12 questions, one walked-away contract, six figures saved
A 120-person manufacturer was 48 hours from signing a three-year AI deal. The 12 due-diligence questions surfaced a single, clear deal-breaker.
The vendor's contract reserved the right to use customer data for model training, with no opt-out.
The COO had not seen this in the privacy policy. The sales team had not flagged it.
Walking away cost two weeks of lost momentum. Signing would have cost six figures and three years of regret.
What the questions surfaced
The vendor answered 11 of 12 questions cleanly. Question 3 — 'Is our data used to train your AI models?' — was where the deal broke. The contract reserved training rights with no opt-out and a vague reference to 'aggregate insights.' The privacy policy was no clearer.
How we handled it
Before walking, we gave the vendor a chance to negotiate the clause. They declined. The customer's COO walked, and the team selected an alternative vendor whose contract committed to no training and provided written confirmation.
Lessons
The salesperson genuinely did not know the answer to question 3 — it lived in legal's draft. The questions are valuable specifically because they force unambiguous, written answers. Many problems hide in plain sight in privacy policies.
Plain-English answers
Did you regret the delay?
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