Sales Lessons from a Scottish Ferry Fiasco and the Edinburgh Trams Disaster

Two of Scotland's most spectacular public procurement disasters have more to teach us about value selling than most sales training programmes.

The Ferguson Marine ferry contract and the Edinburgh trams project are both, at their core, stories about what happens when price wins and value loses.

In both cases, the lowest bidder won. In both cases, the project ran massively over budget and over time. In both cases, the final cost to the public was many times the original contract value. And in both cases, the organisations that lost the bid — the ones who were more expensive upfront — would almost certainly have delivered better value in the long run.

This is the price trap in its purest form.

The decision-makers in both cases were not stupid. They were under pressure. They had budgets to manage, stakeholders to satisfy, and a very human instinct to choose the option that looked cheapest on paper. The long-term consequences were not their problem — or so it seemed at the time.

Sound familiar?

This is exactly what happens in B2B sales every day. Buyers choose the cheaper option. The cheaper option underdelivers. The total cost of ownership turns out to be far higher than the premium alternative would have been. But by then, the original decision has been made, the contract is signed, and the consequences belong to someone else.

The lesson for sellers is not to complain about buyers who choose on price. The lesson is to make the cost of that choice visible before the decision is made.

What is the real cost of choosing the cheaper option? What are the risks? What happens if it goes wrong? What is the cost of delay, of disruption, of having to do it all again in two years?

If you can answer those questions compellingly, you don't need to compete on price. You need to compete on value.

Get in touch and let's talk about how to make that case more effectively.