Here’s an article on a subject that is near and dear to the heart of Coffee for Closers; it is called “What did you learn from the last sale you lost?” The author talks about the importance of doing a quick post-mortem on a sale that you lost, asking some key questions to help understand exactly how things went south. The purpose of this inquiry is to avoid repeating whatever missteps led to the sale being lost. It is important for sales people not to dwell on the past, especially past failures, but there are some nuggets of wisdom in past failures that can improve future performance.

This article talks about making inquiries, or post-mortem exams, on lost sales at the individual sales level. The inquiry involves asking questions of yourself, and when applicable, asking questions of the prospect. This is a great idea, he writes, not only because you stand learn from the lost sale, but also because you have a chance to build the relationship with the prospect for next time.

This approach is smart, and great for the individual who is honing his individual approach, his unique set of skills. But this approach to learning from the past should not be applied by only individual sales agents. It should also applied by sales managers and small business owners. Also, striving to learn only from failures leaves a lot of learning opportunities on the table, successes yield their own set of insights.

So, as the sales rep performs his post-mortem exams on individual lost sales, the sales manager should be executing his own set of inquiries at a higher level. Using lead management software, a lot of data is generated by closed leads, and lost sales alike. It is possible for Sales Managers to make inquiries into the comparative performance of different lead sources, marketing efforts, sales agents, etc…  Lead management empowers the sales manager not only to look into why individual sales fell apart but to take a higher view and spot trends around why certain groups of leads are closing under certain circumstances and not others. Using the Business Intelligence reporting engine, it’s easy to run pre-configured reports to quickly gain insights. It is also possible to easily create custom reports to round out the picture of every aspect of your teams performance.

We should all try to learn from our failures and successes. Whether, you are a sales rep whose sphere of influence is the individual prospect or the sales manager who looks after the entire teams performance, there are tools to help you know what works.

Tags: Lead Management