We're Happy With Our Current Provider
Respect the existing relationship, then determine whether "happy" means excellent, acceptable, or merely familiar.
Someone chose that provider for reasons that made sense at the time. Attack the choice and you attack the person who made it. Happy usually means nothing is currently on fire.
What they say
- “We're happy with who we've got”
- “We already work with someone”
- “We have a guy”
What's actually underneath it
Satisfaction and optimization are not the same thing
Fear of the disruption of switching, not loyalty to the vendor
Nobody has benchmarked the relationship in years
A polite way to end the conversation
The ten questions that open it up
Ask one. Then stop talking. The answer is worth more than anything you were about to say.
- 1.“What does your current provider do particularly well for you?”
- 2.“If you could improve one part of that relationship, what would it be?”
- 3.“When was the last time you measured their performance against the market?”
- 4.“Are you receiving exceptional results, or are things simply working well enough?”
- 5.“What originally caused you to choose that provider?”
- 6.“Have your needs changed since you made that decision?”
- 7.“Where do you feel your current provider could be more proactive?”
- 8.“If another provider produced a meaningfully better result, would loyalty prevent you from considering it?”
- 9.“What would your current provider have to stop doing before you would reconsider the relationship?”
- 10.“Would there be any value in having a benchmark, even if you ultimately stay exactly where you are?”
The trap
Criticizing the incumbent - it insults the buyer's own past judgment.
Ask what they would change, then stop talking. The gap they name is the only opening you need, and it belongs to them, not to you.
Related objections
Information without context is usually ignored. Discover what the buyer actually wants to learn.
A proposal should advance a decision - not become an expensive document that disappears into an inbox.
Busy people still make time for problems that matter. Determine whether the issue is scheduling or relevance.
Try it live
Paste the objection you actually got this week and get the question to ask back.
Reverse your objection