Carta's CRO reveals why "trusted advisor" positioning fails without strategic timing. Learn the two forcing functions that actually drive enterprise deals.
Many reps are exceptional at building relationships. They’re well-liked inside accounts. They know the stakeholdersMany reps are exceptional at building relationships. They’re well-liked inside accounts. They know the stakeholders. They get meetings easily and stay consistently engaged. On calls, the buyer is responsive, collaborative, and positive. By all outward measures, the relationship is strong.
And yet, the pipeline tells a different story.
These accounts rarely convert on a predictable timeline. Deals stall in late stages. Forecast calls are filled with qualifiers such as, “they love us,” “we’re in a good spot,”and “it’s just timing.” The relationship is real, but the revenue isn’t.
This is what Jeff Perry, CRO at Carta, calls, “relationship theater.” It happens when reps easily build relationships, but struggle to convert those relationships into buying customers. The result is a pipeline that looks busy, but lacks deals with real momentum.
Although trust is the foundation of any relationship, timing is the trigger. If you have trust without timing, you have a friend, not a customer.
In this article, we’ll explore why the traditional “Trusted Advisor” model falls short on its own, and how high-performing revenue teams identify and act on the forcing functions that actually move deals forward.
Let’s get started!
Once upon a time, becoming a strategic partner to your buyer was the gold standard in B2B sales. It signaled that you weren’t just chasing a quota — you understood the customer’s business, had their best interests in mind, and were willing to invest in a long-term relationship. That approach worked because it was rare.
Today, it’s expected.
Every salesperson says they want to be a partner. Every pitch emphasizes trust, credibility, and value. From the buyer’'s perspective, those qualities are no longer differentiators, they're table stakes, with 99% of B2B decision-makers saying trust is crucial when choosing a supplier. Trust is essential, but it isn’t decisive. Trust alone doesn't unlock budget, reorder internal priorities, or force a buying decision onto a specific timeline. 80% of B2B buyers report that choosing a vendor can take up to six months.
That’s where the “Trusted Advisor” model breaks down. It assumes that if a seller builds enough trust and continues to add value, a deal will eventually happen. In reality, value without urgency simply extends the conversation. The buyer becomes more informed, the relationship deepens, and meetings continue, but nothing inside the organization compels action.
“At the core, what really doesn't change is building a relationship,” explains Jeff. “What does change is adding value through what we believe our product helps make, creating a better experience for the buyer.”
The missing piece is timing. Deals don’t close because buyers trust you or understand your solution. They close when something inside the business makes staying the same more painful than changing. Without that forcing function, even the strongest relationships stall.
In enterprise sales, buying decisions are rarely driven by preference alone. They’re driven by pressure (both internal or external forces) that make maintaining the status quo more costly than changing it.
Across markets and deal sizes, those pressures tend to fall into two categories:
“Like most sales, there are specific factors that make a deal time-bound. The first is when a prospect has a bad experience with their existing provider. That opens a window for us to demonstrate how we do things differently and how our product can resolve their specific frustrations. The second trigger is natural timing. For our customers, that often means they are in the process of raising a new fund,” explains Jeff. “ When you catch a customer at the intersection of those two moments — where they have both dissatisfaction with the status quo and a timely business milestone — you have the best opportunity to demonstrate your value proposition and move the deal forward.”
The strongest sellers don’t wait for permission to educate; they use education as a way to deepen the relationship itself.
This matters because buyers rarely recognize provider dissatisfaction on their own. Most have learned to work around broken processes, poor data, or inefficient workflows. The status quo feels tolerable, even if it’s suboptimal. Education is what makes those hidden costs visible. It reframes what “normal” looks like and exposes gaps the buyer hasn’t fully named yet.
When done well, education creates differentiation long before a formal buying cycle begins. It helps the prospect understand why their current provider is insufficient, not just how your solution is different. That shift moves the conversation from feature comparison to business impact and necessity.
“We are focused on communicating that the way Carta operates is intentionally different,” says Jeff. “We aren’t just hiring accountants to service an account; we are a software company at heart. We leverage the proprietary technology we’ve built on our own general ledger to create massive efficiencies and benefits for our customers. This means there is a continuous education process happening right alongside the relationship building — we are showing them how a software-led approach changes the traditional model they are used to.”
Continuous education does more than inform; it also accelerates timing, surfaces dissatisfaction earlier, sharpens the contrast with the status quo, and prepares the buyer to act when a forcing function appears.
When it comes to identifying strategic timing triggers in your market, it’s important to start by mapping your customers’ natural business cycles.
Every market has predictable moments when decisions become more likely. These include:
From there, teams need early warning systems that surface change before it becomes obvious. Forcing functions show up as signals including: funding announcements, executive hires or departures, new strategic initiatives, public complaints about vendors, or shifts in how a company talks about priorities. Tools already exist to capture this information. What’s usually missing is the expectation that reps actually use them as part of qualification, not just prospecting.
The biggest shift, however, needs to happen in how opportunities are qualified. Traditional frameworks tend to treat timing as one checkbox among many. In practice, timing should be the anchor. A deal with budget and authority but no forcing function will stall. Research shows that nearly 60% of forecasted deals in B2B sales slip to the next quarter. A deal with a clear forcing function but imperfect information often accelerates anyway.
A timing-first qualification model asks pointed questions like:
If those answers aren’t clear, the opportunity may still be real, but it isn’t ready.
To identify timing signals in your CRM, reps should consistently pay attention to:
When timing is treated as a first-class qualification signal, reps stop relying on hope and engagement as indicators of deal health. They start building pipelines around moments when customers are structurally prepared to decide.
It’s no secret that not every account deserves the same level of attention, and pretending otherwise is one of the fastest ways to dilute pipeline quality.
In B2B sales, timing should follow an 80/20 reality: a small subset of accounts contains most of the near-term revenue potential. This means not every account should be worked the same way (at the same time).
The following three tiers will help you determine where to spend the bulk of your time based on urgency and impact.
Often referred to as sprint accounts, these prospects warrant disproportionate time and effort because the conditions to buy already exist. In this tier, accounts have both forcing functions present:
This is where reps should go all-in. Sprint accounts call for focus, speed, and coordination — executive alignment, tailored messaging, and quick follow-up. In this tier, precision matters more than patience.
These accounts typically have:
The objective here isn’t acceleration, it’s positioning. Reps should stay engaged without over-investing, using light-touch education to sharpen the buyer’s understanding of their current limitations. The goal is to remain relevant and credible so that when timing shifts, the seller is already the obvious choice.
These accounts show:
They should not consume active selling time. Engagement is minimal and intentional, focused on monitoring for change rather than manufacturing momentum. Reps shouldn’t be allowed to “hide” in these accounts under the guise of relationship building, as they inflate pipeline and distract from real opportunities.
To operationalize this approach, many teams adopt a simple 50/30/20 time allocation model:
This structure gives reps clarity on where to push, where to nurture, and where to wait. It also gives leaders cleaner forecasts and a pipeline that reflects readiness versus activity alone.
Trust still matters, but trust alone doesn’t close deals.
Enterprise buyers act when timing forces a decision. Provider dissatisfaction creates urgency. Natural business milestones compress timelines. When those forcing functions are present, trust becomes leverage. When they aren’t, even strong relationships stall.
The main takeaway? Stop treating timing as a secondary signal in your execution excellence. Make it a first-class input in how opportunities are qualified, forecasted, and resourced.
Be proactive, and use the insights shared in this article to help you master the strategic timing framework outlined above. To get started, identify the two forcing functions that most reliably trigger buying decisions for your product and make sure your team is actively tracking them.
Because enterprise buyers don’t purchase just because they trust you — they purchase because they trust you and they’re in a forcing function.
