When I was CMO at Kodak, we spent somewhere between $60 and $90 million a year on research.
Surveys. Focus groups. Panels. Every tool the industry had to offer — tens of millions of dollars, every year, trying to answer one question: what are our customers actually thinking?
Here’s what all that spend didn’t buy us: the emotion. What they said got filtered and categorized. What they felt — the hesitation, the doubt, the enthusiasm — never made it to the boardroom.
And that gap, between the stated answer and the real feeling, is where most deals quietly die.
You can see it in every pipeline review I’ve sat through since. A deal looks healthy. Good engagement. Right people involved. Everything tracking the way it should.
Then it stalls.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. It just… stops moving.
And the room fills with guesses.
“Probably price.” “Maybe timing.” “They might not be ready.”
Nobody actually knows.
Here’s the Problem Nobody Talks About
Most marketing teams are optimizing based on what already happened.
Open rates. Conversion rates. Pipeline movement.
All useful.
None of it explains this:
What changed in the buyer’s head that made them hesitate?
Because that’s when the deal is really won or lost.
Not in the demo. Not in the proposal.
In that moment where something doesn’t quite land.
We’re Still Guessing at the Most Important Part
Here’s what I see teams do:
They lose a deal… then reverse-engineer a reason that sounds convenient.
“It was pricing.” “It was a competitor.” “It was timing.”
Those answers are easy to say out loud.
They also let everyone move on without fixing the real issue.
Because the real issue is harder to see.
It’s the message that didn’t land. The risk that wasn’t addressed. The doubt that never got surfaced.
And none of that shows up in your CRM.
Why Surveys Don’t Help
A lot of teams try to solve this with surveys.
That doesn’t work either.
By the time someone fills one out:
- The decision is already made
- The context is gone
- The answers are filtered
You’re not getting what they actually thought.
You’re getting what they’re willing to say after the fact.
Big difference.
What’s Actually Changing Right Now
This is where things are starting to shift.
AI is making it possible to capture how people think while they’re thinking it.
Not through a form. Through a conversation.
- It adjusts in real time
- It follows where hesitation shows up
- It surfaces what’s actually causing friction
That’s the part most teams have never been able to see.
This Is What We’re Testing Right Now
This is where I’ve asked our network to get hands-on.
I’m not surprised the best new tool I’ve seen for marketing was built by operators who’ve already shipped a category-defining company. ReadingMinds came out of the founding team behind KnowBe4 — the cybersecurity platform that exited for over $4 billion. They know what the old research stack never delivered. And they built the thing that does.
One of the core tenets of C-Suite Network™ is trust: one executive introduces another for no reason other than I think you should know this. This is one of those times.
Here’s what they’re offering, and why it’s worth three minutes of your time.
ReadingMinds is running a short, AI-led conversation called a Live Test Drive. Three minutes. No prep. No setup.
You spend those three minutes talking with Emma — their voice AI interviewer — about how you currently capture signal from customers, buyers, and teams. She delivers a cited Emotional Fingerprint™ report to your inbox that shows the emotional signals beneath what you said.
It’s the same kind of report you’d get deploying Emma on your own buyers. Which is the point.
- A three-minute conversation with Emma — no forms, no script
- A cited Emotional Fingerprint™ report on your own words, delivered to your inbox
- A hands-on read on whether this deserves to run on your buyers, customers, or team
If you want to see what this technology actually does before you commit to testing it on your pipeline, this is the fastest way to find out.
Take the 3-Minute Test Drive with Emma
Experience the AI that hears the hesitation your CRM can’t show you. Three minutes. Cited report in your inbox.
Bottom Line
Most teams don’t lose deals because they lack effort.
They lose them because they miss the moment where the buyer checks out.
If you can see that moment clearly, you can fix it.
If you can’t…
You’re guessing.
