I was watching MOTD this morning, and marveled at Burnley beating Liverpool 2 nil. At face value, Liverpool lost because Burnley scored more goals. But looking at the stats, Burnley had only 19% of the possession, the lowest ever percentage for a winning team in the Premier League. Burnley won because they had a plan to win, and stuck to it, whereas Liverpool lost because they couldn’t handle that plan.
In a business context, how often do we hear “We lost on price.”? But a quick look beyond that headline answer will reveal the real reasons, usually starting with the failure to sell the potential customer your real value. Conversely, winning should never be about price (because you will have left money on the table), but will be more about outselling the competition and convincing your new customer of your value.
So here’s a suggestion; at your next sales meeting, invite a wider audience, and then workshop the last quarter’s wins and losses, taking each in turn, and getting behind the headline reasons you won or lost. Better still, use the outputs to inform the deals in your current and future pipeline, then ‘rinse and repeat’ every quarter thereafter.
In my experience, sustainable results are only achieved when the lessons learnt from success and failure are continually applied.