Your B2B deal is stuck because your champion is pointing
Your B2B deal is stuck because your champion is pointing at smoke. The fire is somewhere else.
I learned that from my retired neighbor.
He had never sold software. Never run a pipeline review. Never sat through a forecast call.
He was a firefighter. Years ago, I was talking to him over the fence about a deal I could not move.
Four months in.
Good discovery. Strong demo. Champion liked us. Next steps agreed.
Then nothing. Six weeks of polite replies and no decision.
I told him, “I can’t work out what I’ve missed.” He asked me, “Do you know what’s actually on fire?”
I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
He said, “At a house fire, everyone points somewhere different. Kitchen. Garage. Bedroom. Dog’s missing. People are scared, so they shout at whatever they can see.”
“But the fire is not always where people point.” “Sometimes it is inside the wall. Sometimes it is in the attic.”
Then he said the line I still think about: “If you spray water where people are shouting, they calm down. But the house still burns.”
The next day, I changed how I approached the deal.
I stopped asking about timeline. I stopped asking about procurement. I stopped asking when they wanted another call.
I asked one question to the right person:
“What happens if this is still unsolved in 90 days?” That changed the deal.
The workflow issue my champion kept raising was real. But it was not the reason the business would buy.
The fire was a compliance deadline in Q4. Miss it, and the company faced a six-figure penalty.
My champion did not know that. The CFO did.
So I stopped talking about workflow. I started talking about the penalty, the deadline, and who owned the risk.
The deal closed three weeks later. I still see this in stalled deals.
The champion explains the problem they can see. The buyer moves on the problem that carries cost, risk, or consequence.
When a deal stalls, another demo will not fix it. A better deck will not fix it.
Checking in definitely will not fix it.
Find the person who knows what burns if nothing changes.
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