About to Lose a Deal? Now What?

Winning and losing a deal in sales is as common as having 3 meals a day. But what really happens when we receive a call from a prospect saying that they decided not to buy from you. What questions do you ask both yourself and to them?

Most sales people we came across often jump into 1 or 2 of the following categories :

1) Blame it on cut-throat prices from a competitor ;

2) The customer’s issue

Before we jump the gun into any of the above, we would like to offer a systematic approach to peel the rotten onion to find out what really went wrong :

FREEZE Not freeze in panic or paranoia. What we mean here is to stay calm and do not jump to any conclusions yet. It is really a good opportunity to be able to speak to a prospect (especially when they call you), to find out what are the reasons for failure.

THANK THEM Many prospects did not even both to inform you when they decided to go with someone else. But this group did. So thank them professionally for informing you on the status.

FILL IN THE GAPS (PROSPECT’S PERSPECTIVE) Ask the decision maker to bring you up to speed. Are there features or services she’s looking for that you don’t provide (or she doesn't know you provide)? Are there intangibles that affected this decision (for example, does an employee from a competing company sit on their board of directors)?

Listen for specific reasons she’s chosen to go in a different direction, and see if that squares with your understanding of her problem. If it is for some features which they need but do not know you have, then find out if there is still a chance for proving them.

If it really is a price issue, DO NOT start a price discussion. Reconfirm with the prospect if they understood where your differentiators are and bring our their quantified pain (if you have done so). Reaffirm with reference customers if needed.

Ask your prospect to walk through the steps that led them to choose your competitor again.

The purpose of these questions is not to win the deal back on the call. It is to cover the few points to bring you back into play.

FILL IN THE GAPS (YOUR PERSPECTIVE) Ask yourself these questions : - Is this account originally a bad fit? - Are you speaking to the correct person? - Did you qualify the need? - Did you quantify the pain? - Did you present and showcase a particular requirement that is important to your

prospect? - Has the requirement change along the way?

OTHER SOURCES If you have other contact points in that organization, find out if there is someone blocking you from winning? Is the purchase with the competitor a done deal? Is there an especially important piece of the decision process you didn’t know about?

LOST DEAL Accept it with grace and move on. Let them know you completely understand and that you’re always here if they need you. Even top salespeople lose deals. The key is to follow a good sales process and control what you can.

I sometimes call prospects that I lost to a competitor about 90 days after the deal is closed. (In software, that’s around the time where implementation starts getting gnarly.) Determine what that time period looks like for your product and schedule a call on your calendar. Ask your prospects how the product is working out for them, then see if they’d like to be put on a drip campaign for all your top content related to their problem. Tell them if it gets too hard, you’re happy to help.

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Cherry-O!

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