Winning Work in a Distracted Market: What 8 CEOs Told Us at The CEO Table
Let’s be honest. Selling right now isn’t business-as-usual.
It’s harder. Slower. More fragmented. And it’s not because the market’s stopped buying, it’s because attention is the new scarcity.
In a business climate where attention is the rarest currency, eight CEOs sat down at Flux’s CEO Table last week to unpack one critical question: How do you win work when your buyers are more distracted than ever?
Hosted by Flux, this invitation-only breakfast brought together leaders from healthtech, SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services… all scaling through complexity.
What followed was an unfiltered conversation that moved quickly from sales cycles to strategic pivots, from channel partnerships to the human psychology of buying.
Here’s what we learned...
The Reality Check. Sales Has Changed
The Attention Deficit Challenge
Almost unanimously, CEOs reported sales cycles lengthening by months. Decision-making is slower. Stakeholder groups are wider. Buyer confidence is the missing ingredient, and it’s at an all-time low. Not because buyers lack need, but because their risk appetite has vanished, and even obvious second steps are being second-guessed.
“You can’t push the pace anymore,” one leader noted, “you have to adjust to it.”
Every leader in the room has felt the ground shift from under sales teams. The old rhythms are gone. Budgets are slower to unlock. Decision-makers are harder to reach. And buying journeys are stretching months longer than they used to.
One CEO put it bluntly:
“We’re all selling to people whose inboxes are a war zone.”
Some of the shared realities:
Complex deals are now taking 2–3x longer to close.
Teams are working harder just to secure first conversations.
Prospects are more cautious, asking for proof and ROI earlier.
Distraction is everywhere. From buyers juggling too many priorities to leadership teams changing strategic direction mid-cycle.
Go-to-Market in Motion
Gone are the days of set-and-forget GTM plans. Attendees emphasised the need to hustle (selling), while also creating a repeatable and scalable system. Each CEO was clear on the value of creating a systematic approach before hitting the growth ceiling.
Sales Team Friction
Internal alignment (or lack of it) emerged as a quiet killer of momentum. “The biggest friction is inside the building — marketing chasing leads, sales chasing revenue, product chasing roadmap. We have to get those rows rowing together.”
Trust Through Partnerships
Several CEOs shared wins through strategic channel partnerships - bypassing cold outreach and tapping into partners’ established trust. This was especially powerful for entering highly regulated or tight-knit sectors.
The Human Layer
Perhaps the most resonant theme: selling is still human. Buyers want to be understood, not pitched. Leaders spoke of making outreach relevant to the buyer’s current reality, even if that meant fewer but deeper conversations.
Key Takeaways:
Hustle now, build the scalable system behind it.
Build sales plays around market moments, not just product launches.
Relevance beats volume in human-to-human sales.
Align marketing, sales, and product to a single commercial goal.
Signals Worth Paying Attention To
In a distracted market, the fastest wins go to the CEOs who can spot and act on the right signals with market intelligence from their teams.
The group shared how they’re fine-tuning their radar:
Identifying micro-signals of buying intent earlier in the process.
Qualifying harder, earlier walking away from “maybe” deals sooner.
Listening for shifts in customer language that suggest urgency (or lack of it).
One healthtech CEO shared how their team started tracking prospect hiring patterns as an early indicator of upcoming investment. A move that’s already cut wasted sales time.
Shifts That Are Actually Working for Them
Across industries (SaaS, manufacturing, professional services, healthtech) certain plays seemed to be paying off. The CEO’s discussed:
1. Narrowing the focus
Reducing the total addressable market in order to deepen relevance.
Smaller target lists. More personalised outreach.
2. Repackaging offers
Breaking down big-ticket services into modular entry points that lower the risk for first-time buyers.
3. Warming the door
Using existing clients, partners, and industry allies to make introductions, reducing the cold-start friction.
4. Sales as a leadership function
Several CEOs have taken a more hands-on role in early-stage sales conversations, both to accelerate trust and to hear market signals firsthand.
The Role of Cross-Functional Clarity
Sales momentum doesn’t happen in isolation.
Multiple CEOs called out the need to align product, marketing, and sales around the same market reality. That means:
No “siloed optimism” where one team is working off outdated assumptions.
Tighter GTM alignment on messaging, timing, and targeting.
Leadership reinforcing focus — and protecting teams from low-value distractions.
One CEO summed it up perfectly:
“Sales is everyone’s job. But clarity is the CEO’s job.”
Why These CEO Tables Matter
What stood out for everyone was not only the value of the conversations but the intimate, low-noise format of this gathering - and the company around the table.
Hearing how someone in heavy industry adapts to a stalled deal gave a SaaS CEO a new play for re-engaging their own prospects. Seeing how a healthtech leader used emerging tech to shorten onboarding sparked ideas for a manufacturing CEO on how to reduce client ramp-up time.
This cross-pollination is where the magic happens.
Different industries, different lenses, same problems and the space to talk them through without filters.
The CEO Table exists for these kinds of conversations. Off-the-record, high-trust, and impossible to replicate in a conference room of 200-600 people.
As we take this series to Christchurch on August 29th, the table will change, but the goal remains: give CEOs the space to share what’s really working, and what’s not, in the realities of leading through uncertainty.
