You Can Do Almost Everything Right And Lose

It’s tough to lose a deal that you should have won. It’s even tougher when you know that you could create and deliver greater value than your competitor, and when your dream client made a poor decision (like putting price above the outcome).

• You can do an excellent job targeting your dream client, nurturing the relationship over time, and developing an opportunity. You can choose the right targets and still lose, but that doesn’t mean you should stop working on these difficult to win clients; receptive prospects that aren’t really targets don’t improve your chances of winning.
• You can discover your dream client’s most strategic needs, needs they insist that are critical to their future success. You can build consensus within their team around those needs, and you can gain verbal agreements that your solution is right. You can do these things and still lose an opportunity. But that doesn’t mean that these aren’t the things that are required to sell effectively and win.
• It’s difficult to present well. Most people aren’t nearly as good as they believe themselves to be. But you can present well, connect and engage with your prospective client, and knock every question they ask out of the park, only to lose that opportunity. This is true, and you still need to do your homework and prepare to present.

When you do everything right and lose, it is usually one of two things that caused you to lose.

1. The first is that you didn’t create greater value than your competitor. This is especially difficult to do when someone within your dream client only perceives lowest price as value. But your prospect allows buys what they believe to be the greatest value.
2. The second is that you didn’t resolve your prospect’s concerns; they don’t trust you enough to deliver the results they need. Your customers always buy from someone they believe will execute and deliver.

The only way to get better is to accept that you are responsible for your failures (in this case, lost deals), and to start doing something different. When you accept responsibility, you also empower yourself to take new actions and succeed in the future.