Act Like a Business

When I was the buyer, I rarely lacked for good options. The problem was that I had several, and they were all close.

Feature by feature, the lead swung week to week. One pulled ahead on Monday, another by Friday. On capability alone I could not have told you who was winning, and anyone who says that kind of race has a clear leader is likely selling something.

So the choice stopped being about the product. When the options are a coin flip, you are choosing who you want across the table for the next few years: when the thing breaks, when your priorities shift, when you need something you never bought.

One company understood that, and it showed from the first meeting.

They came in knowing I had a choice, and acted like it. No entitlement, no pressure. Their time went to what the relationship would be like after the purchase, not to the demo. And they said, literally, that my business mattered more to them than this deal mattered to me, and that they would honor it. They used the word relationship, and they meant it as a commitment: there when I needed them, and there at the moments I did not yet know I would.

Then came the thing that earned it. They knew we could build what they were selling. Anyone can build almost anything now, and they did not pretend otherwise. So they made it a question of opportunity cost. Let us carry the build, they said, so your people spend their days operating it, not building it. And when our build falls short of what you need, we will build you the feature that closes the gap. A vendor telling me plainly what I could do without them, then making the case for why I should not.

We figured it would be a good test. They over-delivered on it.

Here is what founders miss. When your product and three others are a dead heat, the tiebreaker is maturity. The enterprise is handing a piece of itself to another business, and it reads you the whole time for whether you will still be standing, and still be straight with them, in three years.

Act like a business. Know the buyer has a choice. Care more about the year after the signature than the minute before it. And be straight about what they could build without you.

The product was a coin flip. The relationship never was.