Strategy and GTM Teams
Software
Hard-to-reach people
Changed messaging
Illustrative case study · The outcome shown is a modeled decision, not a measured client result.
Who needed the answer
A product marketing lead at a developer-tools vendor, trying to explain why mid-market deals kept going to the incumbent.
Why they needed help
The team had 14 lost deals and only 3 debriefs, too few to see a pattern, and most lost buyers wouldn’t take a follow-up call.
What they asked
What was the main reason you stayed with your current vendor?
What the experts said
Switching cost, not price, kept buyers with their current vendor
5 of 7 experts named the effort of migrating existing eval suites and workflows as the main reason. 2 pointed to price at renewal.
Sample responses
“Moving our eval suites over would have taken a quarter. The new tool was cheaper, but not that much cheaper.”
Engineering lead, mid-market SaaS company (300–800 employees), evaluated tools in 2026
answer_id
ans_daa66d13
respondent_id
rsp_d6ee6737
“Honestly, it was the renewal quote. If they’d held the price, we wouldn’t have looked.”
Head of platform engineering, fintech (500–1,000 employees), evaluated tools in 2026
answer_id
ans_78dde6c4
respondent_id
rsp_69ff6a72
Illustrative quotes. In the product, every answer carries an answer_id and a respondent_id. The answer_id links to the full response and when it was given; the respondent_id links to the expert’s screened profile without revealing who they are, so any number can be traced back to its source.
About the experts and method
Who answered
Engineering leads at mid-market companies who evaluated tools in the last 12 months
Responses
All 7 answered · 5 switching cost · 2 price at renewal
Safeguards
Buyers only, no competitor staff, no contract terms
Business impact
From the findings via Ask Synquery Connector, the team decided to stop leading with discounts.
The team adds a free migration of existing eval suites to the offer and a “switch in a week” page.