Complex sales reps in industries like capital equipment and machinery, enterprise software, and high-value business services often focus on a decision that has nothing to do with whether a project actually happens. They focus, as they're trained to, on the technical features, capabilities, and specifications of their product or service.
They meet with technical buyers whose job is to vet exactly those details — so they're asked the questions they love to answer. They talk about their stuff. That's a problem.
Not that they're technical experts. In specialized, scientific, and highly technical industries, buyers expect deep expertise and hesitate to trust a vendor who can't clear that bar. It's common in capital equipment sales and conceptual business services to hear buyers say that talking to sales reps simply wastes their time.
The problem is that the technical details normally figure in the last of the important buying decisions — the fifth. That fifth decision is vendor selection. And fighting to win vendor selection while ignoring the real buying need is exactly what produces the epidemic of deals that end in "no decision."
"Fighting to win the vendor selection while ignoring the real buying need is what produces the epidemic of deals that end in no decision."— Ed Marsh
Most complex industrial purchases have to clear five separate hurdles before a vendor is ever chosen. Sales teams and marketing departments pour their energy into the last one — endless talk about what they make and do — while the decisions that determine whether a purchase happens at all go unseen.
Here's the part that matters most. Participating meaningfully in the second and third decisions doesn't just win more deals and head off "no decision" — it's the key to differentiating your company in a market where most products and services are, honestly, good enough.