You've Lost the Sale. Now What?

5 steps to take when you’ve lost the sale. You may not win this opportunity, but you can still turn this prospect into a client.

Transcript of Session –

Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry, shall we?

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Okay. You’re in that situation that every sales person dreads, you get the phone call saying, we’ve chosen another vendor. What do you do you’ve lost the sale?

All right. Don’t freak out because the oil and gas industry drivers are a bit different from a business point of view. You may not be able to salvage this exact sale, but I guarantee you can still do business with this client. So here is a couple of things and make sure you do it.

Number one. Take full accountability, right? You have some role to play and probably a large role to play if you’re the sales lead on why you lost this opportunity. Don’t blame your competition, your competition is only competition if you don’t know their business as good as they know it, right? Maybe you shouldn’t even went after opportunity regardless. Take accountability so you can move forward, so you’re not taking time pointing fingers and playing the blame game.

Number two. As soon as possible have a lost review done. Neither you nor your management should do this because the client is most likely not going to tell you the truth because they like you, right? They see all the time and effort you put in this proposal, so hire an independent third party to do it. We actually offer it as a service, so if you need help reach out to us.

But what you uncover when you do a good lost review is exactly why you lost the business, so in the future you can keep making the same mistakes. In fact, in our research, our clients that do a lost review decrease their lost by 50% in their next engagement. So make sure you do a lost review.

Then, become the backup vendor. This is a no-brainer. Duh? When they call you and tell that you haven’t won the business say, “Look, can I be the backup vendor in case this implementation doesn’t go through well?” They will almost a hundred percent of the time will say yes. What that does is it gives you permission to stay in the relationship with the potential client, right? Genius. All right.

Then, never ever criticize a winning vendor. Let me tell you what happens if you criticize who won. You’re basically saying that your potential client’s decision making process is bad and they’re stupid. Why would you want to do that, right?

Then, continue to build and nurture relationship. Continue to invite them to events, continue to feed them positive news that affects their business. And I’m telling you down the road you will get a chance to do business with them again.

So there you go. I hope this helps. We will see you next time.

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