Most of the deals I've lost were not lost to a competitor. They were lost to nothing happening.
That took me a while to see, because a lost deal usually arrives with a tidy explanation. Someone else was cheaper. The timing moved. There was a reorganisation. All of it plausible, none of it the actual mechanism.
Losing to a rival at least means somebody in that building decided the problem was worth solving. You lost the how. Losing to no decision means the problem was never expensive enough to move anyone, and you spent four months finding that out.
The uncomfortable part is that it is usually visible early. Not in what people say about your solution, which is generally polite, but in whether anyone can tell you what happens if they carry on exactly as they are. If nobody can answer that, there is no deal in the room yet. There is an interesting conversation, which is not the same thing and costs you the same effort.
So the question I try to ask early now is a dull one. What does another year of this cost you. Not to create urgency, which people can smell, but to find out whether any exists.
Sometimes the honest answer is that standing still is fine. That is worth knowing in week one rather than month four.
Nobody buys because they were impressed. They buy because staying put got more expensive than moving.