Here is the short version if you do not have much time to read

The reason B2B deals stall, cold emails get ignored, and account-based marketing campaigns underperform is not a lack of value. It is a surplus of decisions forced onto the buyer at every touchpoint.

This is Hick’s Law. A cognitive principle from the 1950s that says decision time increases logarithmically with the number of options presented. It was designed for human-computer interaction. It applies to your entire go-to-market strategy.

And the real cost is not slow decisions. It is no decisions at all. When buyers are overwhelmed by options, information, and asks, they default to keeping what they have. They don’t choose a competitor. They choose the status quo. The safest decision in any complex B2B purchase is to do nothing. And every unnecessary choice you put in front of a buying committee makes that safe option more attractive.

What follows is a breakdown of how Hick’s Law applies to go-to-market strategy, account-based marketing, cold outreach, social selling, and internal sales enablement. With concrete examples, verified data, and a practical framework you can apply this week.

What is hick’s law?

In the early 1950s, British psychologist William Edmund Hick and his American colleague Ray Hyman ran a series of experiments. They presented participants with a set of lights, each corresponding to a specific button. When a light turned on, the participant pressed the matching button as fast as they could. The researchers changed the number of lights and buttons across trials and measured how long it took to respond.

The finding was consistent. As the number of options increased, the time to respond increased in a logarithmic pattern.

The formula: T = b × log₂(n + 1)

Where T is reaction time, b is a constant that depends on the person and the task. n is the number of options.

In plain language: doubling the number of choices does not double the decision time. But it always increases it. The relationship is a curve, not a straight line. Go from 2 options to 4, and the delay grows. Go from 4 to 8, and it grows again, by the same increment. The cognitive cost of each additional option is real, even if it’s not linear.

Source: Hick, W.E. (1952). “On the rate of gain of information.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Hyman, R. (1953). “Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time.” Journal of Experimental Psychology.

The commercial proof: The jam study

The most cited commercial demonstration of this principle came in 2000. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar (Columbia University) and Mark Lepper (Stanford University) set up a tasting booth at Draeger’s Market, an upscale grocery store in Menlo Park, California. On one day, the booth displayed 24 varieties of jam. On another day, it displayed 6.

The results:

24 jams: 60% of passers-by stopped at the booth. 3% purchased.

6 jams: 40% of passers-by stopped. 30% purchased.

Ten times the conversion rate with fewer options. And participants who chose from the smaller set reported higher satisfaction with their selection.

The larger display attracted more attention. But it produced ten times fewer buyers. The cognitive effort of evaluating 24 options was high enough that the easiest response was to walk away.

Source: Iyengar, S.S. and Lepper, M.R. (2000). “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006.

The nuance: This does not mean “always fewer options”

Before applying this to B2B, a necessary clarification. Hick’s Law is not an argument for stripping everything down to a single button.

In 2010, Benjamin Scheibehenne and colleagues published a meta-analysis of 99 studies on choice overload. The average effect across all studies was close to zero.

The conclusion: choice overload is real, but it is context-dependent.

It shows up strongly in some situations and barely at all in others. The conditions that activate it include: unfamiliar domains, complex comparisons, unclear preferences, and time pressure.

B2B buying happens to tick every single one of those boxes. Buyers evaluate unfamiliar products across multiple criteria, under organizational pressure, with shifting requirements and group dynamics. The conditions for choice overload in B2B are near-perfect.

But the takeaway is not “reduce all information.” B2B marketing & sales operations are complex for good reasons. Buying committees need technical specifications, ROI models, compliance documentation, and implementation details to build internal consensus. Removing this information could hurt the deal.

Source: Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., and Todd, P.M. (2010). “Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload.” Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409-425.

The distinction is: fewer choices per decision point, not fewer choices in total.

The main principle is progressive disclosure. A concept from UX design that works identically in go-to-market strategy. You do not present every piece of information at once. You sequence decisions. First touchpoint: one problem. Second touchpoint: one proof point. Third touchpoint: one ask. The buyer receives all the information they need across the relationship, but never all at the same time.

The B2B buying environment: where Hick’s Law compounds

Before we start on the goods of the Hick’s Law in go-to-market, let’s look at how Hick’s Law might fall short in B2B because of the structural complexity of how companies buy. After this short disclaimer we will also see the goods of it.

Here is what the data looks like.

• 77% of B2B buyers described their last purchase as “very complex or difficult.” (Gartner)

• The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves 6 to 10 decision makers. Each comes to the table with 4 to 5 pieces of independently gathered research. (Gartner)

• Forrester’s 2024 State of Business Buying Report puts the average at 13 stakeholders, with 89% of buying decisions crossing multiple departments. (Forrester, 2024)

• 74% of B2B buyer teams demonstrate “unhealthy conflict” during the decision process. Buying groups that reach consensus are 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal. (Gartner, 2024, survey of 632 B2B buyers)

• Buyers spend only 17% of their total buying time meeting with potential vendors. The rest is self-directed research, peer consultation, and internal discussion. (Gartner)

Now let’s think about what these numbers mean through the lens of Hick’s Law.

Each stakeholder is a separate instance of overload

Every person on the decision making unit is making a different decision.

• The VP of Engineering evaluates technical fit and integration complexity.
• The CFO evaluates cost, ROI timeline, and budget allocation.
• The end user evaluates daily workflow impact and learning curve.
• The CISO evaluates security risk and compliance requirements.
• The Head of Product evaluates strategic alignment.

If you send a single 40-page document covering all of these concerns, you are forcing every person to parse through 80% irrelevant content to find the 20% that applies to their decision. You are creating cognitive overload for all of them, simultaneously. Each one hits Hick’s Law independently.

And they are hitting it under the worst conditions: unfamiliar product, complex criteria, time pressure, group dynamics, and organizational politics.

Cool, now that we have all these out of the way, let’s dig in.

How Hick’s Law applies to go-to-market strategy

When companies build their go-to-market strategy, they often create decision overload without realizing it.

Common breaches include:

Targeting too many ICPs at launch.

Trying to serve enterprise, mid-market, and SMB simultaneously with different messaging, pricing, and sales motions. Each segment multiplies the choices the team has to make internally and the choices the buyer encounters externally.

Listing too many value propositions.

A homepage that says “We help with lead generation, demand generation, ABM, content strategy, analytics, and revenue operations” forces the visitor to figure out which of those six things is relevant to them. If they have to think about it for more than a few seconds, they leave.

Too many CTAs on a single page.

“Book a demo. Start a free trial. Read our blog. Download the whitepaper. Watch the webinar. Check pricing.” Each one is a choice. Each choice adds cognitive load. As Directive Consulting’s research on B2B customer journey friction states: “Decision time increases with the number of choices. On pages with too many options, labels, or CTAs, people take longer to act or don’t act at all. In complex B2B journeys, unnecessary branching can be especially costly.”

Too many tiers on a pricing page.

A page with 4 tiers, 3 add-ons, and a “contact us for custom” option forces the buyer to evaluate 8 or more combinations before making a decision. The buyer is not choosing a plan. They are solving a combinatorial problem.

The awareness stage connection

The amount of choice a buyer can process scales with their awareness level. Eugene Schwartz’s framework for buyer awareness maps cleanly onto Hick’s Law.

1. Unaware: 

TIn this stage, the buyer does not know they have a problem. They can handle one insight. One idea. An article about the problem, not about your product. Zero product choices.

2. Problem-aware: 

The buyer knows the problem but not the solutions. They can handle a comparison of two or three approaches. Not a comparison of eight vendors.

3. Solution-aware: 

The buyer knows solutions exist and is evaluating. They can handle feature comparisons, case studies, and proof points. Sequenced across touchpoints, not stacked on one page.

4. Product-aware: 

The buyer knows your product. They are ready for pricing, implementation details, and a specific call to action. One clear next step.

Dumping bottom-of-funnel choices (pricing, demo scheduling, ROI calculator) on a top-of-funnel audience is a Hick’s Law violation. The buyer is not cognitively ready to process those decisions. And when they encounter them too early, they bounce. Not because they are uninterested, but because the cognitive gap between their awareness stage and the decision you are asking them to make is too wide.

Side-by-side: two GTM approaches

Approach A: violates Hick’s Law

A SaaS company’s homepage has a hero section with three CTAs: “Start free trial,” “Book a demo,” and “See pricing.” Below that, four product modules, each with their own CTA button. A navigation bar with 9 items. The pricing page shows 4 tiers, 3 optional add-ons, and a “Contact us for custom” option. A visitor from a LinkedIn ad about one specific pain point lands on this page and has to process 15+ decisions before finding what is relevant to them.

Approach B: respects Hick’s Law

The homepage hero has one CTA matched to the dominant awareness stage of incoming traffic. If paid traffic is coming from problem-aware campaigns, the CTA leads to a resource, not a demo form. The pricing page shows 2 tiers with a clear “Recommended” label on one. The navigation has 5 items. Secondary options are available, but tucked under expandable sections. Each page asks the visitor to make one decision. And the decision matches where they are in their evaluation process.

How Hick’s Law applies to account-based marketing

ABM is supposed to be the most targeted form of B2B marketing. One-to-one or one-to-few. Personalized to the account, the industry, the pain point. And yet many ABM programs violate Hick’s Law across every touchpoint.

The common breaches of Hick’s Law:

Targeting too many accounts at once

When your “target account list” has 500 companies on it, personalization becomes impossible. Every email becomes semi-generic. Every piece of content covers broad topics to try to be relevant to all 500. The buyer receives a message that is vaguely about their industry instead of specifically about their problem. That vagueness is a form of choice overload. The buyer has to figure out if this is relevant to them or not.

Sending multi-topic content sequences

Email 1 talks about your platform’s analytics. Email 2 talks about your content engine. Email 3 talks about your ABM features. The recipient has to re-evaluate the relationship from scratch with every message because the topic keeps changing. No single email builds enough depth on one problem to create conviction.

Running campaigns with multiple CTAs per touchpoint

“Watch this webinar, download this guide, book a call, visit our booth at the conference.” Four asks in one email. The recipient does not have time to evaluate four options from a vendor they barely know. They choose the fifth option, which is to do nothing.

Presenting the full product suite to every account

Instead of leading with the one capability that matches the account’s specific pain, the campaign leads with a platform overview covering six features. The recipient has to self-select which feature matters to them. For a company they have never evaluated, that cognitive work is too expensive.

The buying committee problem in ABM

This is where ABM and Hick’s Law intersect most clearly.

If your ABM campaign sends the same deck to the VP of Engineering, the CFO, and the Head of Product, you are forcing each person to parse through content irrelevant to their decision. The VP of Engineering does not need the ROI model. The CFO does not need the API documentation. The Head of Product does not need the compliance certifications.

Each stakeholder is a separate decision maker with a separate cognitive load threshold. The Hick’s Law compliant approach is: one piece of content per role. The VP of Engineering gets a technical integration brief. The CFO gets a 1-page ROI model. The Head of Product gets a case study from a comparable company. Each person gets one document, about one topic, with one next step. The champion gets a summary they can circulate to build consensus across the committee.

This is the difference between ABM that respects how buying committees work and ABM that treats the whole account as one person.

Side-by-Side: Two ABM Sequences

Sequence A: Breaks Hick’s Law

Email 1: “Hi [Name], we’re [Company]. We help B2B SaaS companies with lead generation, demand generation, ABM, and full-funnel strategy. Here’s our platform overview. [Link]”

Email 2: “Download our whitepaper on industry trends. [Link]”

Email 3: “Check out these 4 case studies. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] [Link 4]”

Email 4: “Book a demo, attend our webinar, or visit us at the conference. [Link] [Link] [Link]”

Each email requires multiple decisions. The sequence covers too many topics. Cognitive load accumulates across touchpoints instead of building toward a specific action.

Sequence B: Respects Hick’s Law

Email 1: “We noticed [Company] recently expanded the sales team by 8 people. In our experience, that is the moment when the pipeline gap becomes visible. The inbound that fed 5 reps doesn’t sustain 13. Here’s how [comparable company] closed that gap in 3 months. [One link to one case study]”

Email 2: “The Head of Marketing at [comparable company] measured the pipeline gap before and after. Here are the numbers. [One link to a 1-page brief]”

Email 3: “Would a 20-minute call to walk through how this applies to [Company] be useful? [One yes/no CTA]”

Each email covers one topic, presents one proof point, and asks for one action. The sequence builds progressively. The buyer processes one decision per touchpoint.

How Hick’s Law applies to cold outreach and social selling

Cold outreach is the highest cognitive friction environment in B2B. The recipient has no relationship, no context, and no obligation to spend time processing your message. Every word, every link, and every ask competes for mental bandwidth that was not allocated to you.

The cognitive load of a cold email is already high before you add anything. The recipient has to decide: Is this relevant to me? Is this person credible? Is this worth my time? Those three questions are the baseline. Adding more decisions on top of those three pushes the total cognitive load past the threshold where the easiest response is to delete the message.

Common Hick’s Law breaches in cold outreach

Emails with multiple CTAs.

“Want to book a call? Or download our case study? Or check out our webinar recording?” Three options from a stranger. The recipient will choose none.

Long emails with 3 or more value propositions.

“We help with lead gen, demand gen, ABM, analytics, and content strategy.” The recipient has to evaluate which, if any, of these five things is relevant. In a cold email, they will not do that work.

LinkedIn messages that try to sell, educate, and build rapport in the same message.

“Love your recent post about X. By the way, we help companies with Y. Here’s a link to our Z. Would you be open to a chat?” Four objectives in one message. The recipient’s brain cannot process four asks from someone they do not know.

Follow-up sequences that change the topic every time.

Email 1 is about lead gen. Email 2 is about content strategy. Email 3 is about analytics. The recipient has to re-evaluate the sender’s relevance from scratch with each new message. No single email built enough momentum to create a response.

Side-by-Side: two cold emails

Email A: breaks Hick’s Law

“Hi [Name], I’m [Sender] from [Company]. We help B2B SaaS companies with lead generation, demand generation, content marketing, and full-funnel strategy. We’ve worked with companies like [Client A], [Client B], and [Client C]. I’d love to share some insights on how we helped [Client A] increase their pipeline by 40%. Here’s a link to our case study: [link]. You can also check out our latest webinar on demand gen strategy: [link]. Would you be open to a 15-minute call this week or next? Or if you prefer, I can send over a one-pager with more details. Looking forward to hearing from you.”

Decisions forced on the recipient: Is lead gen relevant, or demand gen, or content, or full-funnel? Should I click the case study or the webinar? Should I book a call or ask for the one-pager? This week or next? That is 6 or more decisions from a stranger.

Email B: respects Hick’s Law

“Hi [Name], I see [Company] recently expanded the sales team by 8 people (congrats). In our experience, that is the exact moment when the pipeline gap becomes visible. The inbound that sustained 5 reps doesn’t feed 13. We helped [comparable company] close that gap in 3 months. Would it be useful to see how?”

One decision: is this relevant, and do I want to see more? Yes or no. The email is 55 words. One observation. One problem. One proof point. One question.

Social selling: the same principle

For social selling on LinkedIn, the same rule applies. A message or post should carry one idea. Not a thread of 5 insights with 3 links. One observation. One takeaway. One conversation starter.

A LinkedIn connection request with a pitch, a link, and a question in the same message is three decisions stacked on zero relationship. The recipient has not agreed to invest cognitive effort in you. Asking for three decisions before they have given you permission for one is the fastest way to get ignored.

Build the relationship in steps. First interaction: one relevant comment on their content. Second: a connection with a short, specific reason. Third: a message about one topic. Fourth: an ask. Each step is one decision. Each step earns the right to the next.

The angle nobody talks about: Hick’s Law applies to your own team

Here is the turn most conversations on this topic miss. Hick’s Law does not only affect the buyer. It affects your sales reps, your SDRs, and your marketing team.

When a rep has 12 case studies, 5 pitch decks, 3 one-pagers, 4 demo scripts, and 6 email templates to choose from, they slow down. They spend time deciding what to send instead of sending. They default to the generic deck because choosing the right one for this specific prospect requires more cognitive effort than the deal feels worth in the moment. The generic deck is the status quo option for your own sales team.

When a marketing team has 8 active campaigns across 4 channels targeting 6 ICPs, their focus fragments. Each campaign gets a fraction of the attention it needs. Messaging drifts. Quality drops. Everything becomes average because nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to make everything excellent.

Internal enablement materials need the same Hick’s Law treatment as external campaigns:

• For each ICP, one recommended deck. Not five options in a shared drive folder. One deck, with a name that makes it obvious when to use it.
• For each deal stage, one recommended next step. Not a menu of possible actions. One action, clearly defined for that specific stage and persona.
• For each buyer persona, one case study. Not a library of 30 case studies with a search function. One case study pre-selected because it matches the persona’s industry, company size, and pain point.
• For follow-ups, one templated sequence per scenario. Not a folder of 30 email templates that the rep has to browse through every time.

The companies that move fastest in B2B are the ones where every person on the revenue team knows the one thing they should do next for any given situation. Internal decision overload slows your team the same way external decision overload slows your buyers. And the fix is the same: reduce the number of choices per decision point.

The framework: running a Hick’s Law audit on your go-to-market approach

For every touchpoint in your go-to-market, apply three questions:

1. How many decisions am I asking the buyer (or my own team) to make at this step?

2. Can I reduce it to one?

3. If I need multiple decisions, can I sequence them across steps instead of stacking them in one step?

Apply this across your entire GTM:

Your website

Count the CTAs per page. If there are more than 2, you have a Hick’s Law problem. Identify the one action that matters for each page’s traffic source and awareness stage. Make it dominant. Tuck secondary actions under progressive disclosure. A visitor from a problem-aware Google search needs a different primary CTA than a visitor from a product-aware retargeting ad.

Your pricing page

Count the number of plan combinations a buyer has to evaluate. If it exceeds 3, simplify. Add a “Recommended” label to one tier to reduce comparison effort. Remove add-ons from the initial view and offer them during onboarding. The decision at this point should be: which of these 2 plans fits me? Not: how do I combine 4 tiers and 3 add-ons into the right package?

Your ABM campaigns

For each target account, identify the one problem that matters. Build the campaign around that one problem. Create role-specific content so no stakeholder has to filter through irrelevant material. One CTA per email. One topic per touchpoint. Build the case progressively across the sequence.

Your cold outreach

One problem per email. One proof point. One ask. If your email has two links, remove one. If your email mentions three capabilities, cut two. The goal of the first email is not to explain everything you do. It is to earn the right to a second conversation.

Your social selling

One insight per post or message. Do not combine a personal anecdote, a product pitch, and a CTA in the same LinkedIn message. Build the conversation across multiple interactions. Each interaction earns trust. Each piece of trust earns permission for a slightly bigger ask.

Your sales enablement

For each ICP and deal stage, pre-select the one best asset. Do not give the rep a choice between 12 options. Give them a recommendation. “For Series B fintechs in the evaluation stage, use this deck and this case study.” Remove the decision. Reduce time-to-action.

The bottom line

The B2B buying environment is already at capacity. Every buyer on the committee is processing information from multiple vendors, internal stakeholders, their own research, and competing organizational priorities. Every additional choice you stack onto the pile does not help them decide. It adds to the cognitive weight that pushes them toward inaction.

Hick’s Law is not a design principle. It is a revenue principle. The companies that understand this build GTM strategies, ABM campaigns, and outreach sequences that make it easy for the buyer to say yes by making it unnecessary for them to choose between 7 versions of yes.

Every touchpoint gets one question: what is the one decision I need the buyer to make right now?

If you can answer that for every email, every landing page, every sales call, and every piece of content in your funnel, you have a strategy.

If you can’t, you have noise.