Horizons Customer Magazine 2026
Are You Ready to Sell to the Primitive Brain?
In an age of compressed selling, consensus buying and reliance on AI, getting to the most human part of the human brain is the way to find alignment and win. The co-author of “The Priority Sale” describes the change necessary to succeed today in industrial sales.
Everyone has a Primitive Brain. Everyone also has a Rational Brian, the seat of reason, logic and data. But the Primitive Brain operates beneath this. It is aware of fear, pain and threats, and it moves us powerfully to try to solve, avoid or eliminate them. Perhaps ironically, the advance of technology in the 21st century has made the Primitive Brain far more important for those whose mission is to sell.
Bryan Gray writes about this in "The Priority Sale". As he and his co-authors state in the book, "Over the past 20 years, it has become harder for sales organizations to prevail over the three deadly Cs: commoditization, compressed selling time and consensus decision-making."
The changes stem from the internet. The change came slowly at first, then rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the internet, buyers needed encounters with salespeople, because salespeople brought information buyers could not obtain any other way. The army of salespeople calling on companies was like a proto-internet for business-to-business information. Now, all industrial buyers are accustomed to gathering extensive information before they seek contact with a salesperson.
In a conversation with Horizons, Gray said, "In the past, salespeople went out and sprayed information, hoping some of it stuck. Once the internet came along, sellers got lazy and waited for leads. But by the time a lead shows up, the buyer already knows what they want and you’re in a dogfight with competitors."
The three Cs are how this plays out. The solution is to get ahead of them by connecting with the Primitive Brain of the buyer.
Access to Information Created the Three Cs
The three Cs are all consequences of industrial buyers’ acceptance and mastery of the internet for researching products and services. Having access to B2B information ahead of a sales conversation leads to:
1. Commoditization.
Products get compared within a common framework—the framework chosen by the buyer—and therefore they all look the same. Price becomes the deciding factor.
2. Compressed selling time.
By the time a salesperson is invited in, the prospect is already so far along that there is little time left to make a meaningful case.
3. Consensus decision-making.
Because the choice now involves processing information, more people are invited into the analysis. The salesperson at best connects with a few who are on the buying team, but often lacks access to key decision makers.
The solution is this, says Gray:
Rather than leads, look to priorities. Get ahead of the three Cs by aligning with buyer priorities before the customer even knows what they want.
Not Rational, or at Least Not at First
Gray says it is a mistake to believe the Rational Brain, meaning facts and analysis, accounts for how we make decisions. The Primitive Brain is preeminent instead; it leads us to give priority to the threats and pain. This has always been true, for as long as we have been human, but the luxury of time and contact salespeople used to have meant they did not have to recognize this. Today, the internet is serving the Rational Brain. The salesperson needs to get to the Primitive Brain. “The Priority Sale” is a manual for how to do this.
Part of the approach involves signals. People generally cannot articulate the threats that most move them or the pains they have grown used to carrying. But there are signals to these threats and pains. The salesperson who can articulate the threats, and can offer an effective response, is in a different position that bypasses the three Cs.

A signal is different from a lead. Gray says, “A lead means I’m interested, but that’s the wrong time to enter.
A signal is a sign of a threat. If I can spot or create signals and connect them to real impact, I’m aligned at a higher level where value is appreciated.”
A.I. Increases the Acceleration
Gray and his co-authors wrote the book after seeing how the pandemic accelerated B2B transformation, but he says this acceleration is nothing compared to what he expects from the arrival of generative AI. We will soon enter an age—and we may already be there now—in which research is even more comprehensive, and the synthesis, analysis and recommendation have all been done effortlessly before the salesperson can even make an entrance. The age of AI therefore makes it all the more important to get to the human brain, and to the most human part of the brain.
"AI does not create demand. It doesn’t initiate guidance or direction," Gray says. "That’s where human sellers must focus: creating value at the top, at the start, where threats and priorities live."
