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Your prospective customers are primed for disappointment before you even talk to them.
I'm sure most people will think this doesn't apply to them. After all, if you weren't optimistic you wouldn't be working in sales. But nearly 60% of software buyers regret a recent purchase.
According to Gartner research in 2023 and 2024, close to 60% of software buyers regret a purchase they made in the last 12–18 months, and among buyers involved in renewals, 60% regret nearly every purchase they make. This means that even an above-average sales person and solutions professional is selling to customers who regret their purchases afterwards.
While this might not bother you if all you care about is making your sale and getting your commission, most Solutions professionals tend to care more about their customers' success. Even if you really don't care though, the trend of customer regret and disappointment is having a ripple effect in every industry and that is making it harder and harder for sales teams to meet their numbers.
Every time a customer regrets their purchase, they become less likely to trust someone selling to them in the future. And since so many buyers end up regretting a purchase, you will be unlikely to run across ANYONE who hasn't felt like they made a poor purchasing decision in their career.
Given this increasingly skeptical landscape of buyers, let's explore what technical executives actually care about when you're in the room with them. Helping to understand what they care about can help you to position yourself and walk out of the room with confidence that at least they can trust you and that you want to help them succeed.
Below are the top 5 things that technical executives are evaluating while you're talking with them.
1. "Are you going to create more work for me, or take it off my plate?"
Solutions Consultants are the technical experts on the sales team. We know everything about our product or services from inside and out and can answer nearly every question that comes our way. (Cue video asking if you can draw 7 red lines, some with red ink and some with transparent. If you know you know.)
To most technical executives, this knowledge isn't the most important. While we may be an expert on our own things, we are not an expert on everything that is required to manage the complete technology stack of a department or a whole company. The most important consideration is if your solution will create more work or reduce work.
56% of no-purchase decisions are tied to FOMU
According to research listed in The JOLT Effect by Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna, over half (56%) of no-purchase decisions are tied to "FOMU" or the Fear of Messing Up. Companies are choosing to do NOTHING instead of making a purchase that they feel will make their lives more difficult or complicated.
AI is making this even worse today, not better. A staggering 72% of AI use cases fail to succeed and meet ROI expectations, with 20% of AI use cases outright failing according to Gartner in 2025. Teams who push ROI expectations as a reason to purchase just aren't answering this question correctly.
Solutions teams need to make change feel less risky than doing nothing at all. It's not good enough to just prove that your product is good. You need to prove that you as a partner will reduce the IT Exec's overall load, not just that you are the best selection amongst your competitors.
2. "Will you tell me the truth when the truth costs you the deal?"
Buyers have changed. Rarely will you join a sales call where a prospect has not already done a significant amount of research. Yes, they will often answer the question "Are you familiar with us" by saying "No" ... but that's just because they want to hear your spin on yourself. The research all tells the same overall story of a buyer's perception: Vendors can't be trusted, and sales people will be dishonest to make a sale.
- Direct sales teams are the LEAST trusted information source when making a purchasing decision according to Forrester in 2024
- Buyers do not trust any information on a company's website, with only 15% of buyers even consulting vendor marketing materials any more, according to TrustRadius in 2024. Oh, and don't bother with contributing to the company blog. Only 5% of buyers read those.
- TrustRadius also reports that 73% of buyers say they regularly or sometimes encounter fake reviews online
The situation is bleak for trust. Buyers arrive already discounting everything a sales team says and is hunting for any information NOT published by you and your marketing teams.
As a Solutions professional here's the primary gap that should concern you: 84% of vendors say they're upfront about their product's limitations, but only 36% of buyers feel their vendor actually is, according to TrustRadius. For years, buyers have been telling us they don't believe we'll be honest about our own weaknesses.
“No, I want to hear the answer from HIM”
The IT executive in the room with you wants to know if they can trust ANY of the words you are saying. I remember relatively early in my career sitting in a room of executives with a prospective buyer. The whole expanded sales team was in the room, and it was my job to provide technical guidance and answer anything that was asked that related to HOW our solution would work. Near the end of the meeting, the CIO asked a question that was outside of the scope of what we could accomplish. One of my very seasoned colleagues, who had spent time at major consulting firms, started to answer. The CIO stopped him, and said "No, I want to hear the answer from HIM" and pointed at me.
I didn't recognize it at the time, but the CIO wanted to know if I would be 100% truthful and transparent even when describing something that would paint our solution in a bad light. It was a test to see if he could trust me. Even though I was the least-senior person in the room, if I could not be trusted to be fully honest, then the prospect had no reason to believe anything that our team told them.
Solutions teams have the unique responsibility to gain a prospect's trust above all else. If we can't be trusted, our solution won't be purchased.
3. "How does this actually fail?"
Every solutions consultant is armed with customer use-cases and proof points about all of the times that the project or solution has succeeded. These use-cases are rehearsed and baked into every presentation. Let me know if this rings a bell:
"We have customer BLAH who was struggling because they had BLAH going on. They purchased our software and saw a BLAH increase in BLAH after BLAH months, resulting in BLAH revenue increase."
The problem with success stories is that not only do they sound generic but they are so easily faked and omit critical information. What is important to an IT exec is to know about all of the time things didn't go to plan. Any executive has been around long enough to have seen projects fail and timelines be missed and promised returns not realized.
Half of buyers get on calls with existing users just to validate vendor claims
Research from TrustRadius in 2024 shows that buyers don't take the happy path at face value. About half of buyers take existing user calls to validate vendor claims specifically, and as stated earlier most buyers assume that any review online could be fake.
As a part of building trust with your customer, talk about how things have gone wrong. Just like question two above, it is important for your prospect to believe that you will be truthful at any cost. Sharing how things have failed shows that you can be trusted with both the good results as well as the bad.
Further, knowing how implementations have failed helps the IT exec to understand if they have the capacity and capability to implement what you are selling. Successful implementation isn't fully up to a vendor, and helping the customer to succeed includes arming them with information they will need post-purchase.
4. "Are you listening, or waiting to talk?"
Gong has done a lot of research related to what they refer to as the "listen-to-talk" ratio. Yes, I acknowledge that Gong has a lot to gain by our interest in the metrics they can help us measure, but I have personally seen the impact of improving how much you listen compared to how much you talk when in a sales call.
Top performers talk 43% of the time. Everyone else talks 68%
According to their research, top B2B performers hold a 43:57 talk-to-listen ratio, meaning that high performers talk LESS than their prospective customers when on calls. The average, for comparison, is closer to a 68:32 ratio. High performers hold a steady ratio, as well, whether they win or lose. Low performers tend to talk more when they feel like they are losing a deal.
Why is listening important on sales calls? After all, isn't it your job to join a call and help a customer understand your product?
In short, no. It is your job to make sales. Sales happen when a prospect decides to purchase what you are selling. Sellers who listen earn the trust of those who are purchasing. Buyers want to feel their situation is uniquely understood, and the Gong data backs this up. Sellers who listen sell more than those who talk.
5. "Is this a team I want to bet on for three years?"
Ask any product marketer why their product is selected by their customers, and you'll get a litany of product features and benefits that customers receive from the solution.
39% of buyers chose a product simply because it was the safest, most trusted option
In reality, that's not why customers buy something. Research by TrustRadius and 6sense paints an interesting story. The eventual winner is already on the buyer's shortlist 95% of the time before the first sales call, and buyers had prior experience with that vendor in 85% of deals according to 6sens. TrustRadius further reports that nearly 4 in 10 buyers say they chose a product simply because it was the safest, most trusted option.
Companies are evaluating if they want to work with YOU. Executives are underwriting a multi-year bet. If they can reduce risk in any way they will do that, either through the trust they build or from the knowledge they have of your company OUTSIDE of what you tell them. The Solutions Consultant who demonstrates the trust and longevity is helping to make the buying decision easy.
It's all about them
It's tempting as a Solutions Consultant to focus on ourselves and our product. Most executives care very little about your product. They care about YOU. Specifically, they care about understanding if they can trust you, work with you, that you have their best intentions in mind, and that you believe you can make their lives easier.
Quit focusing on yourself so much. Focus on the needs of your prospects and help simplify their buying decision and you will start to see more and more success during the later stages of a deal.
About the Guest
Jack Cochran is the General Manager of Presales Collective, the largest community for Solutions professionals, with over 70,000 members globally. Before PSC he spent 10+ years in Solutions roles at companies ranging from the largest software and hardware vendors to early-stage startups. He writes about the craft of selling as a technical seller. Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jackcochran
