Sales Operations Best Practices, Research Reports, Training Courses and Webinars

SellingBrew

Insights & Tips

Already a subscriber? Login

Become a subscriber and unlock an information arsenal focused on making your sales operation more effective.

Three Real Reasons Sales Teams Lose

Let’s play Sales Ops Psychic for a minute…

Grab your reason-code report for last quarter’s lost sales. Got it? Ok.

Now…not knowing anything at all about your business or your team…I’m willing to bet…your brew-of-choice…that the number one reason being reported by your sales team is…drumroll, please…

Price!

But wait…I’m not only willing to bet that your sales team believes they lose deals primarily due to price…I’m also willing to bet that they’re wrong.

Why am I so confident?

I just finished reviewing “Why Companies Lose or Win Strategic Sales,” a new research briefing by Rick Reynolds.

Rick and his team at AskForensics do win/loss analysis for a living—we love that kind of information here at SellingBrew.  In fact, his team has researched, investigated, and analyzed nearly $11 billion worth of transactions for some of the largest companies in the world.

And they don’t just do surveys or ask the sales teams…they actually interview the buyers to get to the real reasons behind the losses.

What are those reasons? Here are three that got my attention:

  1. Poor understanding of requirements.
  2. Poor sales presentations and proposals.
  3. Lack of ability to provide proactive ideas.

Hmmmm. These all sound like things that are under the sales team’s direct control.

Does pricing play a role? Absolutely.

But as the research briefing reveals, pricing’s role is not nearly as significant as many sales teams are reporting…particularly when it comes to the larger deals.

Now, that may seem somewhat counter-intuitive. But when you really get below the surface and actually talk to buyers, it turns out that companies are losing the bigger deals for reasons other than price…reasons that are well-within the sales team’s ability to correct.

Of course, these other reasons may not be as convenient a scapegoat as price…but that doesn’t make them any less real.

PS: In the highly-unlikely event that I lost the bet, just look me up on your next visit to my neck of the woods and I’ll buy you that brew 🙂

Get Immediate Access To Everything In The SellingBrew Playbook

Subscribe Today

Related Resources

  • Assessing Your Sales Operation

    How do you know how your sales capabilities really stack up? How can you tell? In this on-demand webinar, learn how to leverage "3 P" assessments to figure out where you're at and where you need to improve.

    View This Webinar

  • The Big Deal About "Modern" Sales Playbooks

    A lot of sales operations have been trying to determine whether playbooks are something they should be leveraging. And if so, how should they be going about it? In this expert interview, Christopher Faust helps cut through the confusion and provides guidance on topic.

    View This Interview

  • Closing the Gap on Growing Existing Customers

    Our research into leading sales operations shows that for most B2B companies, selling more to their current customers is a top priority. However, this research also exposes a mission-critical capability that most B2B sales operations are admittedly lacking.

    View This Research

  • Seven Steps to Identify and Capture Your Value

    With dozens of different methodologies, it's easy to get sidetracked by all of the complexity of value-based selling and pricing. But it's the fundamentals that matter. This video guide gives you what you need to know in seven simple steps.

    View This Guide