Why Is the Sales Team's Version Incomplete?
Not dishonesty, position: losing reps hear polite reasons ('budget', 'timing') because buyers avoid awkward truths with people they may meet again; winning reps credit the demo. The systematic truth (the reference call that swung it, the integration fear nobody voiced, the competitor's aggressive year-one pricing) surfaces only when a neutral interviewer asks after the pressure is off.
What Do Buyers Reveal Post-Decision?
The recurring intelligence from structured programs:
- The real decision criteria and their weights (versus the stated RFP criteria
- Competitor pricing structures, discount behaviour and proposal claims) described first-hand
- Where your proposition confused, impressed or bored the committee
- Process failures: response speed, demo relevance, who talked too much
- The moment the decision actually tipped, rarely where the CRM thinks
How Does a Program Compound Into Advantage?
Interview a consistent sample each quarter, wins and losses both; code the findings; and route them ruthlessly: pricing patterns to deal desks, positioning gaps to marketing, recurring objections to product, competitor claims to battlecards. Win rates move within two or three quarters because sellers finally aim at the real criteria. Garuda conducts interviews as the neutral third party, buyers speak more freely to outsiders, which is the method's whole engine.