The Cost of Doing Nothing

If you’re in B2B, you know that only 5% -10% of prospects in your Total Addressable Market (TAM) are ready to buy at any given time.

That’s a really small segment. On top of that, solutions are becoming more of the same (with no real differentiation), purchasing budgets are shrinking, teams are expected to do more with less, sales cycles are getting longer, companies have higher risk aversion, and larger buying committees are getting involved in purchase decisions to manage costs and mitigate risks. There's a lot of “wait and see” in the market.

No one wants to get in trouble for buying expensive software that turns out to be a complete waste of time and money. 

We focus a lot on proving ROI (as we should) to prove to prospects that this solution will help them improve their business in some way. 

But we don’t focus nearly as much as we should on educating buyers on the Cost of Doing Nothing.

The status quo is our biggest competitor because it’s the least risky option for the buyer. Even if the prospect knows that their current setup is not ideal, they would rather have an inefficient status quo than a productive but inherently risky solution where they have to justify the change (costs, training, infrastructure and integration implications).

The Cost of Doing Nothing includes the cost of manual/inefficient processes, the potential loss in revenue from customers leaving your company for one with better services, and the opportunity cost of lost revenue from new customer acquisition.  

ROI must be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And the Cost of Doing Nothing has to be greater than the cost and benefit of changing the status quo.