Have you ever met a salesperson who wants to discount their way to a win?

That might be an effective strategy for selling a car, a house, or simply ensuring that there is no margin left to sustain a viable business. But you might be surprised to learn that price-cutting isn't necessarily the secret sauce in complex technical sales. In fact, it can sometimes be a red flag to your prospects and do more harm than good.

When you are selling large and custom automation projects, you are typically dealing with professional and experienced buyers, project managers, engineers, and end users. Their process for making an award decision typically isn't as simple as "pick the cheapest integrator" (at least not if they are doing their job well). Instead, they are usually evaluating a variety of factors that paint an overall picture of what their future may look like with each integrator option in front of them. Their goal is to spend the company's money wisely while maximizing the probability that the project will be successful. Making a decision based solely on price can be dangerous because the consequences of choosing the wrong supplier can be substantial. 

Consequently, in industrial automation, customers aren't simply choosing the lowest-priced qualified option. They are choosing the company that they perceive as presenting the lowest overall project risk. Behind every competitive bid is an implicit question:

"Who is least likely to make me regret signing this purchase order?"

For integrators and OEMs, winning competitive bids therefore usually requires more than demonstrating technical capability and offering a competitive price. Those are often the minimum requirements to even remain in the conversation.

Winning is often the result of systematically demonstrating that your company is the safest choice. This is especially true for large capital expenditures, where the stakes are high and mistakes can have significant economic or safety consequences.

So what exactly are customers evaluating beyond price?

Technical competence: can you actually do this?

The first question a customer is asking is: "Does this company have the capabilities and experience to be successful on my project?"

Technical competence is usually the first and most fundamental criterion in any bidding situation. If you cannot demonstrate that you know what you are doing (and a competitor can), you have already lost substantial ground. Fortunately, technical competence is relatively straightforward to demonstrate. Case studies of successful projects using the requested technologies or involving a similar process can provide strong evidence that your organization has the necessary capabilities and experience.

For example, suppose you are being asked to develop a custom vision inspection system. It would be much more compelling to show three to five recent examples of vision systems your organization has successfully designed and implemented as opposed to simply telling the customer that you have "extensive vision experience." Proof will always outweigh the claim here, and those examples communicate something important to the buyer: "This isn't our first rodeo. We have already done this successfully, and you won't be paying us to figure out the core technology for the first time on your project." Testimonials from happy customers and endorsements from technology partners can strengthen this message even further.

Technical competence is therefore a critical first step. It demonstrates that your company is qualified to play the game. However, there is a vast sea of technically competent integrators and OEMs competing for work, so you’ll still need to work hard to differentiate from the pack. Proving that you are capable is often necessary, but it isn't always enough to get the win.

Communication: will you be a pain to work with?

The next question a customer is asking is: "What is it going to be like to work with this company?"

Beyond technical competence, project managers and end users want to work with a company they believe will be responsive, trustworthy, and easy to work with. The front-end experience during the proposal process serves as a preview of what it will be like to work with your organization after the purchase order is signed.

Technical competence means very little if your organization is difficult to get ahold of, takes several days to respond to emails, or regularly misses commitments. Worse, if a bidder makes promises during the sales process and repeatedly fails to deliver on those promises, the customer is likely to wonder: "Is this what working with them is going to be like after we award the project?"

The good news is that this also creates a significant opportunity to differentiate yourself. Respond quickly, communicate proactively and regularly, take the time to educate the customer when necessary, set clear expectations, and most importantly: KEEP YOUR PROMISES.

The customer experience during the proposal process can become a genuine "wow" factor when done well. An integrator or OEM that communicates well and follows through on commitments gives the customer evidence that future obstacles are likely to be handled rather than ignored.

Admittedly, many integrators and OEMs, under the belief that technical superiority is the main key to success, place enormous emphasis on technology expertise and engineering excellence while treating the customer experience as a secondary priority. That can create a surprisingly large opportunity for differentiation. You may not be the only company capable of building the system, but you can make yourself the company that the customer actually enjoys working with, and that has meaningful value.

Execution: do you have a controlled way of getting this done?

The next question is: "How does this company plan to get this project done?"

Customers don't just care about what you are capable of doing. They also care about how you plan to execute the work. Bidders that can clearly communicate the processes, standards, and methodologies they use to support successful project execution can get a serious leg up in a competitive situation and significantly reduce anxiety for the customer. This gives the customer a window into how your organization operates. It helps answer an important question: “Do you have systematic processes in place to control project risk, or does your engineering department operate somewhere closer to controlled chaos?”

The proposal stage is a great opportunity to give your customers a preview of your methodology. Show them how you approach requirements development, design reviews, testing, documentation, commissioning, or whatever other portions of the project are relevant. Demonstrate where you have controls in place to catch mistakes before they become expensive problems. Failing to share a methodology doesn't necessarily hurt you by default. But showing the customer exactly how you intend to mitigate execution risk can elevate you above competitors who simply promise that they will "get the job done."

This becomes particularly important when a project contains a significant safety element or when its primary objective is safety related. In those cases, attention to detail is critical. You can give your organization a meaningful advantage by showing examples of the documents, procedures, testing practices, and internal standards you use to design and validate safety-critical systems. You are not simply telling the customer that you take safety seriously. You are showing them how.

Commercial risk: how much risk are you asking the customer to take?

Yet, another question customers are asking is: "How much financial and commercial liability am I exposing myself to by engaging with this supplier?"

The friendliness of your terms and conditions, the financial stability of your organization, the amount of change-order exposure in your proposal, and your overall warranty posture can paint a surprisingly revealing profile of your company. These factors tell the customer something about the health of your organization, how much risk you are willing to share, and whether they could potentially be left holding the bag if something goes wrong.

In many cases, these issues are largely outside the individual salesperson’s control. Company leadership often establishes commercial policies, warranty terms, contract language, and acceptable levels of risk. That doesn't mean the sales team can ignore them. It is important to understand where your organization stands and, when appropriate, anticipate customer concerns and provide explanations before they are asked.

There are often competing incentives between engineering and sales on this subject. Engineering teams are naturally motivated to reduce risk for themselves, while sales teams are often motivated to make the commercial package as attractive as possible to the customer. The right answer is usually somewhere in the middle.

Too much risk shifted to the customer through extremely limited warranties, aggressive exclusions, and extensive change-order exposure can cause a deal to fall apart quickly. On the other hand, shifting too much risk internally may leave the customer feeling secure while leaving your organization responsible for absorbing significant losses. The appropriate balance depends heavily on the customer's risk tolerance and the nature of the project. The important point is that the customer’s perception of your commercial positioning absolutely factors into their award decision.

What matters is that you don't shy away from the conversation. Taking the time to be transparent and talking through these details with your customers can reduce anxiety and continue building trust before the project ever starts. In a competitive bid, being the supplier that decides to be proactive in discussing the uncomfortable commercial details can itself become a differentiator.

Lifecycle support: what happens after the project is finished?

An extremely important question for an end user group is: "How is this company going to help us succeed in the long term?"

It's easy to think of industrial projects as transactional. A purchase order is issued, the system is designed and installed, the project is commissioned, and everyone moves on. In reality, many capital projects are the beginning of long-term relationships.

If you aren't the incumbent supplier, the customer is effectively deciding who they are going to be "married" to for the next several months or even years. What happens after the system is handed over can therefore be just as important as what happens during the initial project. Customers want to know things like:

• What does your service & support department look like? 

• Do you actually have a dedicated support team?

• Do you offer service or support agreements? 

• Where is that support located? 

• How quickly can you respond when something goes wrong? 

• What documentation will be provided with the project? 

• Will that documentation actually be useful six months or six years from now?

Integrators and OEMs that prioritize service and support capabilities can shine in this area, particularly when customers have constrained internal resources. It is extremely common for customers operating complex machinery or automation systems to rely heavily on OEM or integrator support over the life of the equipment. In some cases, the availability and quality of that support can become a genuine deal breaker.

For customers, buying an expensive system without reliable support resource introduces yet another risk. If you cannot demonstrate competent and responsive long-term support capabilities, you should expect that deficiency to affect your chances of winning the project.

Industry reputation: what evidence can I find to validate that you are trustworthy?

Finally, there is one significant factor that influences nearly all of the other categories mentioned above: "What do other companies and the broader industry have to say about this bidder?"

On this front, your brand, industry presence, and external champions are some of your most valuable assets. Your industry reputation is built over time through the consistent effort of your organization to communicate who you are and what you are good at. Marketing plays an important role here, but so do your customers, technology partners, employees, and everyone else who interacts with your company. Testimonials from satisfied customers and partners provide third-party validation of the message your marketing team is communicating. They provide evidence that your organization actually is who it says it is.

A strong industry reputation can also do a significant amount of selling before you ever have an initial conversation with a prospect. If a prospective customer has already heard positive things about your organization from a trusted industry contact, you enter the competitive process with a meaningful advantage. Having little or no industry reputation doesn't necessarily disqualify you, but it does mean you will likely have more work to do during the proposal process to establish credibility and explain your value proposition. 

A negative reputation, on the other hand, can be extremely damaging and may eliminate your organization from consideration before the sales process even begins.

For that reason, companies should treat brand recognition and industry reputation as strategic investments, not simply marketing expenses. There are real revenue consequences to operating in a vacuum, and a strong reputation can bring more opportunities through the door while also giving customers additional confidence when it is time to make an award decision.

Your reputation doesn’t actually do any risk mitigation on its own, but it increases the odds that customers will approach you with more trust than skepticism from the start. 

But what about customers who only care about price?

It’s true that some buyers are simply looking for the lowest price. Especially for off-the-shelf or extremely simple projects.  Not every customer is going to value risk mitigation to the same degree. Some organizations simply don't have the budget to justify significant investments in risk reduction. Others may be dealing with relatively simple projects where the consequences of a mistake are limited and manageable. In those situations, an elaborate risk-mitigation approach may not carry as much weight. It's important to recognize those circumstances and adjust your sales strategy accordingly.

There are also prospective customers who simply don't have the scars yet. They haven't experienced what happens when a major project goes wrong, so they may be more willing to make a decision based primarily on price. Sometimes those decisions work out, sometimes they create the scars that change how the organization buys the next time around.

For reasonably experienced organizations that have executed medium- to large-scale capital projects before, however, it is reasonable to expect that they have already learned that project failure comes with real consequences. When a project goes wrong, the customer may be dealing with excessive production downtime, missed production targets and upset customers, compromised safety, engineering rework, internal political fallout, budget overruns, or career consequences for the person who selected the vendor.

These are all costs that can dwarf the difference between two competing bids. An integrator that costs 10% more but materially reduces the probability of a catastrophic failure may ultimately represent a much better financial decision for the customer than the integrator offering the lowest initial price. That is the fundamental reason why price isn't always the deciding factor. The customer isn't simply buying equipment or engineering hours. They are buying the probability that the project will work.

The winning strategy: sell the reduction of harm

The areas discussed above shouldn't be considered a comprehensive list. Every project is different, and there will always be additional factors influencing a customer's decision. However, addressing these core categories can help bidders mitigate many of the fundamental risks that decision makers are quietly evaluating throughout the sales process.

That leads to an important shift in how we think about technical sales. Many junior salespeople are trained to sell by highlighting features and benefits, or, in other words, focusing on the "gains" the customer will receive by choosing their solution. That has its place, but in complex technical sales, I believe there is often a more powerful question to focus on: “How does our company reduce the potential for harm?”

Your buyer is putting the company's money, schedule, production goals, reputation, and sometimes their own career on the line. They aren't just asking, "What do I get?” They're also asking, "What could go wrong, and why should I trust you to prevent it?"

In many cases, by the time a project reaches the formal RFQ stage, the customer has likely already gone through an internal process to justify capital expenditure. They probably don’t need you to convince them that they need the project or that it is urgent. The decision they are really making is: "Who can solve this problem without creating other problems and do it within my target budget?"

That is where risk becomes the central theme of the sale. So on every large competitive proposal, your sales team should ask itself: “Have we addressed each of the major risk categories we can anticipate that our customer is probably worried about?” Because when the stakes are high, customers are usually willing to buy down the odds of disaster.

Happy selling! Onward and upward!