Why do we lose?

This isn’t a World Cup related blog post, in fact, at time of writing, England is still in. That said, I imagine many of the same principles – on the value of analysing your losses – apply in the world of sport as they do in the world of sales and marketing…

One of my favourite questions when meeting a new client or prospect is "why do you lose tenders?"

Why we win is great, but it's rare you get a meaningful answer to this question when you ask it. You'll either get technical attributes (rarely genuinely the differentiator, though important to understand) or nice, but relatively anodyne comments about how they are a better team who try harder, act as a true partner for their customer… etc.

I mean, there's nothing bad about any of that, but it doesn't always help unpick the challenge or inform a strategy or messaging that could support an organisation. And to be fair, many may not know - where there is feedback from a tender, some of it will doubtless be post-rationalised (it's not you, it's me nonsense, or worse).

But if you're self-aware enough to embrace failure as a learning, then you can understand better if you're losing because, for example…

• You're perceived as too expensive - perhaps you need to build value/premium positioning into everything you say and do, or adjust your pricing
• Your customer didn't understand the problem you were addressing - all kinds of comms support could help here
• You lack credibility or experience in a space - you need a strong customer advocacy programme, demonstrating your expertise tangibly
• You lack feature A or B, or they prefer architectural approach x or y - you need a technical thought leadership track that tackles your rivals' positioning actively
• You got into the tender process too late - you need content and engagement programmes that reach your audience earlier in their journeys
• You lacked the C-Suite or TDM advocates - as above, engagement programmes needed
• Your sales team didn't know how to engage at a senior level / from the customer perspective - sales transformation programme and social selling support, perhaps

'Failing fast' is not just trendy because of Silicon Valley - to ignore the mistakes of the past is indeed to be doomed to repeat them. Marcomms leaders need to seek out and help actively position against these failures through content and engagement programmes that position the attributes of a product, service or solution against the context of its (perceived) weaknesses.

Only then can you change those perceptions.