NFIB

Turn Losing a Sale into a Learning Experience
04/ 02/ 2002

It's discouraging to learn that a prospective customer you've been wooing for some time has just bought from a competitor. Experienced sales professionals say, however, that rather than lose heart at such a moment, it's better to try to learn more about your product, your sales techniques, yourself and your competition. By asking customers why they bought from someone else, you can improve your chances for future sales success.

When trying to learn more about why you lost a sale, don't be confrontational and tell customers they made a mistake not buying from you. Antagonizing someone will shut down the possibility that they will open up and tell you why they didn't buy from you. Instead, tell them that you would value any information they can give you about why they chose to do business with someone else. In today's Workshop, contributor Jeffrey Moses lists six key things you want to learn.

1. Ask if there was any single point about your product or services that was inferior to the competition's. By asking the customer to name a single point, rather than many points, you'll make it easier for the customer to focus and give you a genuine answer. If there are one or more definite points in which the customer feels that your competition is superior, you'll know to address these points in particular during future sales presentations.

2. Determine if price was the central issue in the customer's decision. If so, you'll need to adjust your sales presentation to emphasize the importance of the quality, durability, extra features or whatever added benefits your products or services offer.

3. Ask if you failed to supply information to the customer or were slow to respond in any way. Also see if any information was not supplied in a timely way by your staff or by others in your company.

4. Determine if you personally said or did anything to offend the customer. Such an admission is often hard to get out of a customer (they won't want to get into personal issues), but if you have certain techniques or personality quirks that irritate customers, it's important to find out about them. To draw this information from a customer, you'll have to be extremely sincere when describing how important it is for you to know every reason they chose not to purchase from you.

5. Try to determine if your competition made promises or statements that are untrue about their product/services/guarantees--or about yours. The customer, of course, won't know that what your competitor said is untrue, so you'll have to uncover this by asking questions about what the competition said.

6. Ask if the competition put time pressure on the customer (buy immediately and save 10 percent), and if that was the reason the customer didn't give you notice about buying from someone else. When you realize that the competition is operating in this way, you'll be able to match such offers in the future.

If you can swallow your pride and hide your disappointment, you can turn the discouraging moment of a lost sale into an advantage. Sales pros view each successful and unsuccessful sale as single moments in an unending process. Learning is the key to long-term success, so don't pass up important moments in the process.

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