We tend to think that our biggest competitors are our closest industry rivals and possibly the new disruptors in the market. But just as often, we’re up against a less obvious and even more confounding challenge: the magnetic pull of the status quo.
This might explain why, in a recent webinar, sales leaders told us that their biggest sales challenge is opportunities that initially progress but then lose momentum. As many salespeople have discovered, no matter how great your product or service is, and no matter how perfectly matched your solution is to a client’s needs, the reality for many customers today is that doing nothing is still the easiest and safest choice. All that interest and enthusiasm they showed early on in the process fizzles out, and a once-promising deal stalls out indefinitely.
So how do you compete with inertia? It helps to take a step back and think about what