Human connection is the difference between winning and losing

The margin between winning a deal and losing is very slim.

This is especially true in markets when there are no meaningful differences between vendors and the products they sell.

Which is largely the case in every market segment with more than a handful of competitors.

This was reinforced for me recently by a story a friend told me.

Dale said that he was starting a construction project to build a small rental unit at the back of his property behind his house.

I asked him about his process to hire a contractor to do the project.

I wanted to compare it to the process I’d gone through last year to hire a contractor for an apartment renovation in NYC.

Dale said that once he had his architectural plans approved by the city he lived in, he started searching for a general contractor to build the unit.

He did his research online, spoke to a number of friends who’d used contractors and identified five firms as potential candidates.

He interviewed all five before narrowing his choices down and asking the three finalists to submit bids.

The estimates he had from all three contractors were very similar.

The references he spoke with for all three firms were uniformly positive.

He felt confident that any of the three would do a good job.

But he didn’t know how to decide among them. He was stuck.

Then one day Dale walked into his local grocery store and ran into John, the owner of one of the three finalists.

They had a conversation standing over the vegetables in the produce aisle.

Dale told me that even though he’d previously interviewed John, he felt he really hadn’t gotten to know him.

It turns out that John lives in the same neighborhood as Dale. They know people in common. Their kids had attended the same local schools.

In those moments standing over the lettuce and carrots in the store a human connection was established.

Dale told me that as he walked out of the store he decided “That’s who I want to spend my money with.”

Which is exactly what your buyers are saying.

For example, there are market segments in SaaS, such as conversational intelligence, with more than 100 competitors. As far as buyers are concerned, the products all largely do the same things for roughly the same price.

So, when buyers make their decision about which vendor to work with, it rarely comes down to product features or price.

My experience has been that more often than not, it comes down to the buyer’s personal experience with the seller. On the big things and the little. Like forming a connection on a human level.

Which can influence who they want to spend their money with.

And create that small margin of victory that is the slim difference between winning and losing.