Why Do Sales Teams Win? – Let your past success lead to future success (3-10)

As mentioned, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.

3. Let your past success lead to future success.

Strong relationships and successful partnerships not only lead to future sales with the customers themselves; they also serve as the foundation for accounts with other customers. Whether it is through word-of-mouth, seeing what other companies in the industry were using or by checking with reference companies that had been provided by the supplier, many respondents mentioned that the knowledge that a product was being utilized successfully in other locations was a factor in their decision to select a supplier.

References were the deciding point in several of the interviews. In one case, a supplier was chosen because of the references it provided, even though its product was significantly more expensive than its competitor’s offering:

“We narrowed it down to [Company 1] and [Company 2], and their products were almost identical. What separated [Company 1] and [Company 2] were customer support issues. Every [supplier] that we considered on the short list gave us references, and then we went out and found install sites on our own. [Company 2]’s references, including the ones that they provided to us, were terrible.”

In another example, a respondent used references as a way of obtaining direct comparisons of competing suppliers. In this case, the references were especially powerful because they came from organizations that had experience with each of the competitors:

“[Company 1]’s references were extremely strong. One reference company had actually worked with [Company 2] previously and within the previous year had moved over, so it was a good company to talk to about the two competing suppliers, and be able to really compare apples to apples.”

These cases illuminate the role of references in a well-developed account strategy. They not only provided examples of satisfied customers and successful relationships; in cases where they were chosen judiciously, they demonstrated industry expertise and experience, and provided objective, third-party comparisons of the competing offerings.

Because of the importance of references, it is vital that account strategies include a carefully designed system for developing and using references. A solid reference program allows a supplier to produce powerful, compelling and current references whenever requested, and prevents the problems that will come with “crossing your fingers” and hoping that your reference will give you a good recommendation.