So you got their attention - but didn't get the sale. Here's what went wrong

I recently saw a post on LinkedIn. A frustrated founder, after two years of being ghosted by a buyer at Sainsbury's, sent them a Specsavers voucher with a handwritten note. The implication: maybe you need your eyes checked, because my emails keep going unread.

It got attention. People called it creative. Gutsy. A masterclass in persistence.

But most of the people reacting to that story were solving the wrong problem.

Let's say it worked. The buyer laughed, picked up the phone, booked a meeting. Even then — the message still has a long way to travel.

In a large retailer like Sainsbury's, a buyer doesn't buy alone. They buy in a system. Any new supplier decision moves through category leads, procurement, finance, sometimes legal, sometimes a trading director. If the business is big enough, it touches the board.

The founder won the first reader. But in B2B, the first reader is rarely the decision-maker. They're the translator.

And translation is where most messages break.

This is the part nobody tells you when they teach you to "grab attention." Attention gets you into the room. It doesn't get you through the next five.

Once your message leaves your hands, it stops being yours. It moves through people who are half-reading it between fifteen other things, who won't do the work of translating it for someone else unless it's already effortless, who will eventually land in front of someone in Finance whose entire job is to ask "does this make business sense?" — with zero interest in how clever your subject line was.

None of that is about your creativity. It's about whether your message can survive without you standing next to it, explaining what you meant.

That's the real winning outcome in B2B buying - not just attention but amplification.

Now I don't mean the volume kind — more posts, more spend, more people shouting the same thing at more first readers. The real kind: your idea showing up in other people's mouths. A sales leader borrowing your language in a pitch. A regional team explaining it to a customer in their own words. A buyer walking into an internal meeting and repeating your point without your one-pager in front of them.

That's when you know a message is working — when it starts moving on its own.

Here's the test I'd give you instead of a checklist: if you handed your message to five people at five different levels of the org, would they explain it the same way tomorrow? Not word for word. Same logic. Same problem. Same conclusion.

If yes — the message is doing real work without you.

If no — if it only makes sense when you're the one telling it — that's not messaging. That's a dependency you've built into your own comms.

And most B2B communication is built exactly that way, even when it's good. It's built for the open, the click, the reply. But complex organisations don't decide things by clicking. They decide through hallway conversations, summarised slides, and thirty-second briefings you'll never be in the room for. If your message can't survive being retold badly, by someone who isn't you, it was never really built to travel.

Five Ways to Design a Message For Amplification

The good news is this isn't about being simpler, or duller, or stripping the personality and creativity out of what you're saying. It's about noticing that a message built to be heard and a message built to be repeated aren't the same thing.

1. Make your key message repeatable in one sentence.

Inside every organisation, there are people who naturally spread ideas: executive translators, internal champions, senior influencers, who will try to repeat your message whether you equip them or not. The question is whether they improvise (improvisation is where distortion begins), or whether they have something to work from. Give them a one-line explanation, a concrete analogy, a number they can point to, a story they can repeat. Language they would happily use.

Turn "They deliver integrated end-to-end innovative solutions across complex supply chains" into, "They'll manage our supply chain so our restaurants can open on time, every time."

2. Anchor it in a recognisable situation, not an abstract benefit.

Messages amplify when people feel recognised by them. The moment someone reads something and thinks "that's exactly what happens here," they'll want to tell everyone. Describe the problem in a way that makes the person reading it feel seen. That recognition is what makes them want to share it. Explanation rarely travels. Identification does.

"We manage your supply chain so you're not the one explaining another missed delivery to your regional director.

3. Build in contrast.

Contrast is one of the most powerful tools for making an idea stick, because it gives people a simple structure to hold onto and repeat.

• old way vs new way

• reactive vs proactive

• complex vs simple

Contrast signals that there's a better option. When someone can summarise your idea as "most companies do X, but we do Y,"

"Most suppliers manage your supply chain after something's gone wrong. We manage it so nothing does.

The Job Doesn't End When the Message Is Sent

Most B2B teams treat publishing as the finish line. The email goes out. The post goes live. The campaign launches. The job, as far as messaging is concerned, is done.

But your message's journey is just beginning.

So the next time a stunt gets you a meeting, or a clever line gets you an open rate you're proud of — pause before you call it a win. Ask what happens next. Ask whether your idea can survive the room you're not in.

That founder got the first reader. Whether Sainsbury's buys depends entirely on what happens after.

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Messaging designed to survive the rooms you’re not in

I'm Vivien. I partner with B2B communication leaders crafting corporate messaging that makes their CEO look good — and holds up long after they've left the room.

Got an announcement keeping you up at 3am? That's exactly what I help you with: building messaging that survives multi-audience scrutiny, and comms teams that need a new way to make their messaging work.

Explore how we can work together