Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease; he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary.—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
As soon as the play shows signs of leading into an endgame, reconsider the position from that point of view. If you feel uneasy about it, defer the endgame as long as you can and utilize the time gained in improving your chances for the ending. If, on the contrary, your chances are good, bring about the endgame as quickly as you can.—Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky
Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night?—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
In business development, the rules of engagement can change radically once late middle game begins and customers begin their formal purchasing process. Sometimes the people who have been talking to you are no longer allowed to talk to you. The communication channels that had been so open and helpful—for both you and your customer—are sealed tight and the flow of information becomes measured and prescribed. This is the Realm of Procurement, and if you have had a close and productive relationship with the customer, late middle game can seem as strange as falling down a rabbit hole and having tea with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.
If your customers do not have formal procurement processes with well-defined rules and procedures about how major products or services are purchased, then our analogy may seem far-fetched. However, if you sell to federal, state, or local governments, or to corporations that do have formal purchasing processes, then our allusions to Alice in Wonderland will make perfect sense. For the benefit of all readers, here’s how it often works.
Communication with suppliers is typically very open before the start of the formal purchasing process. Then, at some point, the specifications, scope of work, and bid request documents are prepared, approved, and ready to be issued. The budget is approved, and the purchasing request moves into the customer’s purchasing department, where it is assigned to a purchasing agent whose responsibility is to manage the process from that point forward according to the laws, rules, regulations, or guidelines in force. At this point, the need has been formalized and has left the hands of the people and departments where it originated. Those people will have found it useful to talk openly with suppliers while they were exploring their needs, but in many formal purchasing situations they become incommunicado once the requirement is dropped into a purchasing manager’s lap. The reason for the sudden stonewall is procurement integrity, and in federal procurements, preserving the integrity of the system is—like gravity—more than just a good idea, it’s the law.
This process has thousands of variations and may not apply at all in your industry or with your customers. Sometimes, there is a discernible shift in mood and tone once formal purchasing begins but you still have access to the customer’s key people and can continue positioning your solution. Sometimes, only a reduced field of providers continues to have access. If you are among those excluded, you may get a message that says, in effect, “Thanks for your interest, and better luck next time.” In other cases, the door is slammed shut on everyone. When that occurs, you lose access to key people and can no longer effectively influence the outcome, which is another reason why you should start early in middle game to condition the customer and position yourself to win. If you wait too long, you will lose the opportunity to presell your solution and will probably have lost the contract. In any case, the circumstances of late middle game vary considerably, so bear in mind as we discuss this phase of the business development process that there is no average situation. Whether or not you can do any of the things we suggest will depend on your customers, their particular purchasing process, and how much access they grant you to their key people as they begin formal purchasing.
In this chapter, we also discuss how you can recover from a weak middle game position and defend yourself if your competitors have done a better job of positioning and behavioral differentiation prior to late middle game. Be forewarned, however, that most late middle game defensive actions are truly a shot in the dark. If you wait until late middle game to start chasing an opportunity, prayer may be more helpful to you than behavioral differentiation because your behavior will already have communicated to customers that you were not very interested in meeting this need.