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12
June
2025
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You’re probably obsessing over the wrong kind of competition.
Your competition isn’t just your rivals – it’s anything or anyone competing for the same resources as you. That could be other initiatives; other projects your customer has going on that could push your initiative down the priority list. It could be self-build - depending on what your solution is, you might be dealing with customers who choose to create a solution themselves.
But your biggest invisible competitor is inertia – where the customer engages with you, but ultimately chooses the status quo. They do nothing. This can be particularly painful for sales teams, because instead of simply losing a deal, it feels more like a race that doesn’t end. Deals slip from one quarter to the next, all because of inertia.
Losing a deal to inertia typically comes down to something misqualified regarding either Value, Stakeholders, or Process.
Value
A customer might choose to do nothing because while there is pain, it isn’t enough for them to really feel like they need to solve it. If that is the case, it is the salesperson’s responsibility to qualify out.
However, if the customer doesn’t feel any urgency, usually it is because the salesperson hasn’t done enough to implicate them in the pain. Organizations are typically quite risk averse, and if there is an option to stay the same, they will just choose that. It is the salesperson’s job to put in the work to get beyond that and prove why change is needed.
Stakeholders
What if you have found incredibly relevant value for a customer, but you don’t have a Champion? If there is no one invested in your solution, who can introduce you to internal stakeholders and give you the necessary information to help you build a compelling business case, then it doesn’t matter what pain you have. You need to have the right stakeholders involved.
Process
Once, when MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte was leading a sales team, they had a deal forecast that required their solution to be implemented after the customer completed a different step as part of their transformation. No matter how much they loved the solution, who the salesperson was engaged with, there would be no movement until after that other step. However, the salesperson didn’t bring that point before the team, so ultimately the deal slipped, fell off the customer’s priority list, and fell apart.
If the salesperson has kept the process of the deal in mind and stayed on top of it, it would have saved time and potentially the whole deal. Often, it is in the Decision and Paper Process stages where deals lose momentum - when departments like legal and procurement get involved who have their own priorities.
If you aren’t proactive about the process elements, you leave things to chance, and the window of opportunity might close.
Ultimately, you need to remember that it is up to you to combat inertia by continuing to implicate the pain and maintain momentum. If you don’t, inertia is going to creep up on you, no matter how great of a solution you have.
