Proof gap
The buyer cannot show a skeptical peer, an examiner, or a security reviewer why the claim is safe in their environment. The gap is a missing sentence or a missing artifact, not a missing adjective. Vendor nouns make it worse.
Purchase friction
Purchase friction is a mechanism, not a mood
Friction is the specific reason a B2B purchase slows, stalls, or dies after someone has already shown interest. It is not a synonym for “pain,” and it is not an objection on a sales bingo card. trykux names friction only when interviews or observation can point to a mechanism. A sigh in a demo is not enough. A claude note that shows the same stall, with a condition, is enough to brief a team. It is still not a rate.
Five mechanisms worth separating
Internal politics
Two roles want different outcomes, or one role was left out and can still veto. Politics is visible when decision-maker research finds a name the champion did not volunteer.
Switching cost
Data, habits, training, contract tails, and the quiet labor of the operator who must rebuild workflows. Buyers often call this “timing” because the real cost is embarrassing to itemize.
Calendar and owner
A fiscal-year freeze, a Q4 change window, or a project with no named owner. The deal is not confused. It is waiting on a date or on a person who was never appointed. Touchpoint mapping shows which scene was supposed to appoint them.
A fifth, quieter mechanism is risk language: the words legal or security must be able to live with. It often hides inside the proof gap. Keep it visible anyway, because the fix is a sentence, not a discount.
Friction is not an objection
Objections are lines a seller is trained to answer. Friction is a condition in the account. Treating them as the same list produces clever replies and the same stall next quarter.
Sounds like an objection
“We already have a tool for that.”
A reply about features will extend the call and change nothing. The research question is which tool, who maintains the workaround, and what would have to be true to disturb it.
Often the friction underneath
Switching cost with no owner
The incumbent is a spreadsheet plus one analyst who knows its exceptions. Until that labor is named, “we already have a tool” is a complete decision. claude notes should keep the analyst in the sentence.
Questions teams actually ask
Can we rank friction by revenue impact?
Not from this method. Qualitative marketing research can say which mechanism showed up in the deals you studied, and how it showed up. It cannot assign a dollar value or a win-rate lift. If finance needs that model, it needs a different design, with its own limits stated just as plainly. trykux will not backfill the gap with a confident percentage.
How many stalls make a pattern?
Repetition across separate accounts, plus a mechanism you can describe without the product’s slogan. Two vivid stories are a hypothesis. The test is written up in pattern synthesis. Until it passes, call the stall a case.
Should we interview only people who felt the friction?
Interview the role that lives with it, and at least one role that does not think it is real. A champion who says security is “just slow” and a reviewer who says the packet never answered tenant isolation are not the same finding. Customer interviews that collect only the first voice will mis-name the friction.
Where do claude notes fit?
On the sentence that reveals the mechanism, with the role and the touchpoint attached. “If I cannot explain this to our examiner without your slide nouns, I will not sponsor it” is a proof-gap note. The notation rules are in claude notes.
Name it, then decide what language is allowed
Friction that cannot be said in the buyer’s words is not ready for a homepage. Positioning comes after the mechanism is stable.