The Incumbent and "We'll Build It Ourselves"

Three competing names appear on the comparison sheet the customer prepares. None of them is your real competitor.

Your first competitor is what they use today. Your second is a man inside the company saying: we can build this ourselves.

And both beat you the same way: with no meeting, no proposal, and no mention of their name.

The status quo rule: never attack what he chose

A system that has run for seven years was chosen by somebody still at the company, and probably by the person sitting in front of you or his manager.

So criticising the system criticises a personal decision, and its owner defends it without meaning to. This is not a psychological observation but a commercial calculation: every minute the customer spends defending his incumbent system is a minute he spends re-convincing himself of it.

The correct formulation flips the direction:

“That system got you this far, which means it worked. The question is: what are you doing outside it now?”

The first sentence ends the defence. The second opens the real file — because the gap does not show up in the system; it shows up in what is done outside it.

Questions that expose the cost without attacking

Ask these, and be quiet after each as in the discovery station:

• “How many spreadsheets are running alongside the system right now? And who owns them?”
• “If that person travels for a week, what stops?”
• “Does the figure you close the month with come straight out of the system, or is it adjusted before it goes up?”
• “Last time you needed a change to the system, how long did it take?”
• “If you entered a new market or opened a new branch tomorrow, does the system come with you?”

Note that none of them mentions your product, and that every answer comes out of his mouth. The annual The 2026 ERP Report — Panorama Consulting Group, 170 responses between January 2025 and January 2026 — found that “removing silos” rose from 55.2% to 77.4% among buyer objectives, the largest jump in the objectives list. A silo is exactly what the five questions above surface.

And the readiness signal is not that they complain about the system. It is their discovering that half their work happens outside it.

“We’ll build it ourselves”: when it is right

Meeting that sentence with derision loses twice — the deal, and the respect of the technical person who said it.

And sometimes it is correct. Building in-house is sound when three things hold: the process is a source of competitive advantage rather than a standard one; there is a development team rather than one person; and the need is narrow and stable rather than a whole system.

Most people who say it do not have all three. The question that exposes that without confrontation:

“If the person building it leaves in a year, who continues it?”

Someone with a ready answer can genuinely build. Someone who goes quiet has answered it himself, and you did not say it.

And the truth to state calmly: nobody builds a complete accounting system inside a company that does not sell software. Successful in-house building sits on top of an existing system — an application serving one specific process, not an attempt to replace the standard modules that were written over hundreds of thousands of hours.

Who the competitor in the room actually is

In most cases “we’ll build it ourselves” does not come from the owner. It comes from the IT manager or an internal developer — the technical gatekeeper we met in the decision map, the one who alone can say no.

And his motive is entirely legitimate: an external system means part of his standing moves to a vendor.

So make him an owner rather than a loser. A company buying a system needs someone to administer it internally, integrate it with what remains, and own the data. Say that to him explicitly, and put his name in the project structure from the proposal onward. Someone who gains position from a change does not resist it.

The story: the developer who became the ally

The story is composited from real events, and every identifying detail has been changed.

A mid-sized distributor with one developer who had built, alone and over four years, a system running sales and inventory. The system worked — and that is not a courtesy: it genuinely worked.

In the first meeting he said the expected sentence: “We don’t need anyone. Whatever’s missing, I’ll build.”

I did not argue. I asked him one question:

“When did you last take a full holiday?”

He laughed, then went quiet, then said:

“Two years ago. And even then I was opening the laptop every day.”

What he was defending was not the system. He was defending four years of his own work, and he was at the same time a prisoner of what he had built.

The shape of the proposal changed entirely after that. I did not sell a replacement for his system — I sold him becoming the platform owner and integration lead, moving what he had built onto a standard foundation somebody else could maintain, and freeing him for the work only he could do.

He became the project’s strongest internal advocate. The deal closed on his recommendation.

The lesson: whoever says “we’ll build it ourselves” is rarely talking about technology. He is talking about his position. Treat the position, not the argument.

Checklist before you move on

• In your last deal: did you criticise the incumbent system, or ask what is done outside it?
• Do you know how many spreadsheets run alongside their system, and who owns them?
• For whoever said “we’ll build it ourselves”: do all three conditions actually hold?
• Does the technical person have a named role in your proposed project structure?
• Does anyone in the room lose something if your project succeeds — and have you addressed it?

Next station

One party remains that we have not discussed, and it rearranges the whole room from outside it: the hidden politics — consultants and intermediaries.