Understanding, not Over-pitching
One of the most impressive partners I ever worked with had products that performed worse, was hard to deploy, and didn't seem to fit well with their customers' broader strategy. I saw them win deals against competitors that had more robust features, had greater integrations, and implemented in far less time.
This company's repeated wins were not suite-functionality based, but rather because they had a fantastic understanding of what went on inside their customers and understood the narrative outside didn't really matter.
Unlike sports, where we can just say "Scoreboard" when asked how a team performed, winning and losing in other areas is more complicated. Most other areas - sales, politics, running a business - failure isn't because we are incapable of putting good things out into the world. It's because we don't understand how/why people change their behavior.
Here are 6 questions to ask before assuming you lost on features:
How long did you wait before showing your customer a demo or talking features/benefits, what you do, and what sort of results you achieve?
If we were to poll your customers, how many would say you listen more than you speak?
What pain do your customers feel and how do you fix it, specifically?
When quantifying what you do and how you do it, whose feedback do you ask for? Whose do you exclude?
How do you deal with skeptics - encourage them to speak up or tell them to shut up?
When you think about decisionmakers - what decisions are you tracking, and what gaps do you think that proposes?
Dunham Listens clients use these questions and others as guidelines for building partnerships infrastructure governed by "so what?" as the foundational principle.
If you're looking to build a platform that drives results and brings in partners, that's the core of our Partnership Infrastructure engagements. And if we don't believe we can help you, we'll do our best finding you someone who can.
Question guide for running through reasons you’re losing opportunities and if your competition wins by selling on a different level of value.