Stevelee90

Account Executive

Help on a $1.4m ACV deal

The context, I have been working this deal for 3 months, previously it was a colleague who never showed up on his way out the business. we spent 2 1/2 weeks preparing for the final demo day and we absolutely nailed it with a personal message from the partner and customer. This instantly got me Kudos with my champion a manager in the decision making team.

Now we are down selected and PoC testing begins, we get off to a rocky start with access to the platform and then not really accepting help or following the usecases doc they produced. Through testing and like out of no where data segregation and access control comes up in a massive amount of detail. My champion, the manager, now tells me I have to only go through the partner and not call him directly. It has become very obvious he is being coached by the competition and we are being treated very harsh as a result of that.

Anyway, we have now answered every damn question around this Data seg piece and can do everything they want. we have also raised concern with the final decision maker and he is aware of our harsh treatment and doesn't actually like our competition. Side note, after we had this call with him, him and my old champion had a huge bust up on a weekly call with the partner.

We are also working with a alliance partner who said they will back us to the CFO and not the competition. and, finally, pricing was due last week and the competition haven't even submitted theirs yet 🤯.

Is there anything more I can be doing to influence this in my favour, any advice welcome.

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18 comments

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SerialBiller

Executive

4

Enterprise Account Executive

It seems that somehow, they competition has found an advantage ... could you try to find out more info about the offer from the competition? At this point, it sounds like tit for tat though.. Nb, I have never done a deal of this size, but still thought to share :D

GDO

Politicker

1

BDM

Normally the buyer will gladly give you what the competitor is better at. Find out!

jefe

Arsonist

3

🍁

Is the competition greasing your champion's wheels? This sounds like a strange situation, especially with the blow up.
Everyone has personal needs and positional needs. Getting in a fight with your boss does NOT contribute to the latter, so I wonder if the competition is doing something to aid with the former...

CuriousFox

WR Officer

4

🦊

👀🍿

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

2

Burn Towns, Get Money

Reading this, I didn't see the word value once.

Features/functions don't win 7 figure + deals, value does.

If you want to get around getting piecemealed by your competition, focus on the value of the problem, and how your solution provides superior value than the competitor.

Often, the process of defining value, and helping champion this to get investment in the program, builds you more trust than demo, POC, or any feature/function will.

The person that ultimately authorizes a purchase of this scale will want to be confident they will get superior ROI from the selected partner. That rarely has to do with which buttons the users will push, but what actually enables the successful implementation of the program / delivers outcomes.

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Yes! I see pricing mentioned (competitor came in less expensive for the first time) which makes me wonder if the wins have often historically been by being the less expensive solution. In that case, there are going to be significant issues with this deal.
Definitely need to make sure value is clearly articulated - how do you solve for the things that matter to your buyer in a better way than the competitor does?

Nice point you raise, justgonnasendit!

Stevelee90

Contributor

1

Account Executive

Understand your comments completely and this was typed in the early morning for me. All we’ve done is focus on value, the areas were the customer wins with resource for optimising vs resource for build and maintain. Ongoing support over the course of a 12 month roll out.

The issue we face and it was my fault for not articulating it better is that part of the technical team went into this process on the premise they already wanted the other solution.

Revising my ask for help to a question, when faced with the above situation, after articulating the value your organisation delivers across people, process and technology, is there anything more that you can do other than reaffirm your messaging and pull any and all levers to keep gaining every inch you can?

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Honestly, reading through your post, you've done a lot of what I'd have recommended. If I read right, your champion went sour, so you went over the (former?) champion's head to the buyer. Many deals have a team or two that favor an alternate solution. You may not win them over, but you need to make sure that the teams that are open to being persuaded are persuaded - and that they have the power to override the objections from the other team(s).
If you've articulated value, and multithreaded, and have partners involved, you're on the right path. Do you have executive alignment? Not just your partner talking to the CFO, but one of your executives (CEO, or -?) speaking with his/her counterpart at the prospect company?
"Usually at this point in the process, we have our C-level exec have a call with your C-level exec to ensure we are culturally aligned and are meeting expectations as a future partner. Can we get that on the calendar for next week?" (or similar).

Stevelee90

Contributor

1

Account Executive

Thanks Sunbunny. We’ve worked hard on this one and it’s been a real dog fight every daily stand up session. The main thing for me is that the buyer has recognised he are being treated unfairly.

Executive Alignment has been turned down for our COO to meet their CEO, but we have had our alliance partner (Salesforce) reach out to their CIO stating they want to work with us over the competitor.

Not sure I can do much more before the decision on Monday.

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

2

Burn Towns, Get Money

Sometimes it just goes like this.

IF you end up losing, it's just a loss for now. Keep in touch and keep monitoring the success of the program. I am going thru this right now with an 18-month sales cycle I was leading, until a C-level departed and his replacement (from outside) was all buddy with the competition already.

However, I'd make one last play, maybe early this morning.

Email the key stakeholders something to the effect of:

- I know it's decision day
- We have enjoyed learning more about you and the value of this problem thru the process thus far
- We are looking forward to helping deliver the outrageous success and value COMPANY X will see from this program
- We are eager to continue earning your trust as a partner

Basically, the only play you have left is to ask for it. Maybe the other guy (or gal / they / it / sasquatch) is sitting back and not doing that.

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

It’s Monday. Good news or bad?

Stevelee90

Contributor

1

Account Executive

Thanks for checking back Sunbunny, they need this week to find out. We ended up marginally cheaper on price. Now to see if the value selling was as good as I hoped it felt at the time and alliance and other partnerships have helped out like they said they would. Either way, everything still crossed.

pirate

Big Shot

1

Account Executive

Multithread even more in the customer organisation?

Stevelee90

Contributor

1

Account Executive

Update team, the competitor who for the last 5 years has never been cheaper than us… has come in cheaper. We’re being played so we’ve gone nuclear with the deal on all fronts, decision on Monday. All spare me a thought over your weekends please, unless you work for the competitor, you can tread in dog crap 💩

Lyceum

Big Shot

0

Strategic Account Executive

How did it end up?

CRAG112

Valued Contributor

0

Account Executive

Have you tried the simplest ask?

Reach out to the decision makers and clearly outline all that has been accomplished.

Leave them with an ask.

As you are further evaluating, will you call me direct towards any concerns on pricing, what we offer, or etc before making a final decision?

Literally ask for the sale and answer any and all potential objections before they are made.

lieselfuel

Member

0

Regional Vice President

If pricing was due and competitive isn’t in- they are holding out for something. What’s the decision makes final criteria? What personal gain do they get from choosing the “right” solution??

ApocalyBoom

Politicker

0

Account Executive

If the price is right, there will be no competition: they are expecting something. What makes the sentence stay the same? What are the benefits of choosing the correct answer?

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