Reviewing lost sales

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How often do you break down lost sales?

As sales professionals, confident, self-assured sales professionals, we’re quick to blame the selling circumstances, timing, our buyer’s company, our buyer, our own company’s policies or product quality or support personnel when things go wrong and we lose a sale.

But how often do we shoulder the blame? Sales author George N. Kahn once said:

“We may not be sure about the impression we make on others, but we know how we look to ourselves — in an admirable light, of course. In other words, we tend to overlook our faults and magnify our virtues.”

Lack of introspection or self-analysis kills so many sales. Yet, because of it’s nature we can never know how many.

Do yourself a favor. When deconstructing your next lost sale, ask first these questions.

• What could I have done in the first few minutes of my first meeting with this buyer to get things off to a better start?
• What should I do next time I’m faced with a buyer who doesn’t want to hear about what makes us unique?
• What questions should I ask buyers that I glossed over this time?
• How well did I really summarize our competitive advantages?
• Did I thoroughly resolve all concerns and objections, or just give a run-of-the-mill answer for them?
• Did I start too low on the totem pole with this account?
• What assumptions did I make that might have taken things in the wrong direction?

You’re wanting to analyze not just what you did, but how you did it. We’re talking self-analysis here, not whether an item can be checked off the list.

Reviewing and examining your lost sales, with an objective eye, keeps you from repeating the same mistakes over and over, winning you more future sales.