# Helen Mackenzie

Helen Mackenzie writes about B2B sales, procurement and social selling, with a focus on building buyer trust and understanding the human risks behind purchasing decisions. Her posts draw on experience moving from procurement into sales.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/helen-mackenzie/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/superstarhelen
- Median of last 7 posts: 6 reactions, 3 comments (checked 2026-11-02)
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, leadership, sales, seo, ai-in-sales, sales-leadership, sales-enablement, b2b-sales, procurement
- Based on 8 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Helen Mackenzie is most useful for explaining buyer trust, procurement and sales, and how helpful content can shape AI buyer research.

- Best for: B2B sales training or buyer psychology campaigns needing guest expert webinars and co-authored articles.
- Not for: A paid sponsored content series with guaranteed impressions and an original benchmark study does not fit.
- Check first: Confirm commercial partnership formats, sponsorship disclosure, and audience data before planning.

### Takeaways

- Sales and procurement are twins looking at the same risky decision.
- Pipeline problems are trust problems, not effort problems.
- B2B buying is emotional and driven by fear of choosing wrong.

## Main ideas

- **Sales and procurement are twins looking at the same risky decision**: Mackenzie argues that sales and procurement are often trying to solve the same problem from different sides. Both want to build trust and reduce the risk of a bad purchase. This frame is used to explain stalled deals, dry pipelines, event leads that go nowhere, and why persuasion is the wrong goal.
- **Pipeline problems are trust problems, not effort problems**: Mackenzie repeatedly argues that unanswered emails and stalled pipelines are not mainly caused by a lack of activity. Buyers have learned to ignore generic outreach, mail merges and brief conference chats. The alternative is to build digital trust and be useful online long before asking for a meeting, so an in-person meeting continues a conversation rather than starts a cold pitch.
- **B2B buying is emotional and driven by fear of choosing wrong**: Mackenzie argues that buyers facing a proposal are not only weighing features, functionality and return on investment. They are also asking what happens if they make the wrong choice. That makes risk reduction, rather than persuasion, the thing that can move a stalled deal. Mackenzie cites an MIT Sloan Management Review article to support the point.
- **Buyers want experts before reps, so sellers should be guides**: A repeated claim across the reviewed posts is that buyers prefer speaking with experts and executives before engaging a sales representative. Mackenzie credits the 70% figure to a study shared by Kerry Cunningham, not to a primary source quoted in the posts. The practical conclusion is that a salesperson does not need to be the deepest expert; they can be a trustworthy guide who connects a buyer's problem to the right solution.
- **What sellers publish now can shape what AI tells buyers later**: Mackenzie cites a Meltwater analysis of 9.5 million AI citations showing LinkedIn is a significant source for the AI search tools buyers use. Instead of treating this only as an SEO or content-volume problem, Mackenzie argues it makes genuine expertise, helpful insight and an understanding of buyer challenges more important.
- **Outside evidence anchors the argument**: Mackenzie tends to attach claims to outside material rather than present opinion alone. The posts reference an MIT Sloan Management Review article, a Meltwater analysis of AI citations, and a 70% buyer-preference figure credited to a study shared by Kerry Cunningham. Some posts link to the original article, and several disclose co-creation with Azpertilo.ai.

## Work to read

- [Why sound B2B deals still stall](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/superstarhelen_b2bsales-procurement-salesleadership-activity-7510247244948926464-naKU)
- [A salesperson can be a guide, not the deepest expert](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/superstarhelen_b2bsales-salesenablement-socialselling-activity-7520748028920745984-_wr3)
- [Why generic sales automation damages trust](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/superstarhelen_b2bsales-procurement-socialselling-activity-7522935106471268352-PSZ-)
- [Why event leads need a relationship after the badge scan](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/superstarhelen_b2bsales-salesstrategy-procurement-activity-7521489791612448768-Yqnu)
- [What sales posts may teach AI about buyers](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/superstarhelen_b2bsales-salesleadership-aiinsales-activity-7520392103949127680-TU1z)

## Brand relationships

- **Azpertilo.ai** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Meltwater** (mention)
- **MIT Sloan Management Review** (mention)

## Partnerships

No commercial partnership formats are documented in the material reviewed for Helen Mackenzie. The nine LinkedIn posts read in full carry no sponsored-content labels, no media kit, no rate card, no sponsorship package and no booking details. The one recurring third-party credit is a co-creation note: seven of the posts close with a line saying they were co-created with Azpertilo.ai, an AI writing tool. That credit shows a working production collaboration on posts about B2B sales, procurement and buyer trust; it does not describe a sponsorship offer or any purchasable terms. Treat this as an absence within the reviewed material, not a claim that Helen Mackenzie never accepts sponsored work. A brand wanting a paid collaboration has nothing here to price or book, so the next step is a direct conversation with Helen Mackenzie rather than a published package.

## Alternatives

- Mark Zides: Choose Mark Zides when the training company's need shifts from buyer psychology to sales-operating rhythm — a session aimed at founders, sales managers or a leadership cohort about running a fixed pipeline review and knowing when founder-led selling becomes the ceiling. The two posts reviewed show the mechanics rather than the theory: an hour every Friday for a pipeline review, same time, no exceptions, with every deal asked the same question — what would it take to move this toward close next week — so that by Monday the team knows which deals it is going after. Mark Zides frames the habit through playing goalie at Babson: see the whole field, be the last line of defence, and tell everyone where to stand whether they ask or not, except on a schedule instead of on memory. The second post supplies capacity arithmetic a trainer can put straight on a slide: 15 hours a week available for selling, one deal eating about 10 of them between calls, proposal and pricing back-and-forth, which lands at roughly 75 deals a year and about $3M at $40K a deal, with more leads only making the queue outside the calendar longer. That is a workshop exercise with a number attached, and it speaks to the same audience the brief targets, just from the seller's calendar inward.
- Nataliia Kulyba: Choose Nataliia Kulyba when the brief wants the challenger angle: questioning methods everyone treats as settled, and treating creativity as a senior sales skill rather than a soft extra. One post makes the argument through Salesforce's End of Software campaign — Salesforce did not invent SaaS, but it changed how customers buy and use software and built its positioning around saying so — and lands on the phrase that should worry any sales organisation: we have always done it this way. The prompt at the end, why are we selling it this way at all, is a usable discussion starter for a training cohort. The second post is the closest match anywhere in the alternatives to the trust and relationship territory in the brief: a CRM reported a deal as nearly done while the VP of Technology had just been replaced, the replacement had a preferred vendor and the budget was under review, all of it learned from a coffee or a five-minute informal call three levels below the decision-maker, none of it captured in a dashboard. The closing line — buyers do not buy software, they buy the person who will still answer the phone six months after the contract is signed — is the same claim the brief is built on, told from a 20-year telecom software seat.
- John Stopper: Choose John Stopper when the room is sales leaders and finance-side executives rather than working reps, and the goal is sharper deal judgement at the review table. The forecast-review post hands over five questions an executive should ask before a quarter closes — who can say no, why buy now, what business problem is being solved, is this deal getting stronger, will it close without the sales team forcing it — and reframes the point of asking: the best answer may be good question, I need to go work through that, and that is the review doing its job rather than failing. The risk post makes the pricing argument that supports it: price is negotiable, the consequence of business risk is not, and moving a deal from efficiency to risk mitigation changes the physics — urgency arrives on its own, more decision-makers join, and the conversation shifts from product features to business function, which is harder to discount because there is no clean number to push against. For a training company that wants an executive-facing module on why deals stall in the forecast, this is ready-made material.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/