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October 21, 2011
Q3 Trend: Sales Training Dollars in Win/Loss Analysis Increase
By: Matt Sharrers
What is the impact if you don’t invest sales training time on Win/Loss Analysis?
4 key stakeholders lose (Reps, Customers, Sales Management and Executives).
Reps— They don’t understand why they lost. No ‘A’ player wants their skills to plateau and Win/Loss allows a great forum to apply the contrast method of what is working vs. what is not across the organization. Arm your sales people quarterly with reasons for wins and pitfalls to avoid from across the company.
Customers— They will begin to tune you out and feel unheard. If you are losing deals to competitors for new products/services inside your existing customers sound the alarms. This is one of the biggest leading indicators that your share of wallet is in jeopardy. Dive into Win/Loss.
Sales Management— Job satisfaction goes down, income goes down and they face potential turnover. Nobody wants to be part of a team that plays “not to lose” vs. playing to win. It is impossible for sales managers to coach sales people when they don’t know have feedback from the customer/prospect on why deals are won and lost.
Executives— There are only a couple of levers that move the share price for those stock options. Nothing drives share price faster than revenue growth. Want to win more? Find out why you lose.
There are a variety of areas your Win/Loss can cover. Best in class sales forces used some of the items below:
- Compelling event (why the buyer was looking for a solution)
- Buyer role intelligence (what was most important to buyer and why)
- Sales Process and Buying Process alignment and breakdown
- Marketing process (you and competitors)
- Selection and non-selection reasons (you and competitors)
- Service or product demonstration/performance (you and competitors)
- Did you understand all of the key influencers making the decision?
- At what point did the customer know they were choosing you/competitor?
- How close to their evaluation criteria were you? Competitor?
Call To Action
- Start now. There is no perfect time. Your customers/prospects will appreciate your thoroughness. If you have to choose, pick the losses over the wins; always more insight from failure
- Ask tough questions. Don’t try to skew the questions to protect yourself with the losses.
- Neutrality. Utilize a third party
- Celebrate failure more than success. Publish the results (especially the losses) and ensure each functional group that is included in selling (sales, business units, procurement, marketing) are aware of the key actions.
There will be a variety of outputs to help you assess your sales strategy. If you have completed a formal or informal Win/Loss and think your Sales process may be misaligned, attend our webinar on Thursday November 10th.
Are there are any big sales training improvements that you have seen due to Win-Loss? We would love to hear from you, let us know in the comments section below.
