LinkedIn: 40% of B2B deals die

1/ The problem in a lot of B2B pipelines is not losing to a rival. It is losing to inaction. LinkedIn and Edelman say more than 40% of B2B deals stall because buying groups cannot align internally. (edelman.com) 2/ That finding sits inside the 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, which drew on nearly 2,000 global professionals, including visible and hidden decision-makers. Edelman says those “hidden buyers” can fast-track a deal or bring it to a halt. (edelman.com) 3/ The core idea: the people in your demo are often not the full decision unit. Edelman describes hidden buyers as internal influencers in functions such as procurement, finance, compliance and IT operations who may not be end users but still shape the outcome. (edelman.com) 4/ LinkedIn sales executive Alyssa Merwin wrote in September 2024 that a study of millions of sales conversations found more than 40% of B2B deals get stuck because of lack of consensus. She said typical B2B buying decisions involve six to ten people. (forbes.com) 5/ That matters because “no decision” is different from a competitive loss. A competitive loss means the buyer chose someone else. A no-decision loss means the buyer never got comfortable enough, aligned enough, or organized enough to choose at all. That distinction is an inference from the LinkedIn and Edelman findings. (edelman.com) 6/ The risk dynamic is central. Merwin said deals that do go through are often made from a defensive position, where the safest choice is favored over the best possible choice because nobody wants to make the wrong call on a high-stakes purchase. (forbes.com) 7/ Hidden buyers tend to reinforce that caution. Merwin said LinkedIn and Bain research found hidden buyers hold nearly half of B2B decision-making power and prioritize peace of mind and reliability, while target buyers are generally more open to innovation. (forbes.com) 8/ Edelman adds another operational wrinkle: 71% of hidden buyers say they have relatively little interaction with sales. So the people who can slow or stop the deal are often not hearing your pitch directly. (edelman.com) 9/ That helps explain why complex enterprise purchases stall so easily. When legal wants lower risk, finance wants predictability, procurement wants process, IT wants integration, and the business sponsor wants speed, the easiest collective answer can become “not now.” This is an inference supported by the reported buying-group dynamics. (edelman.com) 10/ For enterprise insurance procurement, that pattern is especially relevant. Insurance technology, data, fraud, claims, underwriting and workflow tools usually require multi-stakeholder sign-off across operations, compliance, IT, procurement and budget owners. That application to insurance is an inference from the B2B buying-group research. (edelman.com) 11/ The practical takeaway for marketers is not “create more awareness” in the abstract. It is “reduce decision friction” for each participant in the buying group. PPC Land’s June 2, 2026 coverage frames the LinkedIn data that way. (ppc.land) 12/ In practice, that means role-specific proof. A claims leader may need cycle-time or leakage evidence. A compliance stakeholder may need auditability. IT may need implementation detail. Procurement may need a lower-risk commercial path. Those examples are reasoned applications of the hidden-buyer framework. (edelman.com) 13/ It also means implementation clarity matters more than marketers sometimes assume. If a buyer group cannot picture onboarding, ownership, data flow, controls and success metrics, indecision has room to spread. That is an inference from the consensus problem LinkedIn describes. (forbes.com) 14/ Low-risk pilots fit this logic. If the group is struggling to approve a full rollout, a bounded pilot can lower perceived downside, create an internal proof point and give cautious stakeholders a safer path to yes. This is an inference from LinkedIn’s emphasis on risk and reliability. (forbes.com) 15/ Thought leadership plays a role here too. Edelman says hidden buyers actively discover, consume and evaluate thought leadership, and may use strong content to advocate for lesser-known vendors at the final decision stage. (edelman.com) 16/ So the job of content is broader than lead generation. It can equip internal champions with language the rest of the buying group can repeat: what problem this solves, why it is safe to implement, and what happens next. That is an inference from Edelman’s description of thought leadership as a tool for building trust and driving alignment. (edelman.com) 17/ The larger lesson is simple: if 40%-plus of deals die in indecision, then the bottleneck is often buyer confidence, not seller visibility. Teams that map hidden buyers, answer their specific objections and make the next step feel manageable should be better positioned to keep deals moving. (edelman.com) 18/ Sources: PPC Land’s June 2, 2026 report on the LinkedIn data, Edelman’s 2025 LinkedIn thought leadership report page, Edelman’s June 26, 2025 hidden buyers article, and Alyssa Merwin’s September 24, 2024 Forbes piece. (ppc.land)