Jason B., the tracking question is the hard one, and the right one to ask.
Some of it you can see once the buyer is in front of you. The tells are not "I'm confused." They show up as a question built on a false premise, a buyer relitigating something you already settled, or someone stating a wrong assumption about your product as fact. The pattern you described, going quiet for weeks and coming back, is usually that. They self-educated into a model that feels solid and is partly wrong. That is confident misunderstanding, and by the time it reaches you it has already hardened.
The harder version is the one you never see. A stakeholder does their own research, forms a view, and either never surfaces or shows up late with an objection that matches nothing you told them. Gartner found 69 percent of buyers now go back to a rep to validate what their AI research told them, which means most of them are forming views in private first.
That blind spot is the missing layer. Not more content and not more outreach. Something that keeps buyer understanding accurate, and visible to sales, while the buyer is researching alone. Nothing in the stack instruments that today.
How are you catching it with your startup CEOs, mostly in the room, or after the fact?
