Most of them aren't lost to a competitor: the decision is postponed until the deal drops off the forecast. Research on 2.5 million recorded sales conversations puts this at 40% to 60% of deals, and in more than half of them the cause is the buyer's fear of making the wrong call, not love of the status quo.
Try this with last year's lost deals.
Count how many went to a competitor. Then count how many were postponed: "The customer needs more time." "Slipped to the next quarter." "Went quiet."
In my experience, the second list is often the longer one. Most teams have never counted it, because a postponed deal doesn't feel lost. It slips one quarter, then another, and one day it is simply no longer in the forecast.
The second list is the expensive one
Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Sale, and Ted McKenna analysed 2.5 million recorded sales conversations for The JOLT Effect (2022). They found that 40% to 60% of deals end in no decision.
In Europe, we rarely call it that. We say the decision was postponed, or the deal slipped to the next quarter. They are the same deals under a kinder name.
These are the expensive deals. I can tell you that. You paid the full cost of sale: the meetings, the demos, the proposal, the travel. Nobody won the deal, not even a rival. And because nobody lost to anyone, the deal rarely gets a proper review. It just drops off the forecast.
The same research found something less comfortable. Most of those buyers didn't love the status quo. They were afraid of making the wrong call.
That changes the seller's job.
My champion liked me. That was the problem.
In 2009, at T-Mobile, I had one of the largest tenders in my pipeline: a large logistics company. My champion was on my side. They wanted the deal as much as I did.
It didn't come through. I was a self-made seller then, not yet trained in sales, and I didn't see why: my champion couldn't move anyone else inside the organisation. Being on my side and being able to deliver a decision were two different things, and I had only checked the first.
Every sales methodology I have worked with since has a name for the person I was missing. Solution Selling calls the role the power sponsor. MEDDIC calls it the champion, and its definition already includes power and influence; by that standard, what I had in 2009 wasn't a champion at all. The Challenger Customer (2015) calls it the Mobilizer: rarely the friendliest person in the room, often not the most senior, usually the one asking the uncomfortable questions.
Different names, same lesson. Liking you is not the same as being able to deliver the decision.
And the room has grown. Forrester's 2024 buying research puts the average B2B decision at 13 people. Your champion is one of them.
What "let me check with my team" usually means
I have been on the other side of this table too. I have said "let me check with my team" to vendors more than once, and it was never a diplomatic no.
The last time was at Philips. I wanted to deploy a software solution for our North American sales team, and I was convinced it was the right choice. My team was not aligned. So I said the sentence every seller hates, and I meant it literally.
I was not unusual. Gartner found that 74% of B2B buying teams show unhealthy conflict during the decision: conflicting objectives, disagreement on the best course of action, people overruled from outside the group.
The person telling you "let me check" is often the one member of that group who already wants to say yes and can't yet say it for everyone. What helps that person is support with the internal conversation, not another pitch.
Why more relationship building doesn't help
When a deal stalls, the instinct is to get closer to the contact: another lunch, another call, another casual check-in. It feels like progress, because the contact is still warm.
The contact was rarely the problem. The deal stalled somewhere in their group. A warmer relationship with one person doesn't make 12 other people agree, and it doesn't make the decision feel any safer.
In my experience, buyers don't reward the seller who agrees with them. They reward the one who changes how they think about their own problem and then makes the decision feel safe. That means teaching the group something they didn't know about their business, and helping your contact carry that argument into rooms you will never sit in.
This is also the core of the Challenger approach, and what our in-company Challenger programme is built around.
Three questions that show whether a decision is ready
You can test a postponed deal with three questions to your contact. Who else has to say yes? What would they need to see? What does it cost them to wait another quarter?
Vague answers mean the decision isn't ready, however warm the relationship feels. Specific answers usually mean it is: you know the people, the proof they need, and the cost of doing nothing.
Then ask yourself one more question about your contact: can this person move the decision, or do they simply enjoy talking to us? If the response is the second one, your next meeting isn't with them alone.
Count the postponed deals yourself
You don't need anyone from outside for this. One afternoon and your CRM are enough.
Pull every deal from the last 12 months that closed as lost, or that was pushed back at least twice (if your CRM can't show that, take every deal more than one quarter past its first close date). Mark each one: lost to a competitor, or postponed until it died. Be strict. "Budget frozen", with no named alternative, goes on the second list.
Take the five biggest deals from the second list and answer three questions for each, from what is written down, not from memory. A blank counts as no. Did we know by name who else had to say yes? Did we teach the customer something about their business they didn't know before? Did our contact present the case inside their company, or did we only ever hear "let me check with my team"?
Then do the same with the open pipeline. For every deal due this quarter, ask your contact to do one thing that costs them a little effort inside their organisation: bring two colleagues to the next meeting, share the numbers behind the problem, or put the topic on their leadership agenda. A contact who can move the decision will usually do at least one of these. If yours keeps finding reasons not to, that tells you who you are really talking to.
Where your contact is willing but the group isn't moving, offer to write a one-page case together for their leadership: the problem in their own numbers, the cost of waiting another quarter, the options, including doing nothing, and how the risk of the change is kept small. That page makes the decision safer for everyone who has to sign it, and it reaches the people you will never meet.
Before your next forecast review
Put the two lists side by side.
If the first list is longer, your team may have a product, price, or positioning problem. If the second list is longer, the problem sits earlier in the sale: in who your team sells to, and in what they teach the buying group before anyone talks about price.
My suggestion: count both lists before you decide what your team needs to learn next. The length of the second one usually answers the question for you.
If the second list is longer than the first in your team, 25 minutes is enough to see where the decisions stall.
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