How to Make an Unsuccessful Sale a Good Learning Experience

By:Tim Hagen

Everyone has experienced the sales blues, when everything seems perfect and you are confident the sale is going to close until you hear the words, "sorry, we're going ahead with someone else." It is important that we take the emotion out of the sales loss and learn something for it, in order to learn from our mistakes and create more successful closes in the future. Always remember that you cannot always control what happened to close the lost sale, but you can chose your response. The success of your sales future is made by these choices, it is important that you make the right ones.

When you've lost a sale, it is good to go through the following steps:

1)Be a hero-try with lots of digging to save the sale, if possible until you've determined that the deal is dead. Amazingly, studies indicate that 75% of deals lost can be resurrected if the salesperson will continue to be upbeat and persistant.

2)Find out why. This information is essential because it can help you get better and make the loss give you a return on investment for your future deals.

Be direct with the customer and ask: "What could I have done differently to earn your business? You won't hurt my feelings, it'll help me to continue to improve." Then do something with the response you receive.

3)Continue to stay in touch with the contact. Frequently, the customer/prospect will rethink their decision to go to another provider right after their purchase. Keep your name in front of them and in your mailing list. It pays to check back and see how they are being treated by the new organization, you never know when they may need to make a change.

4)Sincerely thank them for their time by sending a card. Guaranteed this will differentiate you from 99% of all salespeople out there.

If the current provider has not done this, it puts you and your organization at a much higher level in the event they should decide to make a change.

5)Ask for referrals. Don't hesitate to ask for a referral, just because they didn't buy from you doesn't mean they aren't aware of others who could benefit from your services/products. In addition, you also keep the lines of communication open with the customer you lost the sale with.

6)Move on to the next opportunity. View it as a learning opportunity and don't take it personally. Know the law of numbers and the sale lost just puts you closer to your next sale.

Finally, keep in mind that you have no choice about what happens to you but by choosing the best response you will enable yourself to experience success in future deals.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: lost deals, building sales skills, sales

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Tim Hagen, President of Sales Progress LLC, builds programs to help organizations increase sales. He has been doing this for 21 years and has helped both small and large size organizations increase their bottom line. He can be reached at http://www.SalesProgress.com or 262-240-1077.

Top Sales Articles
1). Why Use Lead Management Software? By : Halstatt Pires Having a popular website, or popular company of any type, is entirely dependant on sales. Effective sales at that. Maintaining a healthy profit is key to the long-term survival of your web site or business and this means knowing the difference between your effective sales leads and your ineffective sales leads. Small Business Owner Lead management software is perfect for the small business owner or webmaster of a website.
2). Power Words By : Wendy Weiss I conducted a teleconference a few weeks ago with people who were new in sales and new to prospecting. The focus of the call was to help participants get beyond fear and understand their prospecting process. One of the participants on the call told me that she had been given the telephone prospecting script that her team leader uses to set appointments.
3). Secrets to Getting Paid for Your Creative Ideas and Proposals By : Kirstin Carey Many creative professionals such as event planners, interior designers, and decorative painters are frustrated when potential clients steal their ideas and take them to cheaper companies. They present their ideas in a proposal or presentation and later find that they didn’t get the client and their designs are being used by someone else. PROTECT YOUR IDEAS In order to protect your ideas and still get the client, you have to change how you deliver your concepts and specifically what you present.
4). The Sales Training Series: Dealing With Sales Objections and Stalls By : Duane Sparks Most salespeople think of “stalls” and “objections” as synonyms. Wrong. Stalls and objections are both things you may hear after you have asked for commitment, but an objection is a specific reason not to buy. In a stall—“I need to think about it”—the customer offers no particular reason for hesitating.
5). What’s the Objective of Your 1st Sales Appointment? By : Jeff Hardesty Have you defined what you want to happen at the conclusion of your 1st appointment? Only then can you actually set up a proficient sales methodology to achieve the defined objective more times than not. And with a pre-defined objective to your 1st appointment you can (1) set a realistic benchmark of success and (2) measure the outcome. It becomes part of your sales performance scorecard.
6). Stop Cold Calling and Double Your Sales in 30 Days By : Hartley Pinn Everyone knows what “cold calling” is, but how about “warm calling”? That’s easy, warm calling involves contacting your former clients and people you have already identified as prospects. These are the people you had made previous contact with and are listed in your database or on your Rolodex. If appropriate for your industry, I recommend spending one hour a day calling your database.
7). Restaurant Supply a Lifesaver for Caterer By : Kingston Amadan A few years ago, I was working as a catering manager of a local historic hotel. The hotel had been in terrible condition for many years until a group of investors purchased it and began the long arduous process of renovation. They were able to get the majority of it renovated before the funding started to run out, at which time they opened for business to offset some of the costs of ownership.
8). Employers Keep Screening Out Great Sales Candidates By : Robert Cameron Companies hiring sales reps stick to the same old hiring practices, and hire low performers that turn over, while screening out some of the best candidates. Robert Cameron examines two hiring myths and shows you how to easily select sales people who can sell.
9). The Five Cardinal Sins Salespeople Commit By : Bill Brooks We have very candid conversations with the sales professionals who come to our seminars and through those discussions we’ve discovered five critical errors that most salespeople make. Of course, we help them correct those mistakes, but it’s somewhat surprising as to how common they are. Here are the mistakes, see if you commit them in your own sales career.
10). The Downlow on Buying and Selling Concert Tickets Online By : Jared Lock Buying concert tickets online isn’t scary. In fact, it’s as easy as visiting Google and typing in the event you are looking for and follow with the word “tickets”. However, a couple of questions may come to mind when browsing for sports or concert tickets. 1. Why are tickets so expensive on the internet? On Ticketmaster the tickets are so much cheaper.

New Sales Articles
1). How To Get Return Customers By : David Gass Explains to to build customer loyalty and get customers to come back and buy more.
2). 7 Strategies for Loan Officers to Guarantee an Awesome 2006 By : Joe Pahl With the coming high interest rate market, loan officers who follow these seven strategies will guarantee having a successful 2006. The stratgies include new technology, proper planning, business referral groups, and maximizing your "geese that lays golden eggs" among others.
3). 7 Reasons Why Loan Officers SHOULD NOT Market to REALTORS By : Joe Pahl This article expresses why marketing to real estate agents is not always the best option and explores seven other ways to generate purchase business.
4). Staying Warm in a Cooling Market By : Bob Corcoran As the National Real Estate market changes there are five key items an agent can embrace to make the most of this market shift
5). Dealing with the RIGHT Decision Maker By : Tim Hagen Dealing with different decision making styles and decision makers appropriately is a big part of being successful in sales. This article will provide background to the different types of personalities that can be encountered in the sales process.
6). Get Ahead By Using Affiliates By : David Gass Describes what affiliates are and how to benefit from them.
7). How to Make an Unsuccessful Sale a Good Learning Experience By : Tim Hagen Losing a deal can be difficult, however learning from the experience can reap huge rewards. Successfully using what you did incorrectly can change future outcomes if addressed correctly.
8). Closing A Sale: Promise and Deliver! By : Hartley Pinn One of the chief complaints from customers about the way business is conducted these days centers on customer service. Either the service aspect is completely lacking or what has been promised to the customer hasn’t been kept. Dealing with the latter category, it is easy to see why customers are disappointed: sales people routinely over promise and then fail to deliver.
9). Sales Secrets for Entrepreneurs: Increase Profits in 12 Months Flat Through Consumer Education Programs! By : Chet Holmes You can attract far more prospects to look at your offer by providing an education than you'll ever get by simply offering your products or services. For example: Let's say you sell telephone systems, like Company X. Before discovering this concept, Company X would call hundreds of companies per day and ask if they were interested in talking about a new telephone system (product offer).
10). Sell Services Online By : Eggbilly Is it possible to take a normal offline service business like a legal practice, private medical practitioner or even a real estate business and make money with it from the Internet? As someone who’s been doing this since 1996, I say the answer is a resounding “YES”. If you are a business owner, or even an affiliate marketer, you know how hard it is to make a living online.