If you’re working on a deal right now, and it’s above $1 million and will be deployed in a mission-critical environment, your economic buyer is risking his career on it. So the most likely reason your deal may not get done is not the ROI or “business value” but the perception that there’s a risk that it won’t work in their environment. Even more challenging is why …the reasons are usually unrelated to your software. Here are some risks: 1. Your customer's leadership maturity. 2. Your customer's change management ability. 3. The partner team deploying it, if unknown, is a risk. 4. If you removing other software, getting that out is a significant risk. 5. If you need multiple departments to work together to embrace your solution, that is a risk. 6. If your solution needs to be interoperable with other software. And the list goes on and on… De-risking your deal means your proposal today should have answers for as many of these risks as possible. The big deals that will get through the gauntlet this month will be the best-de-risked deals. How is yours looking? Remember what the goal is …big deals in our timeline with delighted customers.💥👈💪
Jon Hunter This is one of the best things I have seen! Especially as many of us approach the end of the quarter or the year. Too often a Sales Professional forgets these things as the pressure to close becomes consuming. Thanks for posting! I am going to do the same!!!
Useful tips
Jon, quite brilliant and true! I found out as a SRVP of global sales the decision maker had not ever signed off on a 1.0M deal! No authority. I had forecasted it to our CEO! And board. It was 20 years ago. The deal pushed as it had to go to their board for approval! I should have known better! Great post.
So, so true Jon Hunter. Thanks for sharing. Easy to think of these risks if we are really looking at the deal through the lens of the buyer AND asking "what could go wrong" with this deal; however, we don't always do that!
Totally agree Jon. Many of the qualification models focus on ROI but miss the human factor of whether the buyer actually wants to commit (and risk is a reason why they may not).
Time to do Great again. Helping customers wrestle data for security and observability outcomes.
1dChange is hard. Help your customer know the path.