You have the perfect fit: your solution matches the buyer’s need perfectly. You like them, they like you, you’ve had coffee/a meal/a powerful meeting or two. They talk about implementation and how they need to add your other product next year. And then they buy from someone else. Or not at all.
What happened? Are they stupid? Did they lie to you? Are they making an emotional decision?
Not stupid. Didn’t lie. No emtional decision making. The problem was the need shifted, or the addition of two new members of the Buying Decision Team who had additional buying criteria.
The truth is, we’ll never know how buyers choose one solution over another so long as we’re using the sales model without adding some Buying Facilitation(r) components to become a part of the change management processes that will offer our prospects the ability to define their criteria.
Here are some criteria they’ll need to meet as they move through their solution selection process:
- have all people who will be touching the solution defined their criteria for choice?
- do they know how they will be implementing the solution and ensuring the new and old will work together?
- do the members of the Buying Decision Team agree to the criteria they each need met – and if not, how is the differential being