ZVRK

Enterprise Account Executive

What would you write?

So.. after a few rounds of meetings and demos, I was confident and expecting for us to be shortlisted, and invited to the RFP. Then this happens.

For context, this email is from a 3rd party sourcing partner, that this customer is working through in order to get offers from a selected list of vendors (including us).

Without getting into why I THINK we lost this opportunity, I just want to understand straight from them (the sourcing partner and the customer), what the real reasons are.

So, my question to you savages is: What do you usually write that produces a response in situations like this one?

I could go with the usual I send, but I want to hear something that works for you.

🧠 Advice

✍️ Sales advice

18 comments

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FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Thank them for considering you, and ask your champion what happened. See who was shortlisted and why you weren’t. It could be anything from missing a critical feature, to not having the prosper executive level relationship.

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

Yeah always good to get an after action report from the horses mouth even if its not a win. I always ask for decision criteria and where I may have missed the mark.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Exactly. Put it on record that you asked. Read the RFP rules. Prepare to contest that bitch.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Did you ever talk to the customer?

punishedlad

Tycoon

Business Development Team Lead

Generally, (even if I'm not surprised, but it sounds like you are) I'll act as such. Make it clear that you're a bit shocked/confused by the decision, and ask for an explanation under the pretense that you're looking for feedback to improve upon in the future.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Go directly to whoever your "champion" is, phrase it as hoping to connect for 15 min to get advice on how you can improve for future needs.

People are more willing to help when asked for advice than feedback

ZVRK

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

@braintank Yes, I met the customer for a disco and 2 demo sessions afterwards. Additional questions and clarifications were handles through the sourcing partner though (via email).

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

I'd go straight to customer using @punishedladmessaging.

Phone call, not email

ZVRK

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Good advice right here, ill def reach out directly. The 3rd party are obviously not as professional as I thought neither do they care..

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

ditto on reaching out straight to the customer on this. Don't involve the 3rd party. They owe you an explanation based on the efforts you put into the demos.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

Thank you for letting me know, we appreciate your time as well, I'm sure you receive requests for feedback about the products that you review frequently, in this case, was there a particular feature set we were not able to offer that I cam bring to my Leadership team to inform them of a gap we might have? Appreciate your help!

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

RFPs are decided before they begin. I'd skip writing anything and move on.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

True - however, sometimes it's executives who would like to understand where things went sideways.

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

If you can at least get feedback on why you weren’t invited it could be valuable the next time or with a different customer. If they don’t respond then 👋🏼 and off to the next

ZVRK

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Most of the time - yes. However, the deal that my 40% of my quota last year, we were invited to an RFP super last minute and we won. You never know. This was a big potential deal too, so i just had to go for it even though I didn’t like the idea of us going through a 3 rd party …

CRAG112

Valued Contributor

Account Executive

Yeah, you have to reach out to the people you worked with directly. However, you have to be willing to dig in to your sales processes and be very critical of everything that was done.

Did you have a true champion that would go to bat for you, or were you just doing some demo's?
What did discovery reveal?
What's their normal buying process?
Why were they committed to change?
How did your product meet that commitment?
What was their implementation date?
What were the milestones necessary to prove your product met expectations and could achieve financial results?
Did you prove during the demo your product met their needs? Who verified this?

Those are questions that came to mind immediately. I would need to review many questions within my own to go deeper.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

You’ve gotten world class advice here. For me, I’d have to know. Whichever way you can phrase it, “level with me” can get an honest answer.

Tough loss. Sorry.

TheHypnotist

Executive

Sales Manager

sounds like several companies got suckered into doing some free consulting and the end user is going to do it themselves in house, or subcontract someone to do it cheaper instead of buying whatever solution your company (and its competitors) provide. I'm assuming the email you have posted says "the end user" is not going forward with the RFP. Or are they simply telling you that YOU are not going forward in their process?

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ZVRK

What would you write?

18 comments

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