The meeting went well but then nothing happened.
Early in my career, I ran a digital consultancy. We pitched for a large tender with an international company. We had two meetings and they loved us. Loved our ideas and our approach. The vibe in the room was electric and if I’m honest we were already spending the tender money in our heads. A week later, we found out we didn’t get the work.
When I asked why, they told me they loved what we did. They loved our strategy. But they worried we were too small for them. Too inexperienced but I think they really meant too young. They were worried we might not be around long enough to support them. Might not have the experience to handle the challenges of an account their size. Every one of those concerns could have been addressed if we had one more meeting with them. But we never got the chance. The first two meetings went so well, we didn’t think we needed to address these concerns. But the decision happened without us in the room.
There’s a massive gap between a great meeting and a closed deal. Most founders I’ve worked with obsess over the pitch. Making sure they showcase a perfect demo and hours practicing what happens in the room when they’re presenting.
But most complex deals don’t die in the meeting. They die in the meeting you’re not invited to. The meeting where your champion has to explain to their boss or their boss’s boss, why they’re recommending you. The one where someone asks an awkward question your champion can’t answer and the one where the person who could answer it decides to stay silent instead of speaking up.
74% of B2B buying teams experience unhealthy conflict during decisions. People getting overruled by decision-makers who weren’t even in your meeting. And 51% of customers who are willing to buy are not willing to stand up for you internally. Liking you is free but fighting for you is not free. Fighting for you is risky politically. This means half of your champions won’t fight for you, they like you and they want you to win. But when the meeting gets a bit tricky or heated, they stay quiet.
I’ve been on the other side of this too. At one company, I was building a digital arm inside a traditional business. The tech stack was legacy. Really old. I wanted to move to cloud-based tools. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, Mutiny. Tools that would let us do sophisticated lead generation, data analysis, proper funnel optimisation.The IT team wanted to keep the non-cloud version of Salesforce. It was next to impossible to integrate any third party tools with. It was hard to get the data we needed. But it was what they knew. They had vested interests. They wanted to keep doing things the way they’d always done them. They didn’t want extra work.
To change anything, I needed CEO level approval. And I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The company wanted results on day one. Showing results on day two. But the strategic work of upgrading the stack needed time. Time I didn’t have. Political capital I hadn’t built.
In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive. More persuasive in showing the benefit of migrating faster. But I was the champion for those tools, and I couldn’t close the internal sale. Many of the third-party vendors I was speaking to couldn’t understand why. It’s hard to understand unless you’re on the inside. That’s what it feels like to be your own champion who can’t sell internally and if you’re selling to enterprises, that’s what your champion feels like too.
Most people get champions wrong. A champion who loves your product and a champion who’ll risk their neck for it are two very different people. Don;t be naive as champions don’t fight for you, they fight for themselves. They need to believe that getting you on board is in their best interest. That your solution makes them look good and protects their job. Maybe it even advances their career.
It’s not charity. It’s not about how much they liked your slick demo or banter. They need to believe if I don’t get this vendor or solution, my job is at risk. That’s a much higher bar than I think these folks are great.
Only 44% of those no-decisions are because the buyer prefers the status quo. The other 56%? Indecision. Fear. The buyer wants to change, but can’t pull the trigger, they’re not scared of missing out.But plenty got fired for one that didn’t so the safe choice is no choice.
These are the questions you should ask yourself before leaving any pitch
Can they repeat what you do in one sentence?
Do they have proof they can point to?
Can they answer the fear question?
The big question you need to ask yourself is whether you’ve armed your champion to win the one meeting you’re not in.
My writing soundtrack this week is “End of the Beginning“ by Djo.
The meeting you're not in is the one that determines everything. I've seen this failure mode repeatedly in foodtech commercialisation - the champion loves the science but can't sell it to procurement when the room goes cold.
What you've named the 'fear question' is the one I now bake into every partnership brief before anyone shakes hands.
True, decisions are social before rational. It’s not so much about being in the room but enabling your champion to navigate politics safely and effectively.