When a deal goes quiet, the first thing we ask is “who did they go with?”
Usually the answer is nobody.
They didn’t pick a competitor. They picked “not now”. The old system limps on, the budget goes somewhere else, the project slides to next year. In my experience that’s how more deals end than any rival ever wins.
Jen Allen-Knuth, who works with sales teams on exactly this, talks a lot about challenging the status quo and the customer’s fear of getting it wrong. In a webinar for G2 on earning trust in the AI era, the starting point was simple: buyers are overwhelmed by AI-written content and cold pitches that all sound the same.
Why AI is making “not now” worse
Think about it from the buyer’s side. Every supplier now has a polished deck, a perfect email and a confident chatbot. Every option looks equally shiny. When everything looks the same, doing nothing feels like the safest choice.
Add the fact that buyers are researching more on their own. Gartner found 67% of B2B buyers would rather not deal with a sales rep at all, as reported here. So when they do talk to you, you might get one shot.
What I try to do instead
Make the cost of waiting real. Not “prices go up next month”. The actual cost of the old thing: hours lost, errors, the store that can’t find its stock on a Saturday.
Make the first step small. A pilot in one site. One team. Something a nervous buyer can say yes to without betting their job.
Talk about the risk out loud. “What would have to go wrong for this to be a bad decision?” It feels odd to ask. It’s often the most useful question in the meeting.
Be the one thing that isn’t generic. A real number from their world. A short note in my own words. A call instead of the fourth email.
The other supplier isn’t always the problem. Inertia is. And inertia doesn’t care how good your AI-written proposal looks.
Beat “not now” before you worry about anyone else.
