Your Best Competitive Research Is Buried in 20 Lost Deals Your CRM Misclassified
Review 20 closed-lost opportunities, trace each buyer’s next move, and uncover the real alternatives beating your offer, from old tools to inertia.
EXPERT OPINION BY BRUCE ECKFELDT, INC. 5000 CEO AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS COACH @BECKFELDT
When I ran my software agency, I could name our competitors without thinking about it. The same three firms appeared on the same shortlists and delivered the same pitches. What I couldn’t have told you was where the deals we lost actually went. Our records said “price,” and I had no reason to doubt them. I have since seen the same blind spot in almost every pipeline I look at.
Your sales process may be the most valuableows what a customer chose at the moment it was making a decision. Most companies lose that information because they record the explanation the customer gave rather than what the customer ultimately did. The explanation may simply be a polite way to end the conversation, while the customer’s next step offers useful evidence
The fix takes an afternoon and requires no new research. Pull your past 20 closed-lost opportunities, ignore the recorded reasons, and answer one question about each: What is that company doing today about the problem you solve? Sort the answers, and you will have a competitive map grounded in actual customer decisions.
1. Price is where a lost deal goes to hide.
The reason in your CRM was chosen by the person who had just lost the deal, from a short dropdown menu, at the moment that person least wanted to explain what happened. “Price” is a safe choice because it blames the pricing page and the market rather than the rep. That doesn’t mean the rep is lying. Under mild social pressure, people choose the closest available answer, and “price” often fits well enough.
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As a result, “price” absorbs all kinds of losses. Deals that died of inertia may carry no reason at all because none of the options fit. Those blank fields can contain some of the most useful intelligence you collect all year, yet your system is built to discard them.
2. Ask what the customer did instead.
Asking why the company lost a deal can sound like a request for a verdict on the salesperson, which encourages a defensive answer. Asking what the customer did next is more likely to produce a fact.
Most reps already know the answer. They talked to the buyer for weeks and heard about the internal team, the tool already in the stack, and the executive who wanted to revisit the issue next year. Because none of that information fit the dropdown menu, it disappeared from the record along with the company’s clearest account of the loss.
Source: www.inc.com
