Don't take shortcuts in sales

I've been working on a big deal with a major Canadian bank.

We completed a successful POC back in July of 2024. With the help of my champion, we convinced the Economic Decision Maker to buy. Everything went perfect.

My Champion was very excited to get our technology implemented ASAP for his team to start delivering value. So excited in fact that he attempted to circumvent the banks rigorous AI risk review process. He tried using the loophole that since we were an ML tool, not a GenAI tool we could submit to procurement as a generic analytics software.

This sounded great at the time so I let him do it. Getting the paperwork in place for the POC took almost 3 months so I figured this would allow us to close by the end of Q4 '24.

Boy was I wrong...

The risk review process started and after 3 months of waiting they caught on to the fact that our tool had something to do with AI. They told us that we would need to resubmit the risk evaluation request. Basically they told us get to the back of the line.

Sooooo I missed my year end forecast... AND my Q1 '25 forecast... Fingers crossed that it will close by the end of Q2.

Don't be like me... I seem to like learning lessons the hard way...

Don't take shortcuts.