If the answer to #4 is greater than 1, move on to the steps below. If it isn’t, congratulations! You’re in good shape.
2. Measure your “losing efficiency”
While many leaders tend to measure the length of time it takes to win a deal, it can also be very helpful (although counterintuitive) to measure your “losing efficiency” as well.
One of my friends is a senior sales leader at e-commerce giant Shopify. She shared with me that, as part of their focus on sales execution and continuous improvement, they measure a statistic called “Time to Lose” or TTL. By incorporating statistical standards for how long an opportunity should be open before it either moves up or out of their sales pipeline, they are more easily able to maintain an objective view of the efficiency of their sales team.
3. Take off the “happy ears”
Many cognitive biases cause sales reps to spend more time losing deals than winning them. Among them, confirmation bias (AKA: “Happy Ears”) is one of the most common. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens one’s prior personal beliefs or hypotheses.
For example, if a customer who showed initial interest in your solution hasn’t returned your dozens of calls, you might assume that they are “just busy” and fully intend to respond soon. If you’re struggling to look at your sales opportunities with objectivity, I’ve shared three counter-intuitive declarations you can make to your customer during the initial stages of the discovery process that will immediately help you find that much-needed resolve.
One of the biggest reasons your opportunities fail to uruguay telegram data progress past the initiates stage is because your pitch failed to spark high enough levels of engagement and interest in the mind of your customer. In short, they couldn’t figure out how you could help them!
This can happen when you:
Overload your buyers with product or technical information
Parrot high-level value propositions that lack clarity or differentiation
Fail to manifest the confidence and conviction your customers crave.