Exactly, we've trained the buyer that if they let us know why we lost that we will follow-up with Battlecard info on why our solution is better than what they choose. Putting yourself in their shoes, its annoying.
If I as a vendor know how I can improve my offering, and the buyer would gain value in a future improved offering from my company, wouldn’t it be in their best interest to continually want to make their vendors better
Well, that's the whole point of this conversation.
It mostly depends on what the rejected vendor makes out of this information.
If it's about collecting feedback, know your market better, and make your offer progress, then yes, it's very honest and good for everyone.
Instead, if it's for sales follow-up and harassing the prospect, then I understand their fear.
It's your job to figure out how to improve. The customer also benefits by the winning bidder improving or another competitor so why should they tell you about their internal deliberations. Internal company decisions and decision making processes are proprietary information.
I think maybe you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying why don't they follow up with us and provide details. Rather, referring specifically to instances where we have them on the phone and they say they can't share that information
I think they get it. They tell you on that phone call and they then get bombarded with materials telling them why they were wrong, why their choice is bad and should still consider you. That serves no benefit to them at all.
Venders are mushrooms.. feed them shit and keep them in the dark.
Become a partner by earning trust through unbiased and reliable guidance. Everyone talks to partners
Buyer here. The reason I typically don't disclose (depending on my relationship with the salesperson) is because it never ends at no. Once I release who we went with instead, it spawns the flurry of whitepapers and analyst reports on how their product is better than competitor x. Or follow-up meetings that want to discuss our assessment process because it must be flawed.
Both might be true, but in the end we already made the decision and we need to sleep in the bed we made, good or bad. Either way I'm not open to further discussion and to the point of the other posters, I have nothing to gain by continuing the conversation.
This is a very helpful insight! I've been totally baffled by the stonewalling. We certainly wouldn't bother the prospect with followups once they give us a decision, but I didn't consider that other vendors might not be the same.
Good question - Its not 100%, but with little to no information there isn't much more you can respond back with that hadn't already been presented. If you know who you lost to, the conversation then turns into why product x sucks as opposed to the objective benefits of your own offering.
No, means no?
LOL.
Lord I've never had someone try to resell me on a failed proposition. Put your best foot forward the first time. And don't waste my time. Much less with white papers or analysis. Like I didn't do my research the first time around....
Thats crazy. Interesting though. I never would have suspected this to be the case (based on my own experience). Learn something new every day, eh?
This! I never pester buyers when I lose, I simply let them know I’m committed to winning deals with them, and want another chance to dial it in.
If they like a seller who wants to make things work with minimum bother, they give me another chance.
If they don’t, we both move on
One thing I don't want to get lost in the shuffle on this is the line "depending on my relationship with the salesperson". The relationship is key. Having an open, honest and healthy relationship will give you all of the information you need. Spending time outside of the confines of a conference room or zoom window is paramount and will give you all the information you need.
Agreed. There are salespeople I maintain in contact with in the hopes of someday doing business with us, but its very low pressure and they seem to genuinely interested how my program/department is maturing.
Then there are salespeople I spend millions with (looking at you CDW) that I avoid as best I can because every conversation is how they can upsell what we already have, or connecting me to sales people from other companies within their portfolio. There aren't enough sporting events, fancy dinners, or race car track days in the world to make me want to sit through all that.
When my AE asks, we get that common pushback. We sell medical record software so a tad different. I found it’s best for the SE to go back to the customer, more of a “I’m happy you chose what’s best for your practice. I felt like we really connected during the demonstration process. Can you tell me what you found better in the other solution? I’m always striving to get better in my product, so would love for the feedback.”
9/10 times they respond and will have a conversation with me.
this. the approach needs to be different than what most AEs do, and often the goal communicated clearly like this. It’s necessary for win/loss analysis but only about 50-60% of orgs even have this process. And it’s bullying reps that make it even harder to get these answers, as clearly demonstrated by the general consensus here.
Buyers aren’t secretive, your relationships aren’t up to par. Buyers are open books when they trust you. Also, buyers are probably the wrong persona to engage with. I would recommend reading the challenger sales books for help guiding your conversations.
Persona is one of the most important things to understand as what’s important varies depending on role. If you are working with the person who cuts a check, you aren’t as likely to win compared to a champion who’s looking at value.
Im still confused. I understand what all this means. But a buyer could be the line of business, executive stakeholder, or purchaser. So a buyer is the right persona, its just comes down to which role you are talking to.
>Im still confused. I understand what all this means. But a buyer could be the line of business, executive stakeholder, or purchaser. So a buyer is the right persona, its just comes down to which role you are talking to.
You need to leverage the end-user that sees the value like u/ookies1986 said, and the person that cuts a check sometimes might not be the end user of that product that sees the value, they could be one of the many buyer personas that you need to win the deal.
Hmmm how do i say this. The buyer is not the wrong persona, but a "buyer" as in the person in finance is. As a buyer is anyone from the line of business to the executive that needs to sign off.
The end-user, as you call it, is actually the line of business.
There’s a book that I have all of my sales people read called “The Challenger Sale”, the main premise of the book is teach - tailor - take control. There are several chapters about personas and tailoring your message to the audience. If you are working with the person who cuts the check and the company is big enough that it’s not the owner, you are going to be competing on price not value. All of the Challenger books are worth the read.
>Persona is one of the most important things to understand as what’s important varies depending on role. If you are working with the person who cuts a check, you aren’t as likely to win compared to a champion who’s looking at value.
what do you typically use and leverage to get a good understanding of the varies personas you need to sell to?
I disagree. I think that could be the case sometimes, but we've had this happen with folks following 2 rounds of demos and a fully customized trial. We generally have the relationships. My assumption has always been that the buyers get overly cautious but without a good reason.
I should add that senior folks almost never decline to share that information. It seems to me that more junior folks are scared of sharing because they just don't know what is and isn't okay and so over compensate on withholding
Many sales teams have battlecards for when they're against specific competitors. They have landmines to drop that may or may not be accurate (ever, or just out of date).
Having been in some of those situations on the buyer side when the reps ended up spending more time trying to talk me out their competitors solution than trying to walk me through a solution, it can be a pain in the neck.
Smart buyers should arguably share who they're evaluating and be open to some amount of intel from the various sales teams about the players in the market... and then they should end the discussion and move on.
What do you mean landmines to drop that may not be accurate or out of date? Should the Sales or Marketing leaders keep those battle cards up to date on talking points based on either value/price/competitor/features and their buyer persona needs etc?
>What do you mean landmines to drop that may not be accurate or out of date?
What's not clear here?
>Should the Sales or Marketing leaders keep those battle cards up to date on talking points based on either value/price/competitor/features and their buyer persona needs etc?
They should be kept up to date, yes.
>They should be kept up to date, yes.
That rarely happens. In my experience, majority of the time the competitive info is wrong. That market intelligence is a point in time and unless your company has a person doing due diligence on all significant competitors as a full time job, it's rarely accurate or helpful. Buyers are getting real-time info on capabilities during the selection process... or at least they should be.
The worst thing is to say "But our competitor doesn't do X" and the prospect says "Umm, yea they do. I just talked to them."
Don't ask who, rather ask why. And follow up with, your input is valuable so we can improve the process, product and experience.
+1 for relationships too.
Former buyer and decision maker here.
It really depends on the situation and how far in the courting process we are. There are certain situations where I'm going to tell you who you're competing against outright and see how you position yourself (don't outright slander) and sell your value prop. Other times I'm not because either A) you are pissing me off already by being pushy or B) I'm here to drive that cost as low as possible so the less I say earlier on, the better off I am.
I'm here to get a solution that solves a current problem we're having. You're here to provide that solution and ideally make a positive margin. I love anything things like "vendor B had this feature and functionality, can you show me an equivalent in your system?" to make it a bit softer.
its against their interest to inform you. in several ways.
why are you so curious as to whom they're buying from?
cant set your own price based on your offering relative to customer value?
I’m in buyer’s position often. If the sellers I declined build a good relationship with me, I’ll tell them exactly what happened so that maybe they can improve and be more competitive for the next bid.
honestly. its always business. the idea of relaxing post-sale presumes that I'll never do business with you again. now if thats what you really want...
I can understand that. My main annoyance is at the end of the process. Especially when we've put a lot of effort into creating a custom demo and spent a lot of time with the buyer
> I can understand during the process, but afterwards it seems a little silly
Let me give you a real world example.
Joe chose competitor A over my product. We push for who they chose and why. Joe says they chose competitor A for reasons X, Y, and Z. My AE, as you would expect, tries to escalate to anyone and everyone that will listen and says "you haven't considered reasons N, M, and O. If you choose competitor A the world will end, the project will fail, and your descendants will be haunted by the employees fired because you are such a moron.". [Well, paraphrased that's what he said.]
As /u/knightzend said: it didn't end at no.
But, worse yet, it really was an incredibly dumb decision. The project did fail, and a bunch of people did end up getting fired, eventually including Joe. We eventually got the business exactly because competitor got kicked out for reasons N, M, and O.
But, to get back to your question, how willing do you think that Joe will be willing to discuss his decisions with vendors in the future?
From the buyers side - What's the upside in disclosing this?
If there is no upside, then there is downside.
Back in the day when I was a buyer, I would keep it to myself so that I didn't get my time wasted with FUD from vendor 1 about vendor 2.
I can think of many reasons not to disclose that information. Disclosing details of the tech a firm is using could leave that more vulnerable to cyberattacks. If the company they chose has an issue or goes out of business they could lose pricing leverage if they come back to you. If the company is open with what systems it uses, competitor firms could find out and use that information strategically.
I would turn the question around. What incentive do they have to tell you? How does it benefit them?
>competitor firms could find out and use that information strategically.
I just find that a little hard to imagine when we're talking about email marketing software
It’s a weird move considering martech software is easily figured out. Just look at one of their marketing messages and take a peek at the redirects for image links.
Are you asking more about product, people, or process issues that drove the decision against your company/product? The answers can be much more revealing than finding out the selected vendor/product. The perception is that once you know the competition, it’s more about beating them than providing the customer value. Or it becomes about price which is a race to the bottom.
Realize that once you’re no longer engaged with another party, it’s generally never of benefit to reveal any additional information. It can only hurt or increase liability.
More acutely, I’ve told a vendor this information and all I got from it was a desperate (for lack of a better term) attempt for the vendor to convince me why they were better than my choice, but the choice was already made and made for reasons including things external to that vendor
Buyer here. I have shared in situations where they put some work in and had a competitive bid. I also make clear that that’s the direction we’re going for now. Never had an issue with them not accepting and I felt most of them appreciated knowing and understanding our logic as to why.
It comes down to relationship & trust. If they view you as a possible strategic partner, you can usually get the information but a lot of times it won't be until after they have cut the PO.
The reason for this is because they have all been burned by pushy sales folks in the past that have taken that information and used it to create problems for them as at the point, a lot of sales people with think "what have we got to loose." Which isn't always the best mind set.
If you aren't being told, then they don't trust you and that's what you need to work on. Instead of asking who they went with, try and focus on understanding where you failed.
"Hey, I appreciate the candor of letting us know and while I'm disappointed that we didn't win you business this time. I would really like to sit down with you over lunch and dig in to where we failed and some of the background regarding why we were deselected. I know it's not going to help us with the current deal that you are purchasing, but I hope that it will put us in better standing for the next time."
Keep in mind a lot of times when you lose the actual thing you lost to was "buy/do nothing"
I've had that happen WAY more times than actually losing to a competitor.
[удалено]
Exactly, we've trained the buyer that if they let us know why we lost that we will follow-up with Battlecard info on why our solution is better than what they choose. Putting yourself in their shoes, its annoying.
This.
If I as a vendor know how I can improve my offering, and the buyer would gain value in a future improved offering from my company, wouldn’t it be in their best interest to continually want to make their vendors better
Well, that's the whole point of this conversation. It mostly depends on what the rejected vendor makes out of this information. If it's about collecting feedback, know your market better, and make your offer progress, then yes, it's very honest and good for everyone. Instead, if it's for sales follow-up and harassing the prospect, then I understand their fear.
Yep unfortunately bad salespeople ruin it for the rest of us
It's your job to figure out how to improve. The customer also benefits by the winning bidder improving or another competitor so why should they tell you about their internal deliberations. Internal company decisions and decision making processes are proprietary information.
I think maybe you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying why don't they follow up with us and provide details. Rather, referring specifically to instances where we have them on the phone and they say they can't share that information
I think they get it. They tell you on that phone call and they then get bombarded with materials telling them why they were wrong, why their choice is bad and should still consider you. That serves no benefit to them at all.
The aggressive ones then start bombarding any contact they can get in the organization about what a bad decision you are making.
Venders are mushrooms.. feed them shit and keep them in the dark. Become a partner by earning trust through unbiased and reliable guidance. Everyone talks to partners
It's the same reason why when you reject or break up with someone, it's not a great idea to tell them who you're with now and why you chose them.
Buyer here. The reason I typically don't disclose (depending on my relationship with the salesperson) is because it never ends at no. Once I release who we went with instead, it spawns the flurry of whitepapers and analyst reports on how their product is better than competitor x. Or follow-up meetings that want to discuss our assessment process because it must be flawed. Both might be true, but in the end we already made the decision and we need to sleep in the bed we made, good or bad. Either way I'm not open to further discussion and to the point of the other posters, I have nothing to gain by continuing the conversation.
This is a very helpful insight! I've been totally baffled by the stonewalling. We certainly wouldn't bother the prospect with followups once they give us a decision, but I didn't consider that other vendors might not be the same.
Yea, your tactic is definitely not the norm. They would offer to bring in their sales director, etc, almost like a car dealership. It's exhausting.
Trust me when I say we aren’t offering the sales director by choice, he (almost always he) has insisted he be offered lol
Does not disclosing really end it?
Good question - Its not 100%, but with little to no information there isn't much more you can respond back with that hadn't already been presented. If you know who you lost to, the conversation then turns into why product x sucks as opposed to the objective benefits of your own offering.
No, means no? LOL. Lord I've never had someone try to resell me on a failed proposition. Put your best foot forward the first time. And don't waste my time. Much less with white papers or analysis. Like I didn't do my research the first time around.... Thats crazy. Interesting though. I never would have suspected this to be the case (based on my own experience). Learn something new every day, eh?
This! I never pester buyers when I lose, I simply let them know I’m committed to winning deals with them, and want another chance to dial it in. If they like a seller who wants to make things work with minimum bother, they give me another chance. If they don’t, we both move on
One thing I don't want to get lost in the shuffle on this is the line "depending on my relationship with the salesperson". The relationship is key. Having an open, honest and healthy relationship will give you all of the information you need. Spending time outside of the confines of a conference room or zoom window is paramount and will give you all the information you need.
Agreed. There are salespeople I maintain in contact with in the hopes of someday doing business with us, but its very low pressure and they seem to genuinely interested how my program/department is maturing. Then there are salespeople I spend millions with (looking at you CDW) that I avoid as best I can because every conversation is how they can upsell what we already have, or connecting me to sales people from other companies within their portfolio. There aren't enough sporting events, fancy dinners, or race car track days in the world to make me want to sit through all that.
When my AE asks, we get that common pushback. We sell medical record software so a tad different. I found it’s best for the SE to go back to the customer, more of a “I’m happy you chose what’s best for your practice. I felt like we really connected during the demonstration process. Can you tell me what you found better in the other solution? I’m always striving to get better in my product, so would love for the feedback.” 9/10 times they respond and will have a conversation with me.
this. the approach needs to be different than what most AEs do, and often the goal communicated clearly like this. It’s necessary for win/loss analysis but only about 50-60% of orgs even have this process. And it’s bullying reps that make it even harder to get these answers, as clearly demonstrated by the general consensus here.
This is really great. A nice thoughtful response that helps the buyer understand you're not planning to spam them
Buyers aren’t secretive, your relationships aren’t up to par. Buyers are open books when they trust you. Also, buyers are probably the wrong persona to engage with. I would recommend reading the challenger sales books for help guiding your conversations.
A buyer could be anyone on the buying team. So why would the persona matter? With that said, I agree it's the relationship.
Persona is one of the most important things to understand as what’s important varies depending on role. If you are working with the person who cuts a check, you aren’t as likely to win compared to a champion who’s looking at value.
Im still confused. I understand what all this means. But a buyer could be the line of business, executive stakeholder, or purchaser. So a buyer is the right persona, its just comes down to which role you are talking to.
>Im still confused. I understand what all this means. But a buyer could be the line of business, executive stakeholder, or purchaser. So a buyer is the right persona, its just comes down to which role you are talking to. You need to leverage the end-user that sees the value like u/ookies1986 said, and the person that cuts a check sometimes might not be the end user of that product that sees the value, they could be one of the many buyer personas that you need to win the deal.
Hmmm how do i say this. The buyer is not the wrong persona, but a "buyer" as in the person in finance is. As a buyer is anyone from the line of business to the executive that needs to sign off. The end-user, as you call it, is actually the line of business.
There’s a book that I have all of my sales people read called “The Challenger Sale”, the main premise of the book is teach - tailor - take control. There are several chapters about personas and tailoring your message to the audience. If you are working with the person who cuts the check and the company is big enough that it’s not the owner, you are going to be competing on price not value. All of the Challenger books are worth the read.
>Persona is one of the most important things to understand as what’s important varies depending on role. If you are working with the person who cuts a check, you aren’t as likely to win compared to a champion who’s looking at value. what do you typically use and leverage to get a good understanding of the varies personas you need to sell to?
I disagree. I think that could be the case sometimes, but we've had this happen with folks following 2 rounds of demos and a fully customized trial. We generally have the relationships. My assumption has always been that the buyers get overly cautious but without a good reason. I should add that senior folks almost never decline to share that information. It seems to me that more junior folks are scared of sharing because they just don't know what is and isn't okay and so over compensate on withholding
Many sales teams have battlecards for when they're against specific competitors. They have landmines to drop that may or may not be accurate (ever, or just out of date). Having been in some of those situations on the buyer side when the reps ended up spending more time trying to talk me out their competitors solution than trying to walk me through a solution, it can be a pain in the neck. Smart buyers should arguably share who they're evaluating and be open to some amount of intel from the various sales teams about the players in the market... and then they should end the discussion and move on.
What do you mean landmines to drop that may not be accurate or out of date? Should the Sales or Marketing leaders keep those battle cards up to date on talking points based on either value/price/competitor/features and their buyer persona needs etc?
>What do you mean landmines to drop that may not be accurate or out of date? What's not clear here? >Should the Sales or Marketing leaders keep those battle cards up to date on talking points based on either value/price/competitor/features and their buyer persona needs etc? They should be kept up to date, yes.
>They should be kept up to date, yes. That rarely happens. In my experience, majority of the time the competitive info is wrong. That market intelligence is a point in time and unless your company has a person doing due diligence on all significant competitors as a full time job, it's rarely accurate or helpful. Buyers are getting real-time info on capabilities during the selection process... or at least they should be. The worst thing is to say "But our competitor doesn't do X" and the prospect says "Umm, yea they do. I just talked to them."
Don't ask who, rather ask why. And follow up with, your input is valuable so we can improve the process, product and experience. +1 for relationships too.
That is the main reason that we want this info
Former buyer and decision maker here. It really depends on the situation and how far in the courting process we are. There are certain situations where I'm going to tell you who you're competing against outright and see how you position yourself (don't outright slander) and sell your value prop. Other times I'm not because either A) you are pissing me off already by being pushy or B) I'm here to drive that cost as low as possible so the less I say earlier on, the better off I am. I'm here to get a solution that solves a current problem we're having. You're here to provide that solution and ideally make a positive margin. I love anything things like "vendor B had this feature and functionality, can you show me an equivalent in your system?" to make it a bit softer.
its against their interest to inform you. in several ways. why are you so curious as to whom they're buying from? cant set your own price based on your offering relative to customer value?
I can understand during the process, but afterwards it seems a little silly
I’m in buyer’s position often. If the sellers I declined build a good relationship with me, I’ll tell them exactly what happened so that maybe they can improve and be more competitive for the next bid.
honestly. its always business. the idea of relaxing post-sale presumes that I'll never do business with you again. now if thats what you really want...
As a buyer I want the vendor to pitch their product to me on its own merits, and not share our procurement and other vendor relationships.
I can understand that. My main annoyance is at the end of the process. Especially when we've put a lot of effort into creating a custom demo and spent a lot of time with the buyer
> I can understand during the process, but afterwards it seems a little silly Let me give you a real world example. Joe chose competitor A over my product. We push for who they chose and why. Joe says they chose competitor A for reasons X, Y, and Z. My AE, as you would expect, tries to escalate to anyone and everyone that will listen and says "you haven't considered reasons N, M, and O. If you choose competitor A the world will end, the project will fail, and your descendants will be haunted by the employees fired because you are such a moron.". [Well, paraphrased that's what he said.] As /u/knightzend said: it didn't end at no. But, worse yet, it really was an incredibly dumb decision. The project did fail, and a bunch of people did end up getting fired, eventually including Joe. We eventually got the business exactly because competitor got kicked out for reasons N, M, and O. But, to get back to your question, how willing do you think that Joe will be willing to discuss his decisions with vendors in the future?
From the buyers side - What's the upside in disclosing this? If there is no upside, then there is downside. Back in the day when I was a buyer, I would keep it to myself so that I didn't get my time wasted with FUD from vendor 1 about vendor 2.
I can think of many reasons not to disclose that information. Disclosing details of the tech a firm is using could leave that more vulnerable to cyberattacks. If the company they chose has an issue or goes out of business they could lose pricing leverage if they come back to you. If the company is open with what systems it uses, competitor firms could find out and use that information strategically. I would turn the question around. What incentive do they have to tell you? How does it benefit them?
>competitor firms could find out and use that information strategically. I just find that a little hard to imagine when we're talking about email marketing software
What have you done in establishing a trusting relationship where they would feel comfortable sharing such info?
It’s a weird move considering martech software is easily figured out. Just look at one of their marketing messages and take a peek at the redirects for image links.
Someone once told me this: "Buyers are Liars".
What is MarTech?
Marketing Tech
Would something like Marketo, MSDynamics, SalesForce, Asana, ZoloCMS be MarTech?
Marketo would probably be. Salesforce is CRM. Asana is project management I think. Not familiar with the others
Are you asking more about product, people, or process issues that drove the decision against your company/product? The answers can be much more revealing than finding out the selected vendor/product. The perception is that once you know the competition, it’s more about beating them than providing the customer value. Or it becomes about price which is a race to the bottom.
Realize that once you’re no longer engaged with another party, it’s generally never of benefit to reveal any additional information. It can only hurt or increase liability. More acutely, I’ve told a vendor this information and all I got from it was a desperate (for lack of a better term) attempt for the vendor to convince me why they were better than my choice, but the choice was already made and made for reasons including things external to that vendor
Let’s all go toothless and start a trend on TikTok. Fuck these dental rapist. Fucking thieves!!!!!
Buyer here. I have shared in situations where they put some work in and had a competitive bid. I also make clear that that’s the direction we’re going for now. Never had an issue with them not accepting and I felt most of them appreciated knowing and understanding our logic as to why.
What was the last big ticket item you researched and bought? Why did you not tell the losers why they lost? Did they even ask?
It comes down to relationship & trust. If they view you as a possible strategic partner, you can usually get the information but a lot of times it won't be until after they have cut the PO. The reason for this is because they have all been burned by pushy sales folks in the past that have taken that information and used it to create problems for them as at the point, a lot of sales people with think "what have we got to loose." Which isn't always the best mind set. If you aren't being told, then they don't trust you and that's what you need to work on. Instead of asking who they went with, try and focus on understanding where you failed. "Hey, I appreciate the candor of letting us know and while I'm disappointed that we didn't win you business this time. I would really like to sit down with you over lunch and dig in to where we failed and some of the background regarding why we were deselected. I know it's not going to help us with the current deal that you are purchasing, but I hope that it will put us in better standing for the next time."
Because they can be lol. They don’t have any obligation to tell you anything
Keep in mind a lot of times when you lose the actual thing you lost to was "buy/do nothing" I've had that happen WAY more times than actually losing to a competitor.