Selling complex products is an organisational problem

When a deal for a complex platform stalls at the executive layer, the first instinct is to look for technical gaps. Is the architecture wrong? Does it not scale? Are there missing features? Sometimes that's the issue. More often, the product is fine. The problem is organisational.

A complex platform touches multiple stakeholders. It affects infrastructure teams, application owners, security, compliance, procurement, and often finance. Each of these groups has its own mandate, its own risk tolerance, and its own calendar. When you're selling into this environment, you're not just selling a product. You're asking an organisation to coordinate across silos that don't always talk to each other.

The person who brought you in—your champion—might understand the value. They might even have budget authority. But if they can't explain to their peers in legal or operations why this matters, or if they can't align three departments on a shared timeline, the deal doesn't move. It doesn't matter how good your product is.

This is where many technical sales efforts falter. The vendor assumes that a strong technical win is enough. A successful proof of concept, a clean architecture review, a set of happy engineers—these should carry the deal forward. But they don't. Because the next phase isn't technical. It's political.

The question becomes: who inside the customer is going to own the cross-functional coordination required to get this approved? If the answer is unclear, the deal sits. It doesn't get killed. It just stays in limbo, waiting for someone to take responsibility for moving it through legal, security, and procurement.

The best enterprise sellers understand this early. They map the organisation. They identify not just who needs to approve, but who is willing to do the internal work of building consensus. They ask: who has done this before? Who has the credibility to bring finance, security, and operations into the same room and get them to agree on something?

If that person doesn't exist, the seller has two options. One is to help create that coalition—bring stakeholders together, facilitate alignment, make it easier for the customer to say yes. The other is to acknowledge that the organisation isn't ready and move on.

The hardest part is recognising that a lack of organisational readiness isn't a failure of your product. It's a reality of how enterprises operate. Some organisations can move quickly because they've built the internal muscle to do so. Others can't, no matter how compelling the technology.

When you're in a complex sale, the question isn't just whether the product fits. It's whether the customer has the internal structure to buy it. If they don't, no amount of technical validation will change that. The deal will sit, and you'll spend months trying to figure out why a "perfect fit" won't close.

Understanding this shifts how you qualify opportunities. It's not enough to ask whether the customer has budget or whether they have a problem. You need to ask: do they have the ability to execute? Can they coordinate the five teams required to get this approved? Have they done it before?

If the answer is no, it doesn't mean they're not a prospect. It means the sales motion changes. You're not just selling a product. You're helping them build the internal capability to buy it. That takes longer, and it requires a different kind of relationship. But it's the only way complex deals move forward in organisations that aren't built for them.