PBLINK and AutomateNow, CEO, Bart Kowalczyk sat down with Scottish Business Network (SBN) to unpack why sales pipelines stall even when buyers seem ready to commit. The conversation explores a paradox familiar to anyone in sales: buyers now arrive at meetings nearly 60% decided, yet deals still drag on for months. Bart shares why the real blocker isn't a lack of technology or data, but a lack of human connection, and why consolidating a fragmented tech stack is the first step to fixing it. He closes with a practical one-to-ten validation question that any SBN member can use to test how close a prospect really is to signing.
In 2026, up to 80% of the B2B buying journey happens before anyone speaks to sales, and buyers use AI assistants, peers and communities long before they talk to you. One recent report found that 89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI for self-guided vendor research, and typical SaaS cycles have stretched beyond 130 days. By the time a Scottish Business Network member jumps on that first Zoom, the prospect has read a lot, guessed even more, and is carrying a messy mix of facts, half-truths and fears.
Bart calls it out very simply in the interview: “The main part of the problem is confusion… buyers are confused.” They browse AI answers, ask family, read LinkedIn hot takes, and then show up to your call already 60% ready in their own mind but not 60% aligned with your solution. Saying “yes” is socially easier than admitting “I’m not sure what I’m doing.”
If you’re selling from Scotland into London, or from Warsaw into Manchester, that politeness is amplified. We nod, we say “sounds good,” we book a follow-up. Inside, the buyer is thinking, “I need more time. I’m scared of choosing wrong. Maybe AI can help me figure it out later.”
So your first job is not to pitch harder. Your first job is to clear the fog. Take Bart’s framing seriously: assume confusion, not dishonesty. Change your early-stage questions from “Are you ready to move forward?” to “What are you still unsure about?” and “What would make this feel like a safe decision for you and your team?”
And remember the emotional context Bart mentions: macro uncertainty, from Middle East crises to budget freezes, is lengthening cycles. A pipeline that used to move in 60 days now easily takes 120. That’s not just an economic issue; it is a psychological weight your buyer carries into every call. If you treat their “yes” as a contract instead of a signal, you misread the whole story.
The practical shift is small but powerful: stop asking, “Why are they lying?” and start asking, “Where are they confused, and how can I help them think more clearly?”
“They are not ready to buy, but they want to test things. And this is because of the technology, but it is also because of the speed that we are living in.” – Bart
Polish and British buyers both say they care about technology and data, but in practice they buy from people they trust, which means your personal brand, your presence on LinkedIn and at events, and your willingness to simply pick up the phone often matter more than yet another AI-powered outreach sequence.
If you grew up in Poland and now sell in the UK or the other way around you already feel the cultural layer Bart hints at. In both markets, people still quietly believe the old rule: people buy from people. Technology is welcomed, but only if it helps them decide whether they trust you.
Bart’s example is very Polish-English in flavour. Last year, AutomateNow closed a HubSpot project where the first contact didn’t ask, “Can you show me the tool?” but, “What are your terms?” Why? Because the buyer had already used large language models to compare options, read case studies, and check reviews. AI accelerated the journey by three months. But the contract still landed because Bart’s team were visible and human when it mattered.
In other words, AI got them to the door; human trust invited them in.
If you operate in that Polish–British corridor, you probably see the same pattern in your own network: people check you in LLMs, then they check you with mutual contacts on LinkedIn, then they watch how you show up at SBN or local events. Data and demos prove you are competent. Your presence proves you are real.
This is where many sales teams quietly sabotage themselves. They hide behind tools. As Bart puts it, younger sales managers sometimes look for an AI agent to make the call so they only need to “be ready on top.” But prospects in both Kraków and Glasgow want something different: a normal, friendly, human phone call. “How are you doing? What’s actually blocking this?”
On the data side, the problem is not the lack of information; it’s scattered information. A typical 200–300 person firm will have ERP data in one place, marketing automation in another, customer service somewhere else, and no single view of the journey. RevOps has become the fashionable label for fixing this, but Bart’s core point is simpler: consolidate your tech stack so that one system reflects reality across the whole business.
For a Polish founder selling into the UK, or a Scottish team working with Polish manufacturing, this single source of truth does something very practical. It shortens the distance between your promise and your proof. When every touchpoint, from first LinkedIn message to latest service ticket, sits in one HubSpot view, you can speak concretely: “You downloaded this playbook in January, your team trialled the workflow in March, and since then your reply rate has gone from 2% to 5%. Shall we talk about scaling that?”
In a high-context, relationship-driven culture mix, that specificity builds trust much faster than a generic “we help you grow” pitch. It tells your buyer: I see you, I remember you, and I’m paying attention.
“What is missing is actually human connection… sales needs to build their own personality within LinkedIn, events. They need to be there. They need to act really nearly the same as marketing.” – Bart
To turn confused interest into revenue, focus your 2026 sales strategy on three moves: consolidate your tech stack into one RevOps view, use AI to reduce noise rather than create more of it, and adopt Bart’s 1–10 validation question to test true readiness and uncover what still needs to change.
Let’s start with the simplest “secret weapon” Bart mentions: consolidate your tech stack. In many UK and Polish companies, especially once they pass 200 employees, systems multiply. Finance has its own platform, marketing has a separate tool, sales runs on spreadsheets or a basic CRM, and customer success lives in yet another system. Nobody sees the whole picture.
When you pull this into one place—most often a well-implemented HubSpot instance—you unlock very grounded advantages:
This is RevOps in practice: one shared reality, not three competing versions of the truth.
Next, use AI to clear the path, not to hide behind. Let an outreach agent research accounts, summarise discovery notes, or draft a first version of follow-up emails. But keep the human front and centre when it’s time to ask the uncomfortable questions. If your reps never actually call, never meet in person, never show up as themselves on LinkedIn, you’ve built a very efficient system for sending messages nobody truly hears.
This is where Bart’s favourite tool the 1–10 validation rule becomes extremely useful, especially in longer Polish UK buying journeys.
Once you’ve had initial discovery calls and shared a clear picture of how you can solve their problem, ask:
“On a scale from 1 to 10, how well does this solution as we’ve described it solve your problem?”
If the answer is 7–10, you can safely assume fit is there; the obstacles are usually budget, timing or internal decision making. Your follow-up becomes practical: “What would need to happen inside your team to move this from an 8 to a 10?”
If the answer is 0–6, Bart’s advice is clear: your work is not done. You return to education and discovery, not pressure. There’s likely confusion about the problem, competing priorities, or a mismatch between what they truly need and what you’ve proposed. In UK–Polish contexts, where saying “no” directly can feel uncomfortable, this numeric answer gives both sides a polite way to be honest.
Combine that question with consolidated data and you get real control over your pipeline. Instead of a board report full of “committed” deals based on hopeful yeses, you can segment by both stage and score: “We have twelve opportunities at proposal stage, but only five are at 7 or above on the 1–10 scale.”
This is how you respect the human side of the sale while still running a disciplined operation. The numbers reflect emotional reality, not just wishful thinking.
For SBN members and Polish founders listening to Bart’s conversation, the takeaway is straightforward but demanding: technology will not rescue a weak, distant, or generic sales approach. Use HubSpot, AI and RevOps to see clearly. Use your voice, your presence and that quiet “1–10” question to help buyers make the decision they already half-made before they ever met you.
“Sales is about quality, not quantity… be present, show up, and then eventually sales happens.” – Bart