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A little story about this account before I post the email. It was 48 months ago when I was first in on this account. It was an existing RBS account here in NJ.  I wasn't able to win the deal for a few reasons.

1) Client was happy with RBS and there were no issues for service

2) I couldn't match what RBS was offering at the time. My solution for the same box was $3K higher

Thus for the next four years I kept in touch once a year and once the lease closed in on 12 months left I was able to secure another appointment.  Things had changed. This account was sold to a NJ Ricoh dealer, thus there was no loyalty to that dealer. In the year that followed after the Ricoh sold the account. There was no rep involvement from that dealer. Not a peep out of them.

I had keep the previous proposal and the client also sent me all of the contracts. Due to some new promo's and changes I saw an opportunity where I could reduce the costs that the client was paying.

Here's my thought, if I waited any longer, that dealers sales person was going to call once the lease hit the 12 months left mark. I ended up closing the deal about 30 days ago.  Note that the client states "they are very happy with the lease we provided". Thus it was either mine to win or mine to lose. I choose to be proactive\.

Here's the email:

I have had a running email exchange with our previous sales rep who was confused as I did not ask him for an alternate proposal.  I did not reveal your company name or the make or model we now have, not the terms of the lease.
I will spare you the other details of his emails , but wanted to share these with you. You can comment if you want, or not.  We are very satisfied with the new lease.  I guess he’ll get over it. 
“ I would never advise doing a new lease over a year early cause all of that Buy-out is just getting rolled into the new lease…
 
"Its great that you saved money but you could have saved much more if you waited for this current lease to come to term. Also I can almost guarantee this new company you went with sold Canon or Sharp and you will be getting hit with an annual 10-15% uplift charge annually for the service portion of your lease which is significant over a 5 year lease term with your volume…”
Just received the first invoice on the new copier. 
This was my response:
Thanks for this, no need to comment except for that fact that you took advantage of very good offer. 
I thank you for your support. I also confirmed that we will be shipping you additional toner today.
From reading this I can sense that the sales person that called was rather upset because hen mentioned "that I will spare you the details".  I went into this opportunity and fully explained how the transaction worked and my client was fully aware that the money owed on the old lease would be added to the cost of the new device. In addition the rep mentioned that "I can almost guarantee you of the up-lift charge of 15%-20%"  Yeah, well the client and I went over that also and put in writing what the escalations would be.
What every happened with being gracious when you lose. I was when I couldn't win this deal four years ago. I thanked him for the opportunity and kept in touch all those years.
Anyone care to comment?

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I used to get very upset when I lost a deal. A few times I was able to salvage the deal and get them to do the deal with me after the fact but more often than not you burn a bridge by spewing all the bad stuff about the competitor. Now I just let it roll and continue to call on them and see how their experience is with the new company. Great job by the way!

Getting "salty" when losing a deal (by telling the prospect it was a bad decision or bad mouthing the winning dealer) is a lose-lose. It's either going to go 2 ways:

1. You tell the prospect they made a bad decision and you are wrong. Everything goes great within the following 5 years and you still lose.

2. You tell the prospect they made a bad decision and you were right. Because of your attitude, the prospect will make sure they choose any other vendor other than you next time around.

Just gracefully tell them you appreciate the opportunity, find out what the winning lease payment was, and store it in your competitive lease expiration. Then move on.

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