Ask The Team – Stalled Project Start

Stalled Project Start

I sell projects to CXO and senior level execs. A typical sales cycle is approx 4-6 months. I’ve been doing this for 2 years and rank at about the 75% level against my peers. I made by number last year, but am falling short this year. I have a prospect I’ve been working on for almost a year. The deal very nearly closed about 8 months ago – I had a verbal commitment from my primary contact (PC); and we were finalizing a start date, when the PC went quiet for a couple of weeks, and then I received an email from her telling me that she’d left the firm and transferred out of state to join a different company in a similar but non-competing space. She said she’d teed it up with her ex-boss to take over the project and I should get in touch with him to get things rolling.

When I got in touch with him he said he’d been leaning on my PC to get the project started as it was very important; but now he wanted to wait until the PC’s replacement was hired so we would have better support internally for the project. It took 3 months – staying in touch (possibly a bit too much at times) – for the boss guy to decide to promote one of the original PC’s direct reports. When I had a joint call with the boss and the new PC, the PC was the only one that showed up and on that call asked for a revised proposal for a smaller project. Since sending the revised proposal I’ve been unable to re-engage with the PC at any level! Through the boss’s admin I was able to schedule another call with the boss and the PC, but they both no-showed!

Where do I go from here?