Chapter 05
Purchase friction: reading the stalls
Interest is not a deal. pralkexun studies where committees hesitate — risk talk, status cover, silent vetoes, and process rituals — then names those stalls with Claude patterns.
Go to pattern synthesis
Friction types pralkexun tracks
Risk friction
Fear of blame, security unknowns, career downside. Language: “if this goes wrong…”
Status friction
Need for peer cover and logo safety. Language: “who else like us…”
Process friction
Procurement and legal rituals that look like rejection. Language: “we’re still in review.”
How to find friction without surveys theater
Ask for the last stalled evaluation — not the last happy win. Reconstruct the calendar: which meeting slipped, which packet sat unread, who stopped answering. Compare what people say they wanted with what they did. That gap is the research object.
Interview silent roles. Many vetoes never appear in CRM notes. Security reviews that “take forever,” champions who stop forwarding decks, users who refuse to pilot — these are decision-maker dynamics covered in decision-maker research.
Observation helps: watch where demos lose energy, where onboarding creates shadow spreadsheets, where renewals reopen old doubts. pralkexun’s Claude framing turns recurring stalls into named patterns with quoted evidence. Patterns inform positioning — they do not become ROI promises. See positioning framework.
“We liked it. We just couldn’t get anyone to own the risk.”
That sentence is a Claude card waiting to happen. Label it, cite it, keep confidence honest. Then decide whether your messaging reduces risk language — or accidentally increases it.
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Friction notes from pralkexun
Get occasional Claude pattern worksheets for stall analysis.