Any sales engagement where there is a significant investment involved, such as selecting a new business management solution such as SAP Business One, usually encompasses multiple visits to a customer, hours of preparation and delivery of demonstrations and crafting of proposals not to mention using other resources such as calls to your reference customers, site visits and so on.

And from your prospective customers perspective, theres no less effort – preparation of requirements, selection of project teams not to mention the joy of sitting through multiple demonstrations of software, not just from you but also from your competitors.

So when you get that call to let you know that you weren’t successful in your bid to win the customer, it is disappointing and sometimes can leave you feeling angry and bitter.

But there was often times a good reason, or reasons as to why you weren’t selected….do you know what those reasons were…not anecdotally but factually?

More than 90% of the organisations I speak to don’t have a formal process for capturing that information and then learning from the mistakes they made or the points that the customer gave for not selecting them and to me, thats a terrible wasted opportunity to learn how to get better .

Lets face it, no one likes to go back to the scene of a previous defeat but there are so many good reasons why it makes sense to do so.

Why not implement win/loss analysis in to your sales system – if you are unsuccessful in winning a client, try this – send them a gift and a handwritten note wishing them well with their implementation and asking for 15 minutes of their time to help you learn what you could have done better to win them as a client.

Heres some text you could use –

Dear prospect name,

I am sure that by now you have started the implementation of your winning solution name at prospect company and to help you celebrate this milestone I would like to send this gift basket to you.

I recognise that the process of selecting and implementing a new business management system for an organisation is not easy and involves significant effort and investment on your behalf – as it does for us, being on the other side of the process.

I have a small favour to ask – I understand and respect your decision to select winning solution name from winning partner and I wish you the very best with your implementation and I would like to ask if I could have 10 minutes more of your time to help me understand what we could have done during our engagement with you that would have tipped decision in our favour.

This wont be a sales call and I can assure you we won’t be trying to convince you to change your decision in any way – it would just be an opportunity for us to learn from you what we need to do better next time we engage with an organisation like yours.

I would like to call you on . I hope you can take my call – please let me know if that time doesn’t work for you.

Best Wishes

etc etc

Worst case scenario, you’ll be remembered as not too many organisations take the time to say “thanks for the opportunity” and you never know, if things don’t go so well in the implementation, you could get a call.
Best case, you learn how to improve your sales process and increase your chances of winning the next deal – isn’t that worth investing 1 more hour and a few dollars on a gift?

If you are an SAP partner and you would like to review any aspect of your sales process, please let me know, I am happy to assist you in any way I can.

Richard

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