Everybody Said Yes. So Why Didn’t You Get the Order?

Everybody Said Yes. So Why Didn’t You
Get the Order?

🕒 4 min read

By Desiree Grace

You are a Rock Star. You uncovered a vital customer need. You crafted the perfect solution at the perfect (profitable) price. You sold the technical team (engineers), the buyer, and the users (electricians AND production), and you are heading to the bar ready to celebrate and start looking at beach vacation options. Then you get the awful text message: "Sorry, Rock, we cannot place the order this year. Maybe next year." Adios, Cancun.

Before you drown your sorrows in tequila, do a debrief. In all your sales sleuthing, did you ask about the procurement process? Oh, Shite. You did not.

This is an often overlooked but vital part of customer reconnaissance. Selling everybody on the solution doesn't amount to a Mexican jumping bean if you don't understand how the customer actually buys.

Your Customer's Buying Process Checklist

Review the checklist below as part of your debrief, and ask yourself if you know the answers to the following.

Timing matters because your customer might be at the end of the fiscal year and in a position where they do or don't have money to spend. Do you know their fiscal year?

Is your customer publicly traded or privately held? Public companies may have quarterly reporting considerations that affect the timing of major expenditures. They often report large capital expenditures and are often careful with their spending at the end of each quarter, before they report quarterly results. Private companies may have very different approval and capital-planning processes. Know which rules you're playing under.

ROI, or return on investment, is often a corporate mandate: the minimum acceptable rate of return a business will accept before funding a project. This is sometimes called the hurdle rate. Did you meet it? This calculation will include cost of capital and potentially a risk premium.

Payback period is how long the organization is willing to carry the investment before it pays for itself. Some organizations have a three-year threshold, for example. If your project won't pay for itself within three years, you need to get creative. Maybe you should break out the project into two phases. A technically brilliant $300,000 project can lose to a less impressive $75,000 project simply because the second one fits the company's payback rules.

Organizational priorities matter because they can make the difference between your project getting funding or somebody else getting it. If safety is the number one priority, for example, demonstrate how your solution improves Safety. Your proposal isn't just competing against competitors; it may be competing against a new forklift, a roof repair, a cybersecurity upgrade, or another production line. Know your customers.

The controlling department can be a deal-breaker, like our Rock Star found out. Who controls the checkbook? If Engineering or Quality controls the spend, that is a far different discussion than if Purchasing or Finance controls the spend.

Approval levels tell you how high in the organization you need to sell. If the CEO needs to sign off on your solution, you had better have an audience with her, and make sure you are very well prepared to answer all her questions. It is helpful to know if the buyer's boss can approve the project, or if you need to get that CEO signature. Ask that question. Remember the salesperson's Golden Rule: He or she who holds the gold, rules.

Budget cycles matter, too. Knowing the fiscal year isn't enough. When does your customer build the capital budget? When are requests due? You may uncover the world's greatest project in October only to discover next year's capital budget was locked down in August. Find out when projects need to be approved.

Your proposal isn't just competing against competitors. It may be competing against a new forklift, a roof repair, or another production line.

Before You Sing the Blues

One more thing before you start singing the blues. Try to salvage the sale by doing your homework. You might get the order if you change your tune. Making changes to your pitch can be a winning strategy if you understand and address your customer's processes.

Before you kiss Cancun goodbye, give River Heights Consulting a call. We coach new and not-so-new salespeople to ask better questions, uncover the stuff customers forget to tell you, and understand how the buying process really works. We can't guarantee you a beach vacation, but we can help you sell smarter, avoid a few nasty surprises, and maybe hear "Where should we send the PO?" a little more often.

TL;DR: You can sell the engineers, the buyer, and the users and still lose the order if you never asked how the customer actually buys. Before the next big proposal, learn the fiscal year, budget cycle, ROI hurdle rate, payback rules, top priorities, who controls the checkbook, and who has to sign. If a deal has stalled, use those answers to rework the pitch, and you may still save the sale.

About the Author

Desiree Grace writes for River Heights Consulting and The Distributor Channel,
where she helps distributor salespeople ask the questions customers forget to answer on their own. She is a firm believer that "everybody loved it" is not a purchase order. She has nothing against Cancun, but she would like you to book the trip after the PO arrives.

...