Lost deals. What a fantastic storehouse of information that – I agree – goes completely untapped.

Your example is an excellent one because you were not completely out of the target market. In fact you were pretty close, as evidenced by the fact that you were willing to take some time to tell them what you really wanted. (If, for example, you never sent mail, and were therefore not in their target market, you would have had a much shorter conversation.)

As marketers, we need to know why people (or companies) in our target markets don’t buy from us. When we determine that, we can either choose a new target market, or make the changes necessary to capture you as a customer.