Last year, in McKinsey’s annual B2B Buyer Pulse Survey—which surveyed more than 4,000 buyers across thirty-four sectors in eight major industries—the researchers made a pretty interesting proclamation: the so-called “rule of thirds” now rules all B2B buying behavior.

“At any given stage of the buying journey,” they wrote, “one-third of customers hope for in-person interactions, one-third want remote communications, and one-third prefer digital self-serve options. The rule of thirds holds true across all geographies, industries, and company sizes, all types of buying occasions from new to repeat purchases, and across high- and low-value purchases.”

What’s surprising here—at least to me— isn’t that the rule of thirds exists, or even that it’s consistent across all sectors and geographies, it’s how little this reality has been integrated into the commercial models of many B2B organizations—especially those in legacy, operationally intensive industries where sales were historically built around relationships, personal knowledge, and long-standing familiarity. (I’m looking at you, Industrial Sector.)

The Modern Buyer Is a Moving Target

The rule of thirds tells us this about the modern B2B buyer: there is no longer a dominant path to purchase. What may have been true about buying behaviors twenty or thirty years ago isn’t the case today, because too much about the world we all operate in has changed. You can point to the internet, or automation, or remote work, or AI—it really doesn’t matter—but the conclusion you’ll come to is that the operational landscape is nearly unrecognizable when compared to what it was. Which then begs the question of why we would think that buying behaviors would be the same.

The reality is that buyers don’t move linearly. (If you don't believe me, all you have to do is audit your own buying behavior.) Buyers no longer stay confined to a single channel. And they certainly don’t wait patiently for a salesperson to help them interpret a value proposition. One moment, they want in-person reassurance. The next, they want a remote walkthrough. A few hours later—often late at night, when the kids are down and the television is on—they want to explore options, compare solutions, and form an initial point of view entirely on their own.

In other words, buyers now expect companies to be present—and coherent—across all three modes: in person, remote, and digital self-serve.

And yet, many commercial models are still optimized for just one.

Where Most Commercial Models Break Down

I see this most clearly in industrial and construction-adjacent sectors, where the dominant sales question remains some version of, “Who do we know, and who knows us?” Websites are redesigned to “look modern,” but rarely to convey a differentiated value story. Messaging is shaped around internal assumptions rather than external evidence. And decisions about where to invest commercially often reflect long-established habits rather than the way buyers actually behave today.

The result is a quiet but significant misalignment: companies continue speaking to yesterday’s buyer, while today’s buyer has already moved on.

Nowhere is this misalignment more obvious than in the digital self-serve environment, the mode most companies still treat as supplementary, even though it is now an equal third of the buying equation.

Misalignment Begins in the First Click

When a prospective customer visits a website today, they aren’t looking for incredible design or clever marketing (though that can certainly help). They’re looking for answers to three simple questions:

1. Do you have what I need?

2. Can I understand your pricing logic?

3. Why is your offering worth my consideration—especially if it costs more?

These are universal questions that cut across sectors, buyer types, and experience levels. They’re the baseline requirements for earning trust before a conversation ever occurs.

But in many B2B categories, these questions go unanswered. Companies describe their offerings in overly technical terms. They assume their value is self-evident. They rely on sales teams to “explain the difference,” even though the buyer is no longer waiting to be educated. And when the website lacks clarity, buyers rarely interpret that absence neutrally. They make a quick and practical assumption: If I can’t understand your value, you probably can’t meet my needs.

And the way this shows up in the organization isn't always readily apparent. It's often slower growth, more price pressure, and more competitive losses.

Three Modes, One Narrative

Which is all to say that the rule of thirds can be reduced to this: be where your customers are and make sure your value story survives contact with each mode of buyer psychology:

• The in-person buyer who wants reassurance.

• The remote buyer who wants speed and clarity.

• The self-serve buyer who wants autonomy and proof.

When a commercial model is built for only one of these—and most legacy models still default to the in-person third—organizations unintentionally signal that they are out of step with how decisions are made today. They create gaps competitors can easily exploit. And they invite internal debates about “what customers want” that linger far longer than they should.

But when companies realign themselves around all three buyer types, messaging becomes clearer, positioning becomes more effective, and sales and marketing teams begin reinforcing one another rather than competing for narrative ownership.

The rule of thirds won’t simplify a commercial strategy, but it does clarify it. Growth today belongs to the companies that can tell one coherent value story across three distinct environments—without relying on a salesperson to fill in the gaps.

Ignoring that reality doesn’t just slow you down. It makes you easy to beat.