Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Opportunities? Ask the Prospects.

In a recent study for a prominent software company, Primary Intelligence talked to companies that recently evaluated their enterprise offering, but selected a competing vendor. Below, you’ll find a list of the most common reasons why the other vendor was selected:


Notes to Consider
• Respondent companies were able to choose more than one reason
• Percentages don’t necessarily add to 100% due to an abbreviated list of most common responses
• A series of interviews with clients that did choose this vendor indicated many positives

So, let’s understand these data for what they really are. The prospective clients were evaluating this company’s offering. Most likely, they had a pain or other bothersome business issue that caused them to seek a solution. The prospects needed something other than status quo to move forward.

The prospect is likely to solve their problem with one that eliminates the pain or removes obstacles. If your offering causes as much or more pain than it solves. They aren’t going to buy. Likewise, if your offering is better than status quo, but more painful or problematic than the competition’s, you are going to end up on the outside looking in. These are fundamental value equations.

We can look first at the top reason: Price. You would expect price to rank near the top when interviewing losses. Most of the time, our experience shows that price is really a way of saying, “I didn’t see the value in the offering.” In other words, if the solutions does what it is expected, value increases and price is less of an issue. After dozens of thousands of opportunity reviews, I would guide the reader toward the top 3-5 reasons other than price. (I’ll let you read and interpret the chart as you will.)

“So what,” you might ask. “Neat data. What do I do about it?”

Do something about it. Coordinate this competitive intelligence between sales, marketing and product development to create an evaluation scenario that eliminates the most prominent reasons and increases the odds that the next prospect will form a favorable perception of your offering.

Why study something if you’re not going to use it for change?

I have more ideas on making the most out of competitive intelligence, sales intelligence, market intelligence. Let’s chat if you have a few minutes (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)