One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

In the research we conducted that has driven all of my posts about regret and frustration, there is yet another interesting data perspective to explore.??I think I’ve mentioned (it is covered in the research), that despite high regret (expectations not being met and settling for something less ambitious), most customers who are fully or partially deployed feel they have achieved their objective (at some level) or will within a reasonable time period.

But digging a little deeper, how much progress is really being made.??To be honest, we can’t tell for sure from the data, but I suspect that it is often not as much as people would hope.

We asked those same respondents (that were fully or partially deployed) if they had to scale back from plans that had driven the business case to deploy successfully.??65% had vs. 22% that had not.

So, while they have achieved some value, they’d also taken at least one step back from their plans.??But digging a little deeper, what is also interesting is that those that had to scale back to deploy, were also much more likely to have settled for a less ambitious offering and approach before they even made the purchase. In fact, 87% of those that scaled back to deploy, had settled for something less ambitious.?Only 35% of those that did not scale back had settled.?That’s another step or two back.

As you might expect, the “scale back” folks were much more likely to express high regret about the purchase and experience all of the issues that high regret customers did.??The issues lay with both them and the vendors they worked with, but it often related to their own approach to making the decision their lack of confidence.

The distribution of those that did not scale back vs. did falls largely on the lines of the New Chasm.?63% of those that did not scale back came from the Agile Leaders (FID), Fast Followers (SCD), and Disciplined Followers (SIR), despite being just 35% of our sample.?70% of the “scale back” group came from the 4 other profiles that are often indecisive.?The overwhelming leader was the Conflicted Laggard group.

For the vendor community, successful deployments matter.?But if they start off by scaling back, growth will be even harder.??The same techniques discussed in our Regret Reduction Playbook (link for clients) should help.??As the emphasis on closed loop value management grows, helping buyers overcome regression before and after the buy will be critical.