Be the Sherlock Holmes of sales. Be more curious and investigative in your approaches.A Letter From Your Sales Manager
Dear Sales Professional,
I am writing this long after you came to me to discuss your most recent lost deal. The pain on your face and the crack in your voice was too much for me. I held back and wasn’t as direct, straight forward, or truthful as you needed me to be about why you lost this deal.
I want you to understand that I agonize when you are in pain. It’s because I have been in your shoes and made the same mistakes. The sales profession is a cruel teacher and I writhe and twist in a wretched dance of empathy because you, like so many before you, are cursed to learn these lessons the hard way.
That’s why I couldn’t hit you with this real truth today doing our one on one. I didn’t have the heart.
You felt that you did good work on the proposal. The saudi arabia telegram data prospect asked you to show them your best price and value. You worked with our internal team and got sign-offs on the package you proposed. You met with all of the the prospect’s key stakeholders and thought that you conducted good discovery. The buying signs were there and they gave you every indication that the account was yours. You put it on the forecast and guaranteed our leadership team that you would close it.
Instead, you lost the deal to a competitor that you didn’t even know was there. Six months invested in this deal and all you have to show is the egg that’s all over your face. I know it hurts, and I know it’s heavy.
But, you must know the truth and the truth is that the reason why we did not get bought is because you did not persuade the stakeholders with your business case. Your discovery was weak, and so were your relationships. You took things for granted and allowed confirmation bias to cloud your objectivity. You skipped steps in the sales process. This is why you got blindsided.
You did not do your job.