Turn Your Losses into Wins

Win/Loss Interview

by Terry Stidham

No one likes to lose business. The resulting empty feeling of losing a hard fought battle can be devastating. This is especially true if you lose a deal in one of your key accounts that was projected to close at a 75% rate or better. This can be an extremely disappointing time for you and your sales manager.

When you receive the news your initial reaction is to tell your client that they are making a mistake. They certainly must have missed something in your proposal! Your competition must have omitted something or misled them. They are making a BIG MISTAKE if they proceed with anyone other than you. Maybe your sales manager is asking you to set up a meeting in an attempt to unravel the deal. The extreme emotions that follow this bad news are all over the map. Most people in sales have been in this situation. The fact of the matter is the longer you are in sales and business development the more times this will happen. Sure we want to win every deal. And we all believe we should win every deal. But it is unrealistic to believe that we will have a 100% hit ratio. So let’s make sure we make the most from a lost sale and prepare better next time. 

This particular transaction may be lost but let’s be smart about learning from the loss. Instead of calling your client and telling him that he is not so bright let’s take the high road. Let him know that you value your relationship and apologize for not advancing a proposal that met their needs. Ask for a debrief meeting where you and maybe your sales manager can understand where your proposal feel short. If possible ask for a line by line explanation comparing your offer to the winning proposal. In many cases the client may not be willing to get into this detail but it is worth asking for. You want to learn what is the primary reason why you lost the business. And the only way you are going to get to the real reason is to act in a professional manner. Acting out of emotion and attempting to undo the deal during this debrief session is not a good idea.

Remember, the most important long-term goal and benefit of win/loss is to increase a company's new business win rate. This is achieved through an improved understanding of how a company's sales team, products, and services compare with the competition during the sales process. Other benefits include:

• Identifying a company's strengths and weaknesses
• Improving the effectiveness of sales presentations
• Determining key drivers for closing new business
• Using prospect feedback as a training and performance evaluation tool for sales and other presentation team personnel
• Formally sharing prospect perceptions across all areas of an organization to enhance product and service development
• Benchmarking and tracking a company's sales effectiveness, products, and services against the competition's

In-depth Win/Loss interviews with your prospects, customers, and defectors can help you discover answers to your most important business questions, including:

 
• What are the real reasons why you are winning and losing deals?
• What key market trends are you missing?
• What are your best and worst practices?
• What key features are helping you win?
• What key features are you missing?
• What is most important to your buyers
• How do the decision criteria differ based on the type of buyer?
• How are your competitors positioning themselves with your buyers?
• What do your competitors say about you to buyers?
• What training opportunities are you missing?
• How can your sales tools, marketing collateral, and presentations be improved?

 

Getting to the bottom line reason for the loss should be your primary objective. This information will not only better position you for future business in this account. It will also provide valuable feedback relative to how your competition is winning business. You can be sure that this competitor will show up in other accounts you are calling on. It will benefit you to gain as much competitive information as you can in this debrief session. Additionally, your client will appreciate your professional approach to losing this deal. This, of course, assumes you legitimately want to understand how you can better serve the account by learning from this loss. If done properly you will enhance the business relationship with your client and place you in a good position to pick up the business next time around.