Over the next few posts, 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?”
Let’s get started.
By way of background, as part of our
win loss interviews, respondents were asked for the primary reasons why they did or did not select the supplier. Ron coded and tabulated the open-ended responses, analyzing them for performance gaps, or areas where a response was more prevalent in one situation (selection or elimination) than in the other. This was done in order to determine which criteria had the largest impact for selection or elimination. The criteria with the largest gaps are presented in the table below. Positive gaps indicate that a criterion was mentioned more often as a reason for selection, and a negative gap indicates that a criterion was mentioned more often as a reason for elimination.
For example, industry usage had a positive gap of 2.8%. This indicates that respondents were slightly more likely to mention product features as a reason for selection than they were as a reason for not selecting a supplier. The largest gaps indicate where there are opportunities to stand out in areas that are most noticed by the customer, as well as areas where doing the wrong thing will have a significant impact on your chance for success.
1. Let your product speak for itself.A product’s features and functionality had the largest positive gap, indicating that respondents were much more likely to mention product features positively, and that product features were more likely to have a positive influence than a negative one. It is therefore advantageous to point out a product’s strengths to a potential customer
Specific features of a product are especially important because the customer will often be concerned about the product’s ability to meet the precise needs of multiple users and locations, as well as the product’s ability to integrate with other systems already in place. It is therefore vital that customers are not only informed about the product’s specifications, but that they have also been shown how those specifications are translated to the reality of the company’s business needs.
One way that Strategic Account Managers (SAMs) have accomplished this is through the use of product-oriented presentations and demonstrations. When used in conjunction with technical materials, these demonstrations helped to make the product features and functionality more comprehensible, and showed that the SAM was not overstating the product’s capabilities. Most importantly, they helped to make the customer feel more comfortable that the product would meet their needs and that their staff would have the ability to use it effectively. For example, one respondent explained that the evaluation team was not confident about its first choice of product until the SAM could organize a demonstration of features and functionality for them:
“We had a demonstration, and that reassured me that we were making the right decision. For one thing, the whole layout of the computer screens was superior. There were just a lot of little things. It reassured me that we were making the right decision.”
By allaying any fears the customer may have had about the product, the SAM in this situation helped boost the customer’s confidence in both the sale and the business relationship. Customers today actively seek solutions that can create value for the organization in the shortest period of time. As a result, account managers need to do whatever they can to prove that their offering will work in the actual usage situation.
