From a Good Sales Call to a GREAT Sales Call

Close More by Doing What You Do Best

By RICHARD M. SCHRODER

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Richard M. Schroder
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-171811-0

Contents

Foreword by Stephan SchiffmanAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPART 1 RECOGNIZING THE HIDDEN OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE YOUR CLOSE RATE 1STEP 1 Discover the Benefits of Successfully Debriefing with ProspectsSTEP 2 Understand the Postdecision Mind-Set of the ProspectSTEP 3 Recognize How Salespeople Can Inhibit the Feedback ProcessPART 2 SELF-DIAGNOSING YOUR SALES EFFECTIVENESS THROUGH POSTDECISION
DEBRIEFS WITH PROSPECTSSTEP 4 Design a Prospect Debrief QuestionnaireSTEP 5 Utilize Proven Interviewing Techniques for Conducting Debrief
CallsSTEP 6 Identify and Analyze Your Win/Loss TrendsPART 3 LEVERAGING WHAT YOU’VE LEARNEDSTEP 7 Benchmark Your FeedbackSTEP 8 Implement the Right Techniques to Increase Your Close RateConclusionAPPENDIX A (For Sales Managers) Why You Should Implement a Win/Loss
Program for Your Sales TeamAPPENDIX B (For Sales Managers) How to Implement a Win/Loss ProgramIndex

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

STEP 1

Discover the Benefits of Successfully Debriefing with Prospects

Understanding why a deal is won or lost is critical, yet most salespeople havelittle (if any) understanding of the true reasons for winning and losing. Thefirst question salespeople ask themselves when they lose a sale is, “Why did Ilose?” Though the question may be straightforward, getting an accurate answercan be quite difficult.

Salespeople often ask prospects why they lost a deal, but they don’t typicallyget a straight answer. According to proprietary sales research data, prospectsshare the complete truth less than half of the time! This means that in amajority of new business situations, salespeople do not have a complete andaccurate understanding of why they lost, causing them to miss a criticalopportunity to improve their sales performance, better understand theircompetitive landscape, enhance their company’s products and services, andultimately increase sales.

Every year, companies spend significant time and money training theirsalespeople. However, most companies do little to verify that salespeople areactually implementing the right tactics in their interactions with prospects.Most companies do not tie their sales training to actual data and feedback fromprospects, and this is a huge lost opportunity for salespeople to improve theirselling efforts. This disconnect between salespeople and actual customerfeedback is a key factor for why most sales forecasts are wrong, and it showsthat there is a significant opportunity for salespeople to improve their newbusiness win rates. In an increasingly competitive world, every deal counts.

Over the past decade, I have been involved in more than 200 win/loss analysisstudies. My firm has conducted thousands of interviews in a variety ofindustries with bids lost and bids won prospects on behalf of our Fortune 500clients. As part of these studies, we have matched up the reasons that salesreps provided for why they lost specific deals versus the actual reasonsprovided by prospects to us as an independent third party. As Figure 1.1illustrates, only 40 percent of the time did sales reps have an accurate, fullrealization of why they lost. Another 28 percent of the time, the salespeoplehad some of the story correct but were missing other key factors thatcontributed to the loss, and the remaining 32 percent of the time, the salesreps were totally wrong in their assessments of why they lost the deal.

Additionally, as Figure 1.2 illustrates, salespeople’s own perceptionsgenerally align with these percentages. The average salesperson believes that heor she got the truth from a prospect 43 percent of the time. This demonstratesthat salespeople are reasonably adept at judging when prospects are being honestwith them. However, sales reps underestimate the amount of time that prospectsprovide completely false information. Sales reps estimate that prospectswithhold the truth 20 percent of the time; in reality, this occurs 32 percent ofthe time.

This situation does not exist only for lost deals but also for bids-wonsituations. Most salespeople don’t have a good handle on why they win business,either, because many salespeople do not even bother to ask prospects why. Infact, only 40 percent of the time does the average salesperson ask a newcustomer why he or she won the deal. This means that the majority of salespeoplehave a limited understanding of the true reasons why they win in the firstplace. True, they may have their own opinions as to why they are successful atwinning business, but they have not verified these reasons with prospects.Instead, most salespeople celebrate when they win a new piece of business andsimply move on to the next deal. What they don’t understand is that they aremissing out on a key opportunity to better understand their strengths and areasfor improvement in the eyes of prospects who have bought from them.

This data begs the question, if salespeople don’t truly understand why they winand lose, how are they expected to improve their performance? As I tracked thesetypes of sales process statistics over time, it became startling to realize thefrequency with which salespeople miss out on key feedback that is instrumentalto their success. This dilemma is the impetus for this book and explains why 90percent of salespeople believe they could improve upon how they debrief withprospects postdecision in order to receive more candid feedback.

This book will teach you how to gather more accurate and meaningful postdecisionfeedback from your prospects, and this feedback will allow you to focus on yourstrengths and self-diagnose and address your individual areas for improvementduring the sales process.

However, before you learn the many techniques to better debrief with prospectspostdecision, it is important to first understand why this is such a complexproblem for so many salespeople. In Part 1 of this book, we will exploreboth the benefits that can be obtained by implementing your own win/lossanalysis system as well as the challenges that salespeople face as they debriefwith prospects postdecision.

Let’s begin by exploring the transformational benefits that can be achieved bysuccessfully implementing a comprehensive postdecision debrief process at theend of your sales cycle.

APPLY FEEDBACK TO YOUR ENTIRE SALES PROCESS

There are many reasons conducting in-depth debriefs with prospects will bevaluable to you, but the best reason is that by committing to this process, youwill ultimately improve your sales effectiveness and increase your close rate.This will occur because conducting win/loss reviews will allow you to developyour own self-improvement training program by applying prospect feedback acrossall areas of your sales process.

To illustrate this point, let’s explore how debriefing with a prospect fits intothe entire sales process. As shown in Figure 1.3, conventional saleswisdom suggests that there are several key areas to the sales process, includinggetting in the door, establishing a connection, conducting a needs analysis,presenting, answering questions and handling objections, and closing. However,correctly debriefing with a prospect at the conclusion of the sales process isthe often overlooked final element and is not only educational but critical ifyou want to win more business and maximize your earning potential.

Over time, the process of gathering feedback on won and lost situations willchange your sales behavior as you apply what has been learned from thesediscussions to the other areas of your sales process in future salesopportunities. Win/loss analysis allows for a very valuable element wheretypical sales training falls short: the constant use of feedback as a driver ofbehavioral change. By getting direct, personalized feedback from prospects, youwill be able to self-diagnose and mitigate your own sales process deficienciesand improve upon your strengths, often in real time.

IMPLEMENT EFFECTIVE AND ACTIONABLE TACTICS

Although 60 percent of salespeople indicate they receive some form of salestraining each year, many never apply what they learn from their sales trainingin their daily interactions with prospects (and it is only through applicationand practice that sales tactics get learned). In fact, studies have shown thatmost salespeople forget the majority of what they learn at training sessionswithin 48 hours. Therefore, by learning to obtain better and more candidfeedback from prospects, salespeople can apply their learning back into theirsales process. It is much easier for salespeople to incorporate feedback fromthe concrete, real-life experience of a lost or won prospect than it is for themto remember abstract sales tactics from training seminars.

When you begin to hear direct, personalized feedback from prospects on acontinuous basis and you start to notice trends in what your prospects aretelling you, you will be more likely to learn from your mistakes and change yourbehavior. It may sting at first, but it will sink in faster than if you weresimply listening to a training session about general sales tactics. In fact, thecombination of win/loss analysis followed up by targeted sales training can beincredibly effective at improving your close rate, but you must first understandyour main sales process issues before you embark on tailored sales training.This is what most sales professionals don’t do. They don’t first assess theirown unique challenges before trying to implement a solution.

This is analogous to trying to sell a prospect on your product or service beforeyou fully understand the prospect’s unique needs. As you know, it is much easierto make the sale if you understand what the prospect’s true needs are.Similarly, you shouldn’t try to fix your own sales problems with training untilyou have accurately identified your unique selling challenges.

The training/feedback disconnect is not necessarily the fault of each individualsalesperson, as it is often the responsibility of the companies that providetraining to their sales force at annual conferences. Since most companies do notperform win/loss analysis first, sales management typically does not have anaccurate understanding of the true reasons their sales teams win and lose.Therefore, when sales training is provided, it often does not generate thehighest impact or ROI because it is not targeted toward the specific and uniqueneeds of the sales team and each individual member.

This is not to say that sales training is not critical. Sales training can be avery valuable motivational and educational tool that can be used to augment yourarsenal of sales tactics. However, sales training is more valuable if you applywhat you’ve learned and you apply the right tactics to your own unique sellingdeficiencies. Conducting enhanced postdecision debriefs will allow you as asalesperson to better understand what lessons you need to learn and how tobetter apply them.

Just as a doctor should not prescribe a medication or treatment to a patientuntil she has made an accurate diagnosis of the problem, salespeople should makesure they understand the main areas where they need help before making changesto their sales process. This is what win/loss analysis does; it creates anongoing improvement flywheel and allows you to continuously get better at yourprofession. Sales training is critical, but it is best when performed after anaccurate diagnosis is made.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHY YOU WIN AND LOSE

One thing I have always noticed when working with salespeople and sales leadersis that when I ask if they know the true reasons why they win and lose, theyoften respond in the same way. They pause for a moment, and then most say theyare really not sure. They eventually come up with a few reasons, but most aren’tfully sure of all the reasons, and very few can come up with the correctproportions of the reasons behind winning and losing. In fact, very fewsalespeople can rank order the reasons they win or lose. Can you see the problemwith this scenario? If you don’t fully understand the problem, how can youimplement a solution?

There is an old saying that goes like this: Looking for the solution withoutlistening to the problem is working in the dark. This is what mostsalespeople are doing. They continue to sell day by day without fullyunderstanding why they win and lose business, and therefore they cannot work ontheir own sales deficiencies.

Most salespeople, when asked why they win and lose, will mention product orservice features, or pricing issues. Very few will accept responsibility andadmit that their sales performance could be improved. In most win/loss studies,the sales process is typically a top driver of the purchase decision. As I’llshow in Chapter 2, most salespeople are wrong in their assessments ofhow much they impact the outcome of a deal.

One way to think about this situation is by looking at the sales process as”binary.” In each sales situation, you either win or lose—it’s thatsimple. Therefore, each sales situation is really a pass/fail exercise, and itis up to each salesperson to better understand how to pass more tests. Byconducting more candid debriefs with prospects, you will learn the reasons youare passing and failing and, ultimately, how to address the obstacles.

In some cases, you can also lose to “no decision,” when the prospect chooses todefer the decision or maintain the status quo (i.e., choosing to do nothing orelecting to remain with a current supplier). However, losing a deal to nodecision (or the status quo) is still a loss. It is a loss because you wereunable to convince the prospect to make a move, and thus you did not do a goodenough job to motivate him to make a change. Therefore, the binary analogy stillholds. A no decision is really a loss, or a failing grade.

As you can probably tell, I am asking you to change how you approach sellingbecause I am expecting you to take full responsibility for everything about yoursales process. You must accept full accountability in order to be successful. Ihave found that the very best salespeople in any industry are the ones who takefull responsibility for every step of the sales cycle.

The best salespeople don’t see losing as an inevitable process that can’t bechanged. Winning salespeople work to learn everything they can about why theywin and lose, and they are constantly improving themselves. They believe theyare in control and can learn from their mistakes to succeed in the future.

The bottom performers are typically the ones who will say it’s all aboutchemistry and there is nothing they can do to work on themselves to change theoutcome. These people don’t believe the outcomes they achieve in life haveanything to do with their own behavior. They essentially feel powerless to alterwhatever life brings their way.

As a salesperson, you must become an optimist and take full responsibility forthe sales process and making sure the prospect is totally satisfied with thewhole experience. One way to ensure this is to look at debriefing with aprospect as if you were conducting a prospect satisfaction study. Just ascompanies often conduct client or customer satisfaction surveys, why shouldn’tyou as a salesperson conduct your own prospect satisfaction survey? This way youcan fully understand the top drivers of prospect satisfaction and the mostcritical pain points. Just as client satisfaction analysis is intended toultimately increase retention, prospect satisfaction analysis will help youincrease your close rate.

Salespeople and companies should be just as worried about prospect satisfactionas they are about customer satisfaction. In fact, companies should be moreconcerned with prospect satisfaction, because bringing in customers is one ofthe most important and costly tasks in business. Companies spend a lot of timeand money surveying to see if customers are happy, but most don’t check to seehow satisfied prospects are with the sales process. The process of surveyingonly customers creates a customer-focused distortion that can make organizationsconservative and limit their ability to really understand the competitive marketdynamics with which they are dealing. True market dynamics can be moreaccurately gleaned from prospective customers, because prospects whohave recently reviewed their options are typically more knowledgeable of thelatest competitive and market trends than existing customers. Gauging prospectsatisfaction is a huge, untapped opportunity for most companies to increasetheir growth rate.

If you want to be the best salesperson you can be, you must train yourself to becommitted to prospect satisfaction. After all, prospects are your customers.They are the ones who pay your bills through the commissions you earn when youobtain them as customers for your company. Therefore, in order to grow as asalesperson, you must work more effectively with prospects.

We are all familiar with ever-rising quotas and higher hurdle rates for salessuccess. In the corporate world, there continues to be a push toward promotingas much sales activity as possible. As a result of these factors, manysalespeople are trained to shrug off a win or loss and quickly move on to thenext deal. A common sales management paradigm is one in which salespeople areexpected to hold as many sales meetings as possible. There is some validity tothis approach, because it is true that the more qualified prospects you are outin front of, the more you will sell. In general, if you double the number ofqualified prospects you get in front of, you will most likely double your sales.However, like anything else in life, there is a middle ground between qualityand quantity. What many inexperienced salespeople do is take as many meetings aspossible, when another option to increase sales performance is to improve thequality of each sales meeting. One proven way to improve the quality of meetingsis to continuously incorporate prospect feedback into your sales process. Somesalespeople view postdecision debriefs as a less fruitful use of their time thanmoving on to the next deal. However, as this book will show, win rates can beincreased by using feedback from in-depth postdecision interviews. Wouldn’t yourather meet with fewer people and win more business?

When you learn how to properly debrief with a prospect, you will shine a lighton the situation. You will find that once you get a better understanding of whyyou win and lose, you will be in a much better position to execute changes toyour sales process.

IMPROVE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR SALES PRESENTATIONS AND SALES TEAM

As you begin to gather comprehensive feedback from prospects, the informationwill influence how you prepare and execute on your sales presentations, and itwill change how you conduct yourself during sales meetings.

As an example, lack of customization of a sales presentation is a key reasonsalespeople lose in new business situations. One way you can combat this is tolearn from lost prospects what kind of customization would be most effective.For instance, prospects will often share with you how the competition customizedtheir pitch and won the business. This will allow you to learn from others andincrease your abilities in future deal situations.

Another reason prospects often mention is that one sales rep was not as preparedas another. When you begin to gather candid feedback, you may find that you arenot coming across as prepared compared to others. This feedback will highlightspecific behaviors that caused the winning sales rep to come across as well-prepared and can help you improve your preparation skills before sales meetings.

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(Continues…)Excerpted from From a Good Sales Call to a GREAT Sales Call by RICHARD M. SCHRODER. Copyright © 2011 by Richard M. Schroder. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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