your biggest competitor in security deals is "no decision"

why “no decision” wins

A security purchase asks the buyer to change something that works well enough today. Doing nothing carries no budget line, no project risk and no one to blame. Your competitor has to beat you. “No decision” only has to wait.

The numbers are large. Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna, working from about 2.5 million recorded sales conversations, report that 40% to 60% of deals end with the customer doing nothing. That base includes early and badly qualified deals, so treat it as the shape of the problem rather than your late-stage loss rate.

Security makes it worse in a specific way. The value of the product is an incident that does not happen. A buyer can always argue that last year went fine without it.

The other vendor has to beat you. “No decision” only has to wait.

two different reasons to wait

Dixon and McKenna separate two mechanisms that look identical in a CRM.

Status quo preference. The buyer is not convinced that changing is worth it. The problem is real but tolerable, the budget has other claims, the current tool is good enough.

Indecision. The buyer agrees it needs to change, and cannot commit because it is afraid of choosing wrong. In their data, indecision accounts for 56% of no-decision losses and status quo for 44%, and 87% of opportunities showed moderate or high indecision.

Why deals end in no decision, in Dixon and McKenna's data

Indecision: wants to change, afraid of choosing wrong56%

Status quo: not convinced change is worth it44%

The two need opposite treatments. Status quo is overcome by raising the cost of doing nothing. Indecision is overcome by lowering the risk of doing something. Use the first treatment on the second problem and it backfires. Dixon reports an 84% probability that fear-based selling increases indecision. A buyer who is already afraid of making a mistake does not need more reasons to be afraid.

In security deals it is tempting to reach for the status quo move: the breach statistics, the regulatory deadline, the cost of an incident. If the buyer has already agreed there is a problem, that move feeds the fear that is stopping the signature.

The buying group adds its own drag. Gartner’s 2024 fieldwork found “unhealthy conflict” in 74% of B2B buying teams, and teams that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal. Earlier Gartner research found that buyers overwhelmed by high-quality but conflicting information were 153% more likely to settle for a smaller, less disruptive purchase than planned. More content does not help a team that already cannot agree.

four signs a deal is dying

1. The next step has no date. “Let’s reconnect after the quarter” is a polite no.
2. You only talk to one person. Your champion can’t buy alone, and nobody else has heard your name.
3. The POC has no end. No signed criteria, no verdict date, just “keep testing”.
4. Nobody can name the cost of waiting. If the buyer can’t say what doing nothing costs, nothing is what they’ll do.

Check what you think the reason is against the evidence. Who stopped answering? Which agreed step did not happen? What changed in their organisation, a new CISO, a budget freeze, a reorganisation? Corporate Visions, a vendor reporting its own win-loss work, says the reasons sellers record for no-decision losses differ from the reasons buyers give in more than half of cases. Your CRM note is a hypothesis.

what to do this week

Then work on the cause you diagnosed.

If it is status quo, help the buyer put a number on waiting. The cost has to come from their world: analyst hours spent on manual work, an audit finding with a deadline, a renewal of the current tool that locks in another year. A number they calculated is worth more than any number you bring.

If it is indecision, do three things that Dixon and McKenna’s research points to.

• Make a clear recommendation. “Based on what you told me, I would start with this scope, this edition, these two integrations.” Buyers who are afraid of choosing wrong want someone to take a position.
• Narrow the options. Fewer packages, fewer add-ons, fewer “we could also”. Every extra option is another decision they can be wrong about.
• Take risk off the table. A phased scope, a first phase with a clear exit, a paid pilot that converts at pre-agreed terms, a cancellation right after the first quarter. Set honest expectations about implementation, including what will be hard.

The two most common responses to a stall are more discount and more content. Both usually fail. A discount does nothing for the fear of a visible mistake. More content adds to the overload that caused the stall.

To sort one stalled deal quickly, the no-decision deal check asks the questions above and points to the move that fits. The guide on mapping the buying committee covers the people who stall a deal without ever attending a meeting.

when to walk away

Set an exit rule before you need it. A simple one: if the buyer will not agree to one dated step in two consecutive conversations, or the budget owner will not take a 30-minute call, the deal goes out of the forecast and into a quarterly check-in.

That is hard to do because of the time already spent. Research on escalation of commitment, going back to Barry Staw in 1976, shows that people keep investing in a failing course partly because of what they have already sunk into it. A pre-agreed rule protects your engineers’ time and the honesty of your forecast.

Walking away also leaves the door open. A deal that dies of no decision usually leaves the problem in place. The best moments to come back are a trigger the buyer cares about: a new budget cycle, a new security lead, an incident in their sector, a regulatory milestone. Come back with the same people who already know you, and with a smaller first step than last time.