I shot myself in the foot right at the finish line...
TL;DR: after 2 1/2 months, I sent an email with a subject line referring to a comment that my champion made to me explaining why he thinks we might be able to get a deal over the line before September ends, and it had the opposite desired outcome...
After investing a lot of time into each stage of the sales process and building a strong rapport with my champion, I made a silly mistake that could potentially cost me a deal. At the very least, it halted progress before the end of Q3.๐
My champion is all-in on how our solution solves his problems. I'm in the Fin-tech space.
Here's a brief backstory:
Our journey started with a representative from Company X, let's call him 'Rep A'. We explored their current reporting tools and identified several limitations they were facing with their budgeting and planning processes. An initial interest was shown in our product's KPI and budgeting features, along with the potential for operational data integration in the future.
In our second meeting, we delved deeper into Company X's primary business challenge - an unstructured budget and financial planning process. This issue was causing them difficulties in aligning teams and documenting ROI for capital expenses. Furthermore, they lacked a functional tool for revenue forecasting. Rep A was seeking a system that could delegate GL-level tasks to the team, allowing him and the CFO to focus on strategic decisions. Our product's features were presented as solutions to these challenges.
Later, we introduced the CFO and decision-maker in the process. Company X's team was developing an annual operating plan, which included various forecasts and plans. The CFO expressed concerns about their existing budget process and heavy reliance on Excel. However, the idea of using our product for budget collaboration and automated calculations was well received.
Towards the end of our journey, we discussed pricing options and proposed a special discounted package for EOQ.
Rep A was sold, but the CFO was hesitant to pull the trigger.
I got on the phone as soon as I got an email asking for us to set up another demo with the COO to start discussing operational use cases.
This was going to prolong the process and quite frankly, make the whole idea about changing way more daunting. Rep A agreed with me on the phone that the CFO was biting off more than they could chew.
We discussed some ideas that ultimately led to him believing all the CFO needed was a push to execute in some way. I brainstormed with my manager and sent over an email to the CFO with my champion cc'd that acknowledged the hesitation, reminded of the most pressing problems/challenges that they expressed, the special pricing (which was considerable), and a course of action โ executing the agreement while concurrently demonstrating additional operational use cases to the COO.
I made a mistake by using a private comedic phrase from my champion as the subject line. Looking back, it wasn't clever or beneficial at all. Instead, it made my champion uncomfortable and might have compromised our trust.
The response I got back in a direct email to myself and manager was:
"Pushing too hard using my language, advising against that going forward."
Ouch.
Never again will I make that mistake. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Has anyone else done something similar before?
Has anyone still been able to recover?
26 comments