The Three P's are a lie we tell ourselves

Ask any seller why they lost a deal and you'll get one of three answers. Let's call them the three P's.

Product: we didn't have what they needed.

Price: we couldn't get there.

Politics: it was beyond my control.

Every one of these is comfortable. Every one of these is external. And every one of these, most of the time, is a story we tell ourselves so we don't have to look at what actually happened.

Product isn't the problem. Our Discovery is.

"We didn't have what they needed" almost never means we were missing a feature. It means we never got specific enough about their pain to connect what we do have to what they're actually losing sleep over. The prospect walks away thinking we're not a fit.

The real version of this story is: We didn't communicate how our product addresses their clear pain points in their own words.

Price isn't the problem. Our Value Prop is.

"We couldn't get there" is what we say when price was never anchored to anything. If the number feels high, it's not because the number is wrong; it's because we never built the case for why it's a no-brainer relative to the cost of doing nothing.

The real version of this story: We didn't explain the value prop clearly enough for the price to be obvious.

Politics isn't the problem. Our Buyer Map is.

"Beyond my control" usually means we were talking to one person and hoping they'd carry the deal for us internally. We never multithreaded into other stakeholders who had a say. We never learned how this organization makes decisions, who signs off and who can quietly kill it.

The real version of this story: We didn't understand how they buy.

Why does this reframe matter?

Excuses are external and unfixable. The above are internal and fixable. If we lost because of any of these, the world just wasn't on our side this time. But if we lose because we didn't nail discovery, didn't clearly build value or didn't map the buying committee, that's a skill. Skills can be practiced, and we can get better at exactly these moments that kill deals.

This reframe tells us what to fix.

— Cliff