Why You Really Lost the Sale: Part 2

Last week reviewed the reasons sales managers and salespeople most often give for losing the sale.

No matter how you look at those reasons, in truth there are really only two reasons you lose a sale:

1. You should not have been pursuing the deal in the first place, or
2. You were outsold.

It’s as simple as that. In my experience, failure is weighted fairly evenly across both. Today, let's look at reason number one in more detail. 

Reason 1: You should not have been pursuing the deal in the first place.

At The TAS Group, we discuss ways to help sales teams win four out of seven deals, instead of three out of 10. 

This means that you pursue fewer opportunities. It’s not about getting up to bat more often; in fact it’s the opposite. In practice, it means determining at the outset if your solution can uniquely and competitively add value to the specific customer that you are targeting.

Of course, this approach means research, and work, and understanding what the customer wants to achieve, and how your solution might be applied to solve their specific problem. This information is only useful if you understand what the competitor might be offering. Often, it’s as simple as defining your sweet-spot customer –- listing the attributes that describe the profile of the customer for whom you can competitively add value. When you hear yourself saying “We haven't sold to this type of customer before, but I think I can make it work,” then move on. You’re wasting your time.

Bottom line: If you are a sales manager or salesperson and you say any of the following after you lose the deal, you never should have been there in the first place.

1. “The customer is locked into our competitor.”
2. “Our solution just wasn’t a good fit, and the rep tried to squeeze a round peg into a square hole.”
3. “The customer never told me that capability X was important.”
4. “We couldn’t provide a reference because we’ve never sold to that type of customer before.”
5. “The rep never knew that the competitor wrote the RFP.” 

Now let’s examine the second reason deals are lost.

Reason 2: You were outsold.

Sometimes this is hard to accept. Personally, if I can’t make the case that I didn’t belong there in the first place, then I’ve been outsold. That means any of the following were true:

• I didn’t understand what the customer wanted to achieve,
• I was not politically aligned in the customer’s organization,
• I didn’t understand the customer’s buying process, 
•  chose the wrong competitive strategy, 
• I failed to articulate my value proposition in terms that the customer understood, 
• I failed to demonstrate ROI for my solution, or (more likely), 
• a combination of a few of these.

Bottom line: If you are a sales manager or salesperson and you say any of the following after you lose the deal, you never should have been there in the first place.

1. “Well, the rep wasn’t speaking to the decision maker.”
2. “The rep didn’t understand what the customer really wanted to achieve.”
3. “The competitor had a stronger relationship with the customer.”
4. “We didn’t understand the personal motivation of the decision maker.”
5. “The rep couldn’t get the customer to understand our value proposition.”
6. “The rep never realized that the budget was way too small for our product.”
7. “We’re just too expensive.”
8. “The rep never knew [the deal] had to be approved the technology committee. The customer never said that.”
9. “The customer just doesn’t get it. I don’t understand it –- she really needs our stuff.”
10. “The customer never told me that capability X was important.”
11. “My [internal] sponsor just didn’t have the juice to make it happen –- even though he told me he did.”

Now, even if you’ve done a great job in qualification –- and if you're passing the should-I-be-there-in-the-first-place test -- you still won’t win all of the deals.  Sometimes, you will be outsold, but the good news is that 3 out of 4 is still a realistic sales win rate target.

When I express the perspective outlined here, I get a range of reactions, ranging from animosity (“Who does he think he is? He doesn’t understand what I go through to win a deal”) to guarded acceptance and excitement (“Wow, if we could actually achieve that, it would be incredible. We should give it a shot”).

As we’ve watched our customers move to these kind of ratios, it’s been really gratifying to know that we’re making that kind of difference for some. I’ve spoken at length to those who excel on this journey, and there are a number of common attributes –- some organizational, and some with respect to the tools they use to help them. 

Organizationally, the companies just seem to be run better, and sales is viewed as the engine that fuels growth. As a result, the investment is commensurate. From a sales tools perspective, the common elements are a sales process that maps to how the customer buys, a deep analysis of the customer’s political structure, and collaborative interaction with the customer to truly understand the business problem and goals.

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