Your customer has an investment in you being successful and so you should use this opportunity to find out what you could do better, what additional features or functions or services would have improved your offering or what you could have done to better address the needs of the customer.
You also want to know if you could have been more efficient in your process. So, were there things you could have done earlier in the process which could have made the interaction more efficient or reduced the overall cycle time of the sale?
Undertaking win/loss interviews is not easy. It is very easy to be brushed aside by the prospect or be given a standard answer just to get rid of you. It requires a professional approach and one where the ego of the salesperson or their reputation can be put aside.
Salespeople themselves are too emotionally involved to undertake this process and are reluctant to step back into a relationship if it has not generated a sale. Also, it is hard to ask a prospect to comment on the sales process if they have negative comments but must make them to the person they wish to criticise.
The interview process itself needs to be carefully thought out and standardised: perhaps different interviews for each of the groups; withdrawn, rejected, won and lost. It needs to be done by someone familiar with the products and services being sold and with the vendor operations, especially the sales process.
Many vendors use an outside agency to conduct the analysis believing that prospects will be more open to someone not from the vendor. If undertaken by someone from the vendor, it is probably best done by someone who was not involved in the sales process, possibly someone from marketing or finance.
Preparation for the interview should start with a review of the original sales activity and the notes made by the sales and pre-sales staff. The interviewer then has a background from which to undertake the interview.
One of the items on the list to analyse is the accuracy of the sales notes. This is especially interesting in light of the way the prospect sees the same activity from their side. Much can be learned from viewing the sales process from the prospect viewpoint.
A lead conversion process needs to be reviewed on a regular basis as the vendor and competitors change their offerings. By bringing prospects and customers into the review process, the vendor has the best chance of refining and optimising their lead conversion system.
Tom McKaskill is a successful global serial entrepreneur, educator and author who is a world acknowledged authority on exit strategies and the former Richard Pratt Professor of Entrepreneurship, Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. A series of free eBooks for entrepreneurs and angel and VC investors can be found at his site here.
