Risk
The feared downside is specific: a failed audit, a line stoppage, a data clause. Ask whose name is on that downside. Risk without an owner is usually a different stall.
Friction
Friction in the B2B purchase, named precisely
An objection is a sentence in a sales call. Friction is the reason that sentence keeps returning: a risk nobody will hold, a political cost, a switching effort, a proof gap, an owner who does not exist yet, or a calendar that is not yours. Claude notes describe it. They do not auction a cure.
Six stalls worth separating
If two stalls share a label, the memo will recommend the wrong next question. Separate them in the write-up even when the guest used one word for all of them.
Politics
Someone loses status, budget, or a local workaround if the file moves. The guest may describe this as “alignment.” Ask who would be worse off on Monday.
Switching effort
The work of leaving: history to migrate, habits, integrations, a spreadsheet that is the real system of record. Effort is not the same as price.
Proof gap
A stated standard of evidence is unmet: a reference in the same regulated niche, a packet, a pilot on their line. Do not translate the gap into a promised payback.
Ownership
No durable owner for the tool after signature. IT will not take the login; operations thought IT would. The purchase waits on a job that does not exist.
Timing
A budget cycle, a shutdown window, a contract end. Timing is a date. If there is no date, you are hearing a softer stall and should rename it.
Write a friction memo, not a battle card
A usable memo has four lines for each stall. Where it showed up: the touchpoint, named narrowly. Who felt it: a role, not “the customer.” What they did next: the workaround, the delay, the renewed incumbent. What would not count as resolution: the slide you are tempted to insert. That fourth line is how claude practice refuses a fantasy.
Take a composite from maintenance scheduling, clearly not a client result. The guest had the pain — missed work orders — and still renewed the incumbent. The planner’s spreadsheet remained the unofficial record, and IT would not own a new login that reached the plant network. Calling this “price sensitivity” would send the next interview into the wrong room. The stalls were ownership and switching effort. Price was what people discussed because it was safer.
When the same pair of stalls shows up in another case, you still do not have a rate. You have a candidate pattern. Test it against a case that should have fit and did not, using the rules in pattern finding. Only then may a positioning line mention the stall, and only as a condition the offer has to respect.
Memo skeleton
- Touchpoint and week.
- Role who carried the wait.
- Stall type from the six, one primary.
- Workaround they actually used.
- Sentence they used internally.
- Claim this note cannot support.
If line six is blank, the memo is not finished. “Cannot support a payback period” is a complete example.
Questions the readout will get
Is friction the same as an objection?
No. An objection is talk in a sales sequence, often shaped by the questions the seller asked. Friction is the structural pause underneath, visible in a timeline and in a workaround. You can collect objections all quarter and still not know why the file sat with counsel. Claude interviews ask for the pause. They do not coach a rebuttal.
Should the research promise to remove it?
No. Naming is the research. Removal is a product, legal, or staffing decision made later, with its own risks. Attaching a return-on-investment figure to “friction removed” invents a denominator the notes do not contain. gardrutdal does not publish those figures.
What if every account names a different stall?
Then you do not have a pattern. You have a set of cases. Brief them as cases. Forcing a single enemy — “trust,” “change management,” “digital transformation” — makes the next study worse because the guide will fish for that word. Hold the variety until the language in the glossary is being used consistently by your own team.
Can we rank stalls by how often we heard them?
Only inside the set you actually spoke to, with the count of conversations printed beside the rank, and never as a property of the market. A rank of six conversations is a sorting aid for the next question. It is not a finding about buyers in the United States or anywhere else.
Friction is an input. The line that respects it is written afterward, and only from notes that still exist.
Read positioning synthesis