Buyers had picked a winner before sales ever called
A consultant who has spent 15 years interviewing buyers says the deals were lost in the research phase, not the demo. One SaaS company doubled its conversion rate by fixing the buying experience instead of the sales team.
A SaaS chief executive told consultant Jehan Lalkaka his sales team was missing quota while qualified leads were up. His conclusion was that the team needed better execution.
Lalkaka's team interviewed 18 prospects who had spoken to sales and declined to buy. On his account, the problem was not the pitch: the prospects had expected an entirely different buying process from the one they got.
The company changed the buying experience rather than the sales script. Lalkaka reports conversion of qualified leads rose from 14% to 31%.
The numbers behind that shift are not his own. He cites Gartner research finding 61% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, and 6sense data indicating buyers typically do not engage sales until they are around two-thirds of the way through the process, by which point 85% to 95% of the decision is made.
In other words, the sales call is often a confirmation exercise. Eleven of the 18 prospects had chosen another vendor.
Their reasons, as Lalkaka quotes them, had nothing to do with rapport. One said they had spent weeks comparing vendors alone and already had a favourite because that vendor made it easier to understand how the product would work for them.
Another said they were not looking for a sales call at all, but for examples, customer stories and practical guidance. A third said the winning vendor had answered most of their questions before anyone reached out.
Lalkaka's framework, drawn from 15 years of win-loss interviews, messaging studies and website research, is that buyers apply five tests: the problem test, the expertise test, the fit test, the solution test and the risk test. He argues conviction only arrives once all five are passed.
The first is whether the vendor understands the buyer's situation. Generic messaging fails it, and his prescription is content about the buyer's problem rather than the product — research, guides, playbooks and landing pages that make the buyer feel understood before any conversation.
The second is whether the expertise is real. His test of that is simple: help the buyer solve a small part of the problem before they pay you, through articles, templates, calculators or webinars they can act on immediately.
For a founder, the practical question is narrower than a framework. It is whether someone evaluating your product at 11pm, with no intention of booking a call, can answer their own questions from your website.
If they cannot, the deal is decided before your sales pipeline records it as a lead.