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GM to the Top 1% ☕
A few quarters ago I ran what I would have called a perfect cycle. Tight discovery. A demo the technical team applauded. A champion who used the word partner unprompted.
We lost. And in the debrief call, the buyer said something I have not stopped thinking about. Honestly, the internal doc had a recommended vendor before we ever talked to any of you. You were the diligence.
Three weeks before I knew the account was in market, an analyst on their side had asked an AI assistant to compare the space, pulled customer evidence, and written a recommendation. Every meeting I was so proud of was the appendix to a decision that was already made.
💡 YOU ARE NOT LOSING DEALS. YOU ARE ENTERING THEM PRE-LOST.
The instinct after a loss like that is to sharpen execution. Better demo. Better traps for the competitor. I did that for years and it works when the game is live.
But a pre-lost deal is not a live game. The recommendation exists, the criteria are shaped around the favorite, and your role is to make the process look rigorous. No amount of in-cycle brilliance beats a conclusion the buyer reached in private, with a machine, before you arrived.
The honest question is not how do I win this deal. It is when was this deal actually decided, and was I present in the sources that decided it. The day I started asking that question out loud, my pipeline reviews changed. Some deals I walked away from a quarter earlier. Others I stopped treating as evaluations and started treating as appeals, which is a different sales motion with different moves. Naming the truth was the unlock.
🔧 THE PRE-LOST DEAL DETECTOR
Run every new opportunity through these four checks in the first two weeks.
1. Date the shortlist: Ask directly when the vendor list was formed and what research produced it. A list older than the deal is a red flag with a timestamp.
2. Find the fingerprints: Ask which materials the team has already read about you. If they quote your competitor's framing of your product, the recommendation doc was not yours.
3. Test criteria flexibility: Propose one evaluation criterion that favors you. If it cannot be added, the criteria are load bearing for someone else's decision.
4. Choose the right motion: Live deal, sell forward. Pre-lost deal, either reset the criteria at the executive level or qualify out and spend the hours on accounts not yet in market.
🎯 THIS WEEK'S HOMEWORK
Take your biggest open deal and date its shortlist this week. One direct question to your champion: when did the vendor list form, and what document shaped it? If the answer predates your first touch, decide on purpose whether you are selling or appealing.
❓ QUESTION OF THE DAY
Have you ever won a deal after learning you were the diligence, not the favorite?
Reply and tell me how. The best answer runs in a future issue.
See you tomorrow.
Edward
Founder, Morning Sales
P.S. The fix for pre-lost deals is presence before the deal forms. The 500 AI Sales Prompts manual has the exact prompts I use to spot in-market signals early and write the insight notes that get you on the list. 27 dollars, lifetime access: https://store.edwardgorbis.com