask in discovery.
People switch when the push of today’s problem and the pull of a better future outweigh their anxiety about the new and the habit of the old.
Bob Moesta’s Switch interviews show most sellers talk only about the pull (features, ROI). Deals move when you also lower anxiety and break the habit.
In our skills
Account briefs write one hypothesis per force. Call prep adds questions for push, anxiety and habit, not only pull.
People are polite about your idea and poor at predicting what they will do. Ask what they did last time instead.
“Would you use this?” gets a kind yes. “Tell me about the last time this happened” gets facts: what it cost, who was involved, what they tried.
In our skills
Discovery questions start with “Tell me about the last time…”. Company context asks what happened at your last three new customers.
Most lost deals are not lost to a competitor. They end in no decision, mostly because the buyer fears getting it wrong.
In about 2.5 million recorded sales calls, 40 to 60 percent of deals ended in no decision. Most of it was indecision, not loyalty to the status quo.
In our skills
The objection helper treats hesitation as fear: give a clear recommendation, a smaller first step and less risk, not more ROI slides.
Top sellers bring a commercial insight that reframes the buyer’s problem, tailor it to each person and lead the process.
CEB’s research on thousands of sellers found the “challenger” profile overrepresented among top performers in complex sales.
In our skills
Cold emails teach one thing. Account intelligence looks for two public facts that together create a problem you solve.
Situation, pain, impact, critical event and decision. A shared set of headings for discovery notes and hand-offs.
The critical event is the buyer’s deadline, not the seller’s quarter. Test it by asking what happens if they miss the date.
In our skills
Call prep and call follow-up use these five headings when SPICED is your team’s method, and mark each one evidenced, assumed or unknown.
Metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, identified pain, champion and competition.
Created at PTC in the 1990s, with many published variants. Its value is in the gaps: the letters a team assumes instead of evidences.
In our skills
Deal review and call follow-up check which letters are evidenced. After your approval they can write each one to HubSpot as a custom field.
One purchase involves different roles: the economic buyer, the user, the technical evaluator and a coach inside the company who wants you to win.
Miller and Heiman built their Strategic Selling method on mapping these roles for every deal, because a deal missing one of them is a deal at risk.
In our skills
The stakeholder map places every person in a role and flags the roles nobody has met yet.
Plot stakeholders by power and interest: manage the powerful and interested closely, keep the powerful but uninterested satisfied.
Mendelow’s matrix is the classic tool for prioritising stakeholders, used across strategy and project management.
In our skills
The stakeholder map plots each person’s influence against their stance, so you see who needs attention first.
Deals move when someone inside the company pushes for change. That is often not the friendliest contact.
The Challenger Customer research separates mobilisers, who drive consensus, from talkers, who are helpful but cannot move a group.
In our skills
The stakeholder map marks who mobilises and who only talks, and proposal writer arms the mobiliser with a business case.
Imagining a plan has already failed, then explaining why, surfaces more risks than asking what could go wrong.
Gary Klein’s premortem builds on research into “prospective hindsight” (Mitchell, Russo and Pennington, 1989), which found it improves the ability to identify reasons for an outcome.
In our skills
Every deal review asks: “It is next quarter and we lost this deal. Why?” The answers become the three actions.
Complex purchases involve a group, buyers research mostly on their own, and most purchases stall along the way.
Forrester (2024): 86 percent of B2B purchases stall. Forrester (2026): when a purchase includes generative AI, the buying group is about twice as large. Gartner (2025, 646 buyers): 67 percent prefer a rep-free experience. Gartner also found buyers who are helped to make sense of information buy with less regret.
In our skills
Agents map roles, not one contact, flag single-threaded accounts and make self-serve proof easy to find. They cut options down instead of adding material.
How markets work
Why most buyers are not ready yet, and how to be remembered when they are.
At any moment only about 5 percent of B2B buyers are in market. The other 95 percent will buy later.
Based on how often companies replace suppliers. Advertising to the 95 percent builds memory; sales effort pays most on the 5 percent.
In our skills
The signal monitor separates “reach out now” from “stay remembered”. Posts are written for the 95 percent.
Buyers recall brands through the situations that trigger a need. Brands linked to more of those situations come to mind more often.
Jenni Romaniuk’s work at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the research group behind How Brands Grow.
In our skills
Company context lists the situations just before people buy. Posts and content briefs name those situations in the buyer’s words.
Start from what customers would use if you did not exist, then the attributes only you have, the value they create and who cares most.
April Dunford’s order avoids slogans: the category and the message follow from real alternatives and real value.
In our skills
Company context builds your positioning statement in this order, so every other skill stops sounding generic.
Business buyers weigh 40 kinds of value, from price and features to reduced anxiety, reputation and time back.
The higher, personal levels are where suppliers stand out, because most competitors already cover the table stakes.
In our skills
Company context and QBR prep cover value for each person in the room, not only cost and features.
When a champion from a won deal changes jobs, their new company is a warm lead and their old one is a renewal risk.
Kyle Poyar describes champion tracking as one of the plays that combine bought signals with data only you have, so competitors cannot copy it.
In our skills
Watch where past champions move, and reach out with a note that mentions the result they got with you.
Deals lost for timing or budget often return when something changes at the company.
Snitcher describes the pattern as a burst of pricing or comparison page visits after months of silence from a company that said "not now".
How to use it
Reopen a lost deal only when a dated signal shows something changed.
Companies that try to reach a web lead within an hour are far more likely to qualify it than those that wait.
An audit of 2,241 US companies found contact within an hour made firms nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead than waiting longer.
In our skills
The lead hand-off check measures your first response time and the leads that sit with no owner.
Content that states the answer, cites sources and adds statistics and quotations is more likely to be used in AI answers.
The GEO paper tested these changes on a benchmark of queries and found citations, statistics and quotations raised visibility in generative engine answers.
In our skills
The AI visibility check and content brief use this standard: answer first, cited, quotable.
Email and data
What the data says about cold email length, deliverability and opens.
Replies drop once cold emails pass about 100 words, and executives reply less often than others.
Gong’s analysis of cold emails found 50 to 100 words performs best.
In our skills
Cold emails stay under 100 words, with one question and no attachments.
Since February 2024, bulk senders must authenticate, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep spam complaints below 0.3 percent.
Authentication means SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Senders who break the rules see mail rejected or sent to spam.
In our skills
The email check verifies authentication and the complaint rate before you add volume.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection and corporate security scanners open emails automatically, so an open says little about interest.
Opens are inflated by machines. Replies, meetings and clicks from several people at one company are reliable.
In our skills
No skill treats an open as interest. Account context counts replies and meetings; lead scores never reward opens.
The “3x pipeline” rule assumes a one-in-three win rate. Honest coverage is about 1 divided by your own win rate.
Count only deals that can close in the period. A team that wins one in five needs about 5x, not 3x.
In our skills
Pipeline review computes coverage from your own win rate and flags deals that cannot close in time.
Consultancy research
Large surveys on channels, personalisation, retention and sales productivity.
B2B buyers split their time about evenly between in-person, remote and self-serve channels, and growth leaders use about ten channels.
McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024, nearly 4,000 decision makers in 13 countries. 41 percent prefer meeting in person with a new supplier.
In our skills
Outreach mixes email, LinkedIn and calls. For large deals, the first meeting is worth doing in person.
71 percent of customers expect personalised interactions and 76 percent are frustrated when they do not get them.
Leaders earn about 40 percent more revenue from personalisation. The data is mostly consumer, so apply it with care in B2B.
In our skills
Skills personalise on the buyer’s situation, not surface facts like a first name or a recent post.
A small rise in customer retention can raise profit sharply.
Often quoted as 5 percent more retention giving 25 to 95 percent more profit, from Frederick Reichheld’s loyalty work at Bain.
In our skills
Renewal risk and QBR prep treat early warning as revenue work, months before the renewal date.
Most growth gains come from using existing resources better, and AI in sales works when most of the effort goes into people and process.
BCG puts the split at roughly 10 percent algorithms, 20 percent technology and 70 percent people and process.
In our skills
RevOps skills fix the hand-offs and the data that decisions depend on before adding automation.
How every skill behaves
Not studies. Habits that keep the output honest.
Lead and health scores count only if they predict a result you can check later. Weights come from your own wins and losses.
Every report ends with one decision someone can make this week, with an owner.
New automations read, then propose, then write after a person approves.
How sure we are
A vendor’s data and a peer-reviewed study are both useful. They are not equally strong, so each card says which it is.
Your own. Discovery, call follow-up and deal review ask once which method your team sells with, MEDDPICC, MEDDICC, SPICED, BANT or GPCT, and then apply it every time. Without a method, they default to SPICED for discovery and MEDDPICC for deal reviews.
MEDDPICC adds a P for paper process: the legal, procurement and security steps between a yes and a signed contract. It matters most in larger deals, where paperwork is a common reason a deal slips.
A rule for customer conversations from Rob Fitzpatrick’s book: ask about specific past behaviour, not opinions or the future. “Tell me about the last time this happened” gets facts; “would you buy this?” gets politeness.
A risk exercise from Gary Klein: imagine the project, or the deal, has already failed and explain why. It surfaces risks that “what could go wrong?” misses. Our deal review runs one on every deal.
Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the LinkedIn B2B Institute estimating that only about 5 percent of B2B buyers are in market at any time. Marketing should build memory with the other 95 percent; sales effort pays most on the 5 percent showing signals.
Each idea is labelled by evidence type: peer-reviewed study, field study, book, analyst survey, vendor data, official rule or field practice. Figures marked “quoted via summaries” come from secondary sources; check the original before you quote them.