Here's a phrase I'd normally be suspicious of: buyer intent gap.
It sounds like something invented to sell a dashboard. So let me strip it back to what it actually means, because underneath the jargon there's a genuinely useful idea.
A buyer intent gap is a point in the buying journey where your prospect is trying to do something - work out if they've got a problem, compare two options, get sign-off from a finance director - and you've given them nothing that helps.
They've got intent. You've got a gap. Somebody else fills it, and you never hear about the deal.
Most partner marketing has at least two of these. Most partners have never looked.
Why partners get this wrong so consistently
Because we all write for the wrong moment.
Think about what sits on a typical Microsoft partner website. A services page. Some case studies. A few blogs about the latest wave of Copilot features. Maybe a whitepaper behind a form.
Almost all of it is aimed at someone who has already decided they want the thing and is now choosing a supplier.
That's the last five per cent of the journey, and it's the most competitive five per cent there is. Meanwhile the buyer who's three months earlier - the one who's just been told to "do something about security" and hasn't got a clue where to start - finds nothing on your site that speaks to them at all.
They go and educate themselves somewhere else. And by the time they're ready to choose a partner, they've been shaped by whoever taught them.
The four moments worth checking
You don't need a complicated framework. Four questions, and honest answers.
"Have I actually got a problem here?"
The buyer suspects something's wrong but can't name it. They're searching symptoms, not solutions. Do you have anything that helps them recognise themselves?
"What are my options?"
Now they know the problem and they're mapping the landscape. Build versus buy, do it internally versus bring someone in, this technology versus that one. Do you help them think, or do you just say "choose us"?
"Who should I pick?"
The bit everyone's already covered. Worth checking it's actually good though - most partner case studies are a paragraph of vague outcomes and a logo.
"How do I get this signed off?"
Massively underserved, and the one I'd fix first. Your champion has to sell this internally to people who've never met you. What are you giving them to do that with? A business case template, a rough cost breakdown, an answer to "why now" - that's the stuff that unsticks stalled deals.
How to actually find your gaps
Read your own site as a stranger
Pick one target customer. Genuinely imagine them at each of those four moments, land on your homepage, and ask what they'd do next.
Most partners find the same thing: the site works fine for moment three and offers nothing at all for moments one and four. It's the same problem audience-led messaging exists to solve.
Go through your CRM for the deals that went quiet
Not the ones you lost to a competitor - the ones that just stopped replying. Those are usually a sign-off problem, and sign-off is a content problem far more often than people admit.
Ask the salesperson what the last unanswered question was. That question is a piece of content you haven't written.
Ask sales what they keep having to explain
This is the fastest route to a list, and it takes twenty minutes. Whatever your sales team finds themselves saying on repeat - in the same words, in every meeting - is a gap. They're manually filling something your marketing should be doing at scale.
Look at what people search versus what you publish
Compare the questions people are typing into Google in your space with your last twelve months of content. If everything you've published assumes the reader already knows they want a Microsoft partner, you've got a very obvious hole at the top.
Check the questions in your own inbox
Webinar Q&As, follow-up emails, the "quick question" people send after a first call. Nobody asks a question they've already found the answer to on your website. Every one of them is a gap, evidenced.
What to do once you've found one
Don't write forty pieces of content. Write one good one per gap, put it where the buyer will actually meet it, and see what happens.
And resist the urge to gate everything. A buyer at moment one is not looking for a relationship with you, they're looking for clarity. Make them fill in a form to get it and they'll simply go elsewhere.
The bit that surprises people is how much of this is repurposing rather than creating. The answers already exist - in your sales calls, your onboarding docs, your delivery team's heads. They've just never been written down where a buyer can find them. That's largely what a content strategy is for.
The uncomfortable version of the test
Here's the one that stings.
If a buyer went through their entire journey and only ever read your content - never spoke to you - would they be better informed at the end of it?
If yes, you'll be on the shortlist without doing anything else. If no, you're relying on being found at exactly the right moment by someone who's already made up their mind.
That's not a strategy. That's luck with a content calendar attached.
Want a second pair of eyes on where your gaps are? Fifteen minutes, no obligation, no sales pitch - happy to talk it through.
Nathan, Founder & CEO, Resultful