Alignment: The Missing Ingredient in Most Stalled Deals

In long-term marriages, alignment on core issues—such as financial priorities, parenting philosophies, and work-life balance—is essential. In business, especially in enterprise software sales, the same principle holds true: cross-departmental alignment around key philosophies and operational decisions is critical for success.

A Common Misconception

Many SaaS vendors assume that their prospects are aligned with the vendor’s value proposition and know how to act on it; in reality, that alignment often doesn’t exist. Deals stall not because prospects disagree, but because they lack internal alignment or don’t know how to achieve it—and may be unwilling to invest the effort required.

The Real Job in Software Sales

The true challenge in selling organizational-change software isn’t just convincing a buyer to agree with you, it’s helping the buyer organization agree with itself. Sales success often hinges on your ability to identify and facilitate that internal alignment.

So How Do You Create Alignment?

Alignment can take many forms:

• A shared willingness to accept risk

• Agreement to share in the benefits or

• Simply the act of removing perceived risk by granting “permission” to proceed

Your sales process must be designed to identify which of these is required—and then actively bring it into being.

Why Experience Matters

Experienced sales professionals are effective not because they’ve worked longer, but because they’ve learned not to waste time. They recognize misalignment quickly, know how to diagnose it, and have tools to bridge the gap. That’s what makes them consistently successful.

Try Pipeline Grader

If you’re tired of getting ghosted in late-stage competitive deals, it’s time to try Pipeline Grader. It helps you identify whether alignment exists, whether it can be created, and—critically—what to do next. The result:

• Higher close rates

• More accurate forecasting at the line-item level

• Better cash flow

• Greater enterprise value