Who do you consider to be your biggest competitor? Is it the market leader or the company down the street, with which you fight like cats and dogs for the the same customers? Wrong.
I claim that your most important competitors are No Decision Inc. and Decision Delayed Indefinitely Corp.
Surveys show that nearly 30% of all proposals end with “no decision” and just under 25% of all business goes to a competitor. (The remaining 45% is divided between your company and your customer’s own organisation.)
Why does such a large part of the deals – almost 1/3 – end up in no decision?
There are certainly many reasons for this , but usually the main causes are:
- The seller has not identified the customer’s real need and has not been able to identify a solution that brings real value to him – or has been unable to demonstrate this value to the customer.
- The seller has probably not had a contact in the customer company who would actually like to buy from him (or “champion”), nor has he had access to the real decision-makers.
- Overall, the seller has had no real control over the entire sales process.
This tends to happen, when your company does not have a systematic sales process. Instead, the seller “wings it” best as he can. But when the seller uses a systematic sales process, he would not even make a proposal to customers, who do not meet the above criteria.
If the seller does not recognize the need, develop a solution with the customer and demonstrate its value to him, and he has no internal salesperson – not to mention access to decision-makers – the proposal should simply not be made at all.
[Source: Sales Benchmark Index, and “CustomerCentric Selling”, Michael Bosworth and John Holland 2003]
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