Buyer-state,
Brand & Demand

The GTM World Model's most structurally important revision from v1.x to v2.0 was adding Tier 0: buyer-state (B) and brand stock (B_r). The funnel is Tier 1. Buyer-state is pre-funnel — it largely determines the funnel's conversion rates before a single SDR touches the phone.

Tier 0 (buyer-state): At any given moment, a prospect is in one of three states — unaware (no recognized problem), latent (problem recognized, not yet seeking), or active (actively evaluating vendors). The distribution across these states is approximately 60% / 35% / 5%, mirroring the 95-5 rule. Funnel programs can only convert the 5% active. Brand programs can shift the 95%.

The T12 structural claim: Funnel conversion coefficients are conditional on buyer-state, not causal of it. A company on the Day-1 shortlist converts at 40–60%; one that isn't is largely invisible regardless of personalization, follow-up cadence, or SDR volume. Doubling SDR activity into a fixed in-market pool yields geometric decay in pipeline quality, not proportional pipeline growth.

The T13 structural claim: Brand stock (B_r) is a depreciating asset that must be actively replenished. Nerlove-Arrow adstock dynamics apply: investment builds the stock; absence lets it decay. Mental availability — how readily a brand comes to mind in a specific buying situation — is built by consistent, category-entry-point-linked creative. It is not a lagged conversion event inside last-touch attribution.

If buyer-state and brand stock determine conversion rates, the implication for budget allocation is severe. Traditional GTM concentrates spend on demand-capture programs — SEM, SDR sequences, retargeting — that can only address the active 5%. A brand-first model concentrates spend on building the stock that influences the 95% before they enter evaluation.

Day-1 shortlist formation happens during the latent phase, before any vendor knows a prospect is interested. Analysts, peer recommendations, content found via search, and category associations formed over years all shape the list a buyer writes down (or recalls) on Day 1 of evaluation. A vendor not on that list faces a very steep recovery path — even if they outperform at every subsequent stage.

Brand as a Nerlove-Arrow stock means investment has a decay rate. Companies that pause brand spend — typically to protect short-term pipeline numbers — burn down a stock that took years to build. The decay is not visible in any quarterly funnel report because funnel reports only measure the 5% already in-market. The damage shows up 6–18 months later as deteriorating win rates and rising CAC among cold outbound.

If 95% of your addressable market is not buying now, the question becomes: how do you reach them before the buying window opens? The mechanics are different from demand-capture programs.

Dark funnel dynamics. The 95% do not raise their hand. They consume content, run searches, read analyst reports, ask peers, and follow social accounts — none of which is tracked by your CRM. This is the dark funnel: real, decisive buying behavior that is invisible to standard attribution. Intent data providers (Bombora, G2, 6sense) surface weak signals from the dark funnel, but only for the subset of activity on tracked domains. The majority remains unobservable.

Category entry points (CEPs). Mental availability is linked to specific buying situations, not generic awareness. A buyer thinking "we need to improve sales forecasting accuracy" is in a specific CEP. Being mentally present in that situation — through content, thought leadership, peer mentions, and search — is what earns a Day-1 shortlist slot. Advertising to the same persona with irrelevant creative builds general awareness but not CEP-linked recall.

Demand creation programs (brand content, community, influencer, always-on paid) plant the seeds harvested later by demand-capture programs (SEM, SDR, PQL routing). The harvest-to-planting ratio in most B2B companies is inverted: 80% of budget on capture, 20% on creation. Empirical work (Binet & Field, LinkedIn B2B Institute) suggests the ratio should be closer to 60% creation / 40% capture for most mid-market to enterprise motions.

The most consequential strategic split in modern B2B marketing is not brand vs performance, or inbound vs outbound — it is creation vs capture. They operate on different populations, different timescales, and different economic logics.