We are a few short days away from the start of a new year, and before you go barreling headlong into 2011 with your resolutions, it’s a wise idea to stop and reflect on what you learned this year. This year’s lessons are next year’s improvements—if you think deeply and take massive action on what you learned and discerned from the past year’s wins and losses.

Reflecting on Won Opportunities

What lessons did I learn from competing for the dream clients that I won this year?

What prospecting methods led to these opportunities?

What was it that allowed me to win these clients?

What did I do that made a real difference in winning these deals? How did I stack the deck in my favor, winning before there was a contest?

What relationships made these wins possible?

How do I do more of what allowed me to win in the future?

Reflecting on Lost Opportunities

What lessons did I learn from competing for and losing the opportunities that I lost this year?

What prospecting methods led to these lost opportunities?

What caused me to lose these opportunities? (Note: Don’t answer price or anything else that you believe made your loss inevitable. If this were true, the opportunity should most likely have been disqualified. Focus on what you could have done better).

What could I have done, what actions could I have taken, that would have made losing these opportunities less likely?

Did I have the relationships on the opportunities I lost to have a serious expectation of winning? What relationships were missing?

On my lost opportunities, did I recognize where and when my competitor had the deck heavily stacked in their favor? How did they have the unfair advantage that I would liked to have had? What could I have done to compete here?

What are the three critical takeaways from my lost opportunities?

What do I need to stop doing to improve my sales results in the future?

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