Lost A Sale This Quarter? Learn How To Avoid Making The Same Mistake Again

You've just spent hours toward winning an opportunity: pre-sales activity, creating proposals, developing trust and the relationship with a prospective client, demos, dinners out, time away from your family all to find out you've lost a deal. This can be really defeating and if it's a deal you were hedging your bets on for the quarter or the year, it can really knock the wind out of your sails.

Should you blame the client for not purchasing? They did take up your time and resources. Should you blame yourself completely? Perhaps you could have presented better, proposed better pricing, aligned better partnerships to win the deal.

Whatever happened, you need to validate and not make assumptions! The next time you're in this situation (and it does happen) ask the client for a debrief during which you can show gratitude in their current level of partnership and ask:

1. "What contributed to your decision to not partner?" If your client skirts the question and alludes to, "It's not you, it's just me. We aren't ready." There may be an opportunity to actually win back the deal or at the very least dig for the real answer in decision delay.
2. Then ask, "It is really important to me that we understand where we failed to show value. Are there any areas where you felt we could have connected better with your objectives and needs?" Ultimately people delay or choose not to purchase because they just didn't perceive the value they were looking for from your solution. By admitting to the loss, it shows your willingness for feedback and to learn. Your client may just give you the insight you need to not make the same mistake again during discovery, during a demo, during a proof of concept or negotiation.
3. If the client alludes to timing being an issue for them, dig deeper. Timing is never perfect for any project so dig into how they are going to solve the issue they initially presented to you and re-iterate the business impact, not solving the problem would have on their business. "During our evaluation, we agreed that by waiting to solve X,Y,Z partnership it would cost your company approximately $. Is there an alternative solution that you found that may address your needs? Any feedback is helpful to me and my team and truly value your feedback and partnership."

Clients purchasing technology and software solutions value long-term partnerships. They value vendors and partners that take the time to learn from failures and mistakes. The more you can learn from those that do not purchase from you the more you can gain clarity on:

• Alignment To Your Ideal Customer - Is this the right customer for your business?
• Sales Messaging & Value Positioning
• Discovery Knowledge - Did you ask enough of the right questions to truly understand your customer's pain and evaluation process.
• Sales Process - Was there a breakdown that led to missing an opportunity?
• Customer Experience - Is there a breakdown between marketing and sales that may have led to a misalignment with the client's initial expectations pre-inquiry vs. engagement with sales?

Wishing everyone a solid Q4 from Relativity Sells! If you have lost an opportunity, the door isn't closed. The opportunity still remains for you to gain feedback and continue to build trust with your client. You may just win them over in round 2 or they may respect your thorough efforts to establish a partnership that they'll bring you into a future opportunity!

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