Buyers research you long before they talk to sales. If the website, messaging and content don't hold up, more pipeline won't fix it. The foundation comes first.
I've seen the same pattern play out with almost every company I've worked with over the past two years. Sales have slowed down. They want to enter a new market. They want to build more pipeline. Then I open the website, and it's a mess. I dig through their LinkedIn presence, and it's pretty much abandoned.
And they know it. 'Yeah, the website, we're working on it.' 'We actually have a ton of content, we just don't have anyone to publish it.' 'We know the messaging still isn't quite there.' So I ask them a simple question. If you landed on your own website right now as a potential customer, would you stay or leave? If you researched your company from the outside, would you come away feeling confident about it? Would you understand what it sells, who it's for, and why you should choose it?
That's where I think the real problem starts. We're trying to generate more pipeline before we've built the foundation to support it.
The amount of noise in almost every market today is insane. In nearly every market there's a sea of competitors, all fighting for the same attention. A great product and a strong team are obviously the foundation, but they're not enough if it's hard to understand what the company sells, the messaging isn't sharp, and every touchpoint tells a slightly different story.
It genuinely drives me crazy sometimes to see the most basic things not working, not there, not clicking, and then hear CEOs and founders asking why there are no leads and why sales are stuck. The response is often to bring in more SDRs, invest more in outbound, or try another channel. But salespeople can't fix a GTM foundation that doesn't work. Even a great salesperson needs a company that knows how to tell its story: clear messaging, content, case studies, and tools that help them build trust and move a deal forward.
Because people research you just as much as you research them. They go to your website, check your LinkedIn, look at the CEO's profile, look at your customers, investors, content, and what others say about the company. A large part of what they'll think about you is decided right there, long before you ever get the chance to talk to them.
A 2025 study by Edelman and LinkedIn found that 71% of the behind-the-scenes decision-makers in B2B purchases have little to no interaction with the salespeople of the companies they're evaluating. At the same time, 95% of them said strong, high-quality content makes them more open to outreach from that company.
And that's exactly the point. Your salespeople don't start from zero. By the time they get to the conversation, the other side already has a certain perception of the company, the product, and the people behind it.
Before bringing in another SDR, opening another channel, or entering another market, it's worth making sure the foundation actually works. That the ICP is clear, the messaging is sharp, the website tells the right story, there's content that builds trust, and your salespeople have something to work with.
Source: Edelman-LinkedIn 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
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