When they say we tried this before

A buyer who says they tried this before just told you the problem is real. They spent money on it. It didn't work. And it's still there.

That's not a rejection. It's the most honest reply you'll get all month.

What the reply usually means

There are three versions of this reply, and they read almost the same.

The first is scar tissue. They hired a professional services firm, the project went sideways, and someone took the blame. The buyer may have been that someone. They're not saying the problem doesn't matter. They're saying they don't trust the next pitch.

The second is a real lesson. They tried it, learned something, and now believe the approach itself is wrong. Maybe they think it has to be done in-house. Maybe they think the timing was off.

The third is a polite exit. They don't want to talk, and this is a gracious way to close the door.

You can't tell which one from a single line. So your reply has to work for all three.

What not to send

Don't defend your firm. A paragraph about how you're different from the last vendor sounds exactly like what the last vendor said.

Don't criticize whoever did it before. You don't know what happened. The buyer might have picked that firm. They might still be friends with the partner who ran it.

Don't pivot to a case study. The buyer just told you their own story. Answering it with someone else's tells them you weren't listening.

And don't ask for a call yet. You haven't earned it.

The reply to send

Send a short note that takes the reply seriously and asks what happened. Make a guess about why it stalled, and make the guess easy to correct. That's the same move as the original opening, aimed at the new information.

Say you wrote to a director of finance systems about a stalled consolidation of their reporting tools, and she replied that they tried this two years ago and it didn't stick.

That's useful, thank you. When these stall, it's usually not the software. It's that the business units kept their own reporting on the side and nobody had the authority to turn it off. Was that part of it, or did it break somewhere else?

That reply does three things. It shows you know how these projects fail in real life. It offers a specific guess she can confirm or knock down in one line. And it asks nothing of her beyond an answer.

If it's scar tissue, she'll tell you what went wrong, and now you know what she's afraid of. If it's a real lesson, she'll tell you what she believes, and you can decide whether you agree. If it's a polite exit, she won't reply, and you've lost nothing.

Use the answer

Whatever she tells you becomes the center of the next conversation. Not your method. Not your team. Her account of what broke.

If she says the business units wouldn't give up their spreadsheets, your next message is about governance and executive sponsorship, not tooling. If she says the last firm sent a junior team, your next message is about who'd actually do the work.

This is the logic of the second message is a new hypothesis. Each reply narrows the guess.

Find out who else was there

A failed project leaves a trail. Someone sponsored it. Someone ran it day to day. Someone in IT had to support whatever was left over.

Some of those people are still at the company, and their view of what went wrong might be different from your contact's. Find the economic buyer who'd fund a second attempt and the technical lead who'd live with it. They'll want different things from round two.

The reply that wins

The firm that wins the second attempt is rarely the one with the best pitch. It's the one that understood the first attempt better than anyone else.

Ask what happened. Guess well. Listen to the correction.