Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / The Real Reason Deals Stall After Verbal Commitments
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this moment every sales rep knows, and it's one of the most dangerous in the entire cycle. The buyer looks you in the eye — on Zoom, in person, doesn't matter — and says, 'We're in. Let's move forward.' You feel the rush. You send the contract. And then... silence. Luna: That silence is brutal. I've seen deals that felt completely locked up just go dark for three weeks, and the rep starts panicking, wondering what they did wrong. Lucas: Exactly. And the instinct is to assume you misread the buyer, or a competitor swooped in, or the price suddenly became a problem. But more often, the culprit is something less dramatic and more structural. I want to look at a specific case today — a $12 million enterprise SaaS deal that took 47 days to close after the buyer gave a verbal commitment. No price change, no competitor, no change in scope. Luna: Forty-seven days. That's a month and a half of following up, checking in, waiting. What was the actual blocker? Lucas: The short answer is decision fatigue inertia. The buyer — in this case, the chief revenue officer at a mid-sized fintech company — had all the authority he needed to approve up to $15 million. But the contracting process required sign-off from legal, security, and procurement. And those teams operate on their own timelines, with their own incentives. Luna: So the verbal yes came from the economic buyer, but the actual signature required alignment from three other groups who had no emotional investment in the deal. Lucas: Right. And this is where I think a lot of sales reps make a critical mistake. They treat the verbal commitment as the finish line, when it's actually just the midpoint. The real work — the contracting work — hasn't even started. In this case, the rep assumed the CRO would handle internal alignment. But the CRO was busy. He sent the contract to legal with a one-line email. Legal had seventeen other priorities. Luna: So the rep should have been proactively engaging legal and procurement before the verbal yes even happened. Lucas: Exactly. The best reps I've seen start the contracting conversation during the evaluation phase. They ask, 'When you're ready to move forward, what does your approval process look like? Who needs to sign off, and what information do they need?' They preemptively schedule calls with legal or procurement. They basically create a parallel track so that when the verbal yes comes, the contracting machine is already in motion. Luna: That's a whole different mindset. Instead of 'close the deal and then hand it off,' it's 'close the deal while simultaneously closing the internal stakeholders.' Lucas: Yes. And there's a psychological layer here too. Once the buyer says yes verbally, their brain categorizes the problem as solved. They experience a dopamine drop. The urgency evaporates. Meanwhile, the rep's urgency spikes. This mismatch creates what researchers call the 'urgency gap.' The rep chases, the buyer relaxes, and the deal drifts. Luna: Is that why so many deals that are 'verbal wins' end up slipping a quarter or even falling through entirely? Lucas: According to data from a 2025 study by Revenue Analytics — which analyzed 1,200 enterprise deals across forty SaaS companies — deals that take longer than thirty days to contract after a verbal commitment have a 37 percent higher chance of ultimately being lost or significantly renegotiated. The longer the gap, the more likely something goes wrong. A competitor catches wind, a budget freeze hits, a new executive comes in. Luna: Thirty-seven percent. That's huge. So what did the rep in the $12 million case do to finally get it over the line? Lucas: She did something counterintuitive. Instead of continuing to push the CRO, she stopped emailing him entirely. She mapped out the procurement team — found the actual person who would process the contract — and built a relationship with them directly. She asked them what their typical turnaround was, what information they needed to prioritize her deal, and whether there was a specific day of the week or time of month when they had more bandwidth. Luna: So she went around the CRO but not behind his back. She just found the person who actually does the work. Lucas: Exactly. She sent the CRO a brief note saying, 'I'm working with your procurement team to streamline the paperwork so it's as easy as possible for you.' The CRO was relieved. He didn't want to manage that process anyway. Within two weeks of her engaging procurement directly, the contract was signed. Luna: That's a great example. But not every rep has the access or the confidence to reach out to someone they haven't met. What's the first step for someone who's in the middle of this stall right now? Lucas: First step: stop assuming the buyer is avoiding you. They're probably not. They're just distracted. Send a very specific, low-friction request. Instead of 'just checking in,' say something like, 'I know you're busy. I've drafted a one-page summary of the key terms for your legal team. Can I send it over so they can review it on their timeline?' That makes you a helper, not a chaser. Luna: That reframes the entire dynamic. The rep becomes the person removing obstacles instead of the person adding pressure. Lucas: Right. And if you can get a three-way meeting with the buyer and someone from their legal or procurement team, that's gold. You want to be in the room when they discuss the contract. That way you can answer objections in real time instead of waiting for an email chain to slowly die. Luna: It also shows confidence. You're not afraid of their legal team. You're not hiding behind a proposal. Lucas: Exactly. One other tactic I've seen work: set a mutual deadline before the verbal commitment. Ask the buyer, 'If we agree on terms this week, can we aim to have the contract signed by the end of the month?' If they agree, you've got a shared timeline. If they hesitate, you've surfaced a potential blocker before you're in the dark. Luna: That's smart because it surfaces the procurement timeline as a variable early, not as a surprise. Lucas: Yeah. And it forces the buyer to think through their own process. Most buyers haven't mapped their internal approval chain until you ask them to. They assume it'll just work itself out. It won't. Luna: So for the listener right now who has a deal that's been sitting unsigned for two weeks after a verbal yes, what's the one thing they should do tomorrow? Lucas: Pick up the phone — not email — and call the buyer. Say something like, 'I want to make sure the contracting process is as smooth as possible for your team. Who on your side needs to see this, and what's the best way to get them the information they need?' Nine times out of ten, the buyer will give you a name. Then you follow up with that person directly. Luna: And if the buyer says, 'Don't worry, I'll handle it'? Lucas: That's a yellow flag. Politely push once: 'I know you're busy. It would actually help me to understand the process so I can set expectations on my end. Even a quick overview would be great.' If they still deflect, you may have a bigger problem — maybe the commitment wasn't as firm as you thought. Luna: Right. Because a truly committed buyer will welcome help removing friction. Lucas: Exactly. Look, the $12 million deal taught the rep a lesson she still uses today: the verbal yes is not the close. It's the start of the real close. And the reps who internalize that are the ones who actually hit their number at the end of the quarter. Luna: It's funny, we talk a lot about the psychology of the buyer during the pitch, but the psychology after the pitch — the commitment hangover — is just as important. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's worth an entire episode on its own. But before we go there, I want to mention something briefly. A number of listeners have asked how we keep this show going without any ads. The honest answer is that a small group of listeners chips in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. And that's literally what funds making episodes like this one. Luna: Yeah, it's a pretty straightforward model. No sponsors, no pre-rolls, no interruptions. Just people who find the conversations useful helping cover the costs. It keeps us independent. Lucas: Exactly. So if these episodes have moved your work forward in some small way, that's the channel. No pressure, no pitch — just a hat tip to those who already make it possible. Now, back to the commitment hangover: one thing I want to add is that the best reps actually use the period after the verbal yes to deepen trust, not just push paperwork. Luna: How so? Lucas: They keep the conversation valuable. They send the buyer an article relevant to a challenge they discussed. They introduce them to someone from their own customer network who solved a similar problem. They treat the contracting phase as an extension of the relationship, not a transaction. Luna: That makes the buyer feel like the rep is still bringing value, not just chasing a signature. Lucas: Right. And it also gives the rep a natural reason to stay in touch without being annoying. 'Hey, saw this and thought of you.' That's a lot better than 'Just checking in on the contract.' Luna: So the key takeaway is: don't treat the verbal yes as a done deal. Treat it as the beginning of a new phase where you're now selling to the internal process, not just the buyer. Lucas: Exactly. And if you can get ahead of that process before the verbal yes even happens, you'll close faster, lose fewer deals, and stop wondering why things go dark. Luna: I think that's a solid blueprint for anyone struggling with stalled deals right now. Lucas: Yeah. Next episode, we'll dig into what happens when the buyer says no after a long eval — the post-mortem that actually helps you win next time.