A deal is agreed in April. Everybody shakes hands. The champion is delighted and says it should be quick.
It signs in September. Nothing went wrong, nobody changed their mind, and five months disappeared into legal, security, data protection, finance and a procurement portal that required a supplier registration nobody mentioned.
The first failure: agreement with a champion is not agreement
The champion wants it and cannot deliver it. Behind them sit several functions with their own queues, their own criteria and no particular urgency about somebody else's project.
The second failure: the gates run in sequence
Legal waits for security, security waits for documentation, finance waits for legal. Nothing about this ordering is necessary and almost nobody asks to run them together.
The third failure: nobody has mapped the process
The champion frequently cannot name every step. Asking early which approvals are required, who owns each and how long each usually takes is the single most valuable question available.
The fourth failure: the documentation is not ready
Security packs, insurance certificates, financial statements, data processing terms and accessibility statements are all predictable, and vendors assemble them on request rather than holding them ready.
The fifth failure: supplier registration is discovered late
Portals, onboarding forms, tax documentation and banking verification all take weeks and are never mentioned until after the contract is agreed.
The sixth failure: legal review has a queue
An in house team with a backlog will reach a modest contract when it reaches it. Offering standard terms, a clean redline history and flexibility on wording moves a vendor up that queue.
The seventh failure: the data protection review is treated as an afterthought
Where any personal data is involved, a separate assessment runs with its own owner, its own questions and its own queue, and it frequently starts only after legal has finished. Vendors who offer their data processing terms and a completed assessment upfront remove a month that nobody had planned for.
The eighth failure: the budget cycle intervenes
A deal that misses a quarter frequently waits for the next one. Understanding the buyer's financial calendar early changes how a deal is paced.
The ninth failure: the champion moves on
Five months is long enough for a reorganisation. A deal with one relationship is a deal with a single point of failure.
The tenth failure: nobody keeps it warm
Vendors go quiet during procurement out of politeness. The deal drifts, priorities shift and it slides behind something newer.
The eleventh failure: the pricing was never properly qualified
Late surprises about scope or seat counts restart approvals, which is the problem in enterprise pricing enquiries that need qualifying.
The twelfth failure: nobody asks what would make it faster
Buyers frequently know exactly which step will be slowest and are never asked. A direct question about what usually delays these approvals produces a candid answer, and occasionally an offer to escalate internally that nobody would have volunteered.
The thirteenth failure: the same pattern goes unrecognised
Trade and account applications stall for structurally identical reasons, as set out in trade account applications that stall.
The fourteenth failure: nothing is learned
Vendors rarely record where time went, so the next deal takes exactly as long.
The fix: prepare the gates before they open
An assistant that answers the security, data, compliance and commercial questions immediately, attaches the documentation and captures what approvals a buyer needs lets every gate open at once instead of one at a time. The same handling of demand that arrives in concentrated bursts is covered in ai receptionist seasonal business and the wider renewal picture in procurement timelines and renewal questions in enterprise software. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under saas.