The Deal That Killed the Quarter

The emails had been flying for weeks.
The demos were tailored to perfection.
Even the CFO was in the room for the final pitch — a rare, promising sign.

This was the deal.
The one that would make the quarter.
The one sitting at the top of the forecast with a big, green Commit tag next to it.

The account team had been working it for months. Stakeholders were aligned. Procurement had seen the numbers. Competitors were barely in the conversation.

And then… silence.

No returned calls. No follow-up on the proposal. No “Hey, something’s changed” courtesy email. Just a ghosted opportunity that sat in the CRM like an empty chair at a dinner table.

Three weeks later, the news came through a backchannel: “They went with a different approach. Said priorities shifted.”

The Forecast Fallout

If you’ve ever run a sales organization, you know what that feels like.

One deal disappears, and suddenly the quarter isn’t just “off” — it’s at risk.
Your board wants answers. Your CEO wants a recovery plan. The team’s confidence takes a hit.

In this case, the loss didn’t happen because the competition had better pricing, a slicker demo, or a fancier feature set.

They lost because they’d been selling into a Product-Centric Buying process — and never saw the trap until it was too late.

How the Trap Works

On the surface, Product-Centric Buying looks safe. The buyer hands over a clean set of requirements. Integration points, must-have features, budget range. The sales team gets to work lining up the product to match.

But here’s the problem: those requirements are almost always written in reaction to symptoms, not root causes.

• “Customer churn is up — we need better onboarding software.”

• “Sales are slowing — we need a better CRM.”

Both sound logical. Neither diagnoses why churn is up or sales are slowing.

When you sell into that environment without challenging it, you’re building a deal on a shaky foundation. The buyer’s urgency fades the moment another project feels more pressing. Or, worse, another vendor comes in and reframes the problem in a way that makes your solution irrelevant.

That’s exactly what happened in this deal. While the account team was running perfect demos, another competitor was digging into the business problem. They weren’t selling software — they were selling an outcome.

And they won.

Why CROs Should Lose Sleep Over This

Losing a competitive bake-off hurts. But losing a forecasted win because the buyer wasn’t anchored to solving a real, validated problem? That’s the stuff that kills predictability.

• Forecasts go sideways. Deals vanish without warning.

• Sales cycles stretch. Buyers stall because they’re not sure they’re solving the right thing.

• Win rates plummet. You’re competing on price and features, not impact.

This isn’t just a sales execution problem — it’s a sales system problem.

The Competitive Edge You’re Leaving on the Table

Here’s the part most leaders miss: avoiding the product-centric trap doesn’t just prevent losses — it creates wins.

When you collaborate with buyers to define and validate the problem before you ever talk about product, you:

• Shape decision criteria in your favor.

• Eliminate bad-fit deals early.

• Build urgency that survives shifting priorities.

It’s not about selling harder. It’s about selling smarter.

This Isn’t the Whole Playbook

There’s more to this than “ask better questions” or “challenge the RFP.”
Fixing this requires a shift in how your org thinks about discovery, enablement, and forecast discipline.

I break it all down — the research, the competitive framework, and the step-by-step shift — in our full eBook:
👉 The High Cost of Product-Centric Buying

If you’ve ever lost a deal you thought was yours, you already know how it feels.
The question is — how many more times are you willing to feel it?