Make sure you understand the question before you answer
We almost lost a deal in LOI recently when a small thing turned into something pretty big. When asked pre LOI, my client told our buyer his company got an average of 10 leads, meaning demo downloads, a day on their website. The buyer took that to mean 10 leads to follow up and try to close, and made an offer that was accepted after some negotiating. The factoid not communicated early in the process was that 4 of the 10 were discarded immediately without follow up because they were already in the sales pipeline or otherwise not qualified.
Our buyer built a sales model based on what they heard. When they realized their assumed revenue numbers were too high by 40%, they tried to give my client a serious haircut. Getting the buyer to a more realistic proposal took about two weeks of negotiating and concessions on structure to overcome.
The lesson is to make sure you understand the question before you answer. In this case, a difference in the definition of the word “lead “ nearly killed the deal.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 16 December 2009
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