Moe Revenue

My Worst Sale

I had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my college friends near the end of ‘09 and in a moment of reflection he had the ill manners to ask, “What was your biggest lost-sale disappointment?”

It took about 2 milliseconds to flash back to my computer systems days in Detroit. I was branch manager for Digital Equipment Corporation and the auto industry was our number one market opportunity. The primary competition was always Big Blue (IBM) with their decades of executive contacts, global auto industry experience and massive inside networks to support their recommended solution on every bid. It was the perfect environment to learn how to win the ‘geo-political complex sale.’

We won a large factory line automation project at Chrysler involving a totally new gas guzzling vehicle they were getting ready to announce. The project was just under $1M for us which was real money in the ‘70’s. We had received the vendor selection notification letter from a Chrysler Procurement VP with a confirmation that the complete award package (contract plus new building drawings of the production line layout) would arrive in about 2 weeks.

We were celebrating our win and getting ready to start when the first gas crisis put the country and economy into a tail spin. The bottom line is Chrysler immediately cancelled the project via a courier delivered notice that we received the day before the Postal Service delivered the complete award package.  That’s right, we received the cancellation notice a day before we received the signed contract.

Initially, we thought Big Blue might have caused the gas crisis – we actually thought they might do something like that just to cancel our contract.  Now that is a serious competitor…or a bit of paranoia from being smaller company.

The lesson here was a timeless sales truth – the deal is never done until the check clears the bank.