A crowd of buyers comes in. Watch how few make it out.
They don't leave at the stages. They leave in the gaps between them.
A crowd comes in. Roughly 9 in 10 leave in the middle, before anyone calls it a lost deal.
Tell me where you are. I'll send you the 5 gaps where businesses like yours lose buyers, and how to spot the one that's costing you most.
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From Joe Papadatos. 22 years building and running a marketing agency, sold in 2023. Now the fractional CMO who owns the middle.
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Leads at the top. Sales at the bottom. Everyone watches those two. But the actual deciding happens in the long stretch in between, where a buyer reads, asks around, compares, and quietly settles on a favourite, usually before they ever raise a hand.
A buyer crosses around 10 channels before they choose you. An ad, a review, an email, your site, a word from someone they trust. The leak is almost never at any one of those stages. It is in the gaps between them, where one hands to the next and nobody owns the join. That is the stretch in the animation where the stream thins. That is the messy middle.
You don't lose most deals in the meeting. You lose them in the months before it, in the part nobody was watching.
About 70% of a buying decision is made before a buyer ever talks to you. Roughly 9 in 10 of your leads are not ready to buy this week. They are not junk. They are buyers who haven't arrived yet, sitting in the middle, making up their minds. Win the middle and you win most of them. Ignore it, and they drift to whoever stayed useful while you waited for the enquiry.
The fix isn't more leads at the top. It's owning the middle. One person accountable for the whole journey, the ratios between every stage watched so you can see the gap where buyers drop, and a reason to stay useful in the quiet months when the favourite is being formed. That is the work.
The long stretch of a buyer's journey between being seen and being sold. It is where most of a buying decision is actually made, often before a buyer ever contacts you, and where most businesses are not present because they only watch the lead at the top and the sale at the bottom.
A buyer crosses around 10 channels and several stages before they choose. The leak is rarely at any single stage. It is in the gaps between them, where one hands to the next and nobody owns the join. Around 70% of the decision is made before a buyer talks to you, so they sit in the middle and quietly drift to whoever stayed useful.
Make one person accountable for the whole journey from first contact to signed. Measure the ratios between every stage to find the gap where buyers drop. Then stay useful in the quiet months when the favourite is being formed, rather than only showing up at the enquiry.
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Someone has to own the whole journey, from the first time a buyer hears your name to the day they sign. For most businesses, that someone is nobody. OVERSIGHT is the fractional CMO that takes it on.
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