Glossary
These are the words trykux uses so a brief does not swell. Each term is a working definition for interviews, observation, and positioning. None of them is a metric, and none of them authorizes a claim of a representative sample or a return on investment.
The group of people who influence a B2B purchase. The idea comes from industrial buying research: users, influencers, deciders, buyers, and gatekeepers, plus the security, legal, and finance seats common in US deals today. A buying center is a map of a deal, not a persona. See decision-maker research.
A person who can advance, reshape, or stop a specific purchase. A title is not proof. trykux counts someone as a decision-maker only when a deal narrative shows their authority, including the authority to delay. Champions are decision-makers of a limited kind.
The person inside the account who spends reputation to move a purchase forward. Champions are the easiest interviews and the least sufficient ones. Their confidence about signature power is a claim, checked against other roles, not a fact.
The person who can commit the money and who carries the personal risk if the choice fails. They often ask for a sentence they can repeat, not for a feature tour. If you have not heard one, say so. Do not promote the champion into the role.
A scene where the buying group meets the product, the vendor, or each other, and where the purchase can change direction. “Website” is too vague. A security review with a questionnaire on the table is a touchpoint. Mapped in touchpoint mapping.
Watching an allowed scene while the work is still awkward: order of talk, the artifact people trust, and the empty chair. Observation is not a booth count and not a secret recording. The method page is market observation.
Field shorthand in this guidebook for a close reading of buyer language: verbatim line, role, hedge, repetition, refusal, and deal moment. claude notes are qualitative. They are not a score, not a software brand, and not a sample. The full practice is on the claude notes page.
The condition inside a sentence: if, once, after legal, provided the operator does not have to rebuild the queue. Hedges are often the decision. Flattening them into “interest” deletes the finding. They get their own column in a claude note.
A mechanism that slows or stops a deal after interest exists: proof gap, internal politics, switching cost, calendar, or a missing owner. Friction is not an objection and not a mood. Named in purchase friction.
The buyer cannot show a skeptical peer, examiner, or reviewer why a claim holds in their environment. The missing piece is usually a sentence or an artifact, not a stronger adjective. Discounts do not close a proof gap.
The labor, data, habit, training, and contract tail required to leave the current way of working. Buyers sometimes call this “timing” because the labor is awkward to itemize. The operator who knows the exceptions is part of the cost.
A mechanism that recurs across separate accounts, still attached to its condition and told in buyer language. A pattern is not a trend and not a majority. The test, including the duty to keep disconfirming notes, is pattern synthesis.
A sentence one real role can forward at one real touchpoint without adding a percentage. It names a situation and a friction. It does not name a payoff the study did not measure. Craft rules live in positioning synthesis.
A conversation with someone who spent money, blocked money, or is inside a live decision, anchored to one deal rather than to a philosophy of vendors. The output is claude notes, not a satisfaction score. Method: customer interviews. Interviews remember. Observation watches. Use both, and do not let either pretend to be a census of the market.
Teams blur these because each one produces words. The words are not interchangeable. Use the table when a brief starts to call notes “data.”
| Record | What it holds | What it must not claim |
|---|---|---|
| Customer interview | A reconstructed deal, in a role’s words | That memory is complete, or that one role speaks for the account |
| Market observation | Order, artifact, and absence in a live scene | A rate, a channel ROI, or a hidden recording |
| claude notes | Verbatim line, hedge, refusal, moment | A score, a majority, or a market percentage |
| Pattern | A mechanism across accounts, condition intact | “Most buyers,” or a trend line |
| Positioning line | A forwardable sentence for one role | A payoff, a payback period, or a universal buyer |
Definitions are a brake. The work is still the interview, the scene, and the sentence. Start anywhere the ignorance is.