Downturns happen to everyone in sales. But when they do, there’s a right way and a wrong way to respond. Among the many clients I’ve coached, helping them work their way out of a bad patch, some continued to struggle to get back to where they once found success as sellers.
They asked: “What am I doing wrong?” But that’s the wrong question!
Consistently successful sellers and team leaders—those who rebound quickly from a loss—instead look at the obstacles to success as opportunities. They borrow from old Stoic wisdom that says “What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Let’s look carefully at what that entails…
REFRAMING IS WHERE YOU START
You must reframe your thinking after a setback. Don’t give in to the seduction of self-pity in which your losses define your work. Instead, ask yourself: “what do my wins have in common?” You’ve had far more of those than losses. That means more opportunities to compare how you approached each one of those successful deals, versus the rare one that got away. Ask: “who did I talk to…what were their roles in the organization…and what did I do next?” Don’t just stop there. You also must investigate how you can replicate the value you provided in each one of those successful deals, and apply it to the next prospective one that surfaces in your pipeline.
OWN YOUR MISTAKES
A client of mine was licking their wounds recently after they lost what looked like a very promising deal with a large social media platform. After initially letting themselves get stuck in a demoralizing maze of self-blame, they looked at what was different about this rare case, versus what typically happened with their wins. They found that in this instance they’d not properly qualified their prospect the way they usually did. They were too rushed. In that sense, the loss gave them insight they otherwise would not have gained. Be honest. Own your mistakes, but don’t be defined by them. That’s how we grow as professionals.
EVERY ACTION IS AN EXPERIMENT
One of the great dangers in sales is to treat every decision you make as having inalterable consequences. That’s a recipe for paralysis. Instead, treat each new action as an experiment…especially when you’re conducting a post-mortem on a deal that went bad on you. When you formulate a solution—one that’s based on applying the wisdom of your many wins to your fewer losses—you don’t have to commit to making big changes that will apply forever. Instead, simply decided to try something new next time and see what improves. Lower the stakes, elevate the opportunity.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH VARIABILITY
Don’t allow a failed deal to trick you into believing that it’s time to go “back to the drawing room” to do a complete rethink of your operations. Instead, see it as a “back to training” opportunity. Just like what you’d do in the gym, you must ensure you have variability in your day-to-day exercises as a sales team. Measure carefully where you make changes to your typical routine or business habits, so you can better understand how it affects your longer-term performance. This is how new strength and deeper resilience get built-up in a group.
LET GO (SOMETMES)
Some deals simply aren’t meant to be. You can do everything right—follow your winning formula to the letter—and still strike out at bat. Sometimes the reason behind a loss cannot be known fully, because we are all operating from limited information. Those are the cases that can hardest to let go of, but you must…otherwise you put yourself at risk of telling yourself a story that simply isn’t true.
Continued success in sales is about developing a deeper understanding of a million little things that you adjust incrementally rather than about making big changes to big things in a reactive way. Embrace your obstacles: particularly those that arise from an unsuccessful deal. They are your teachers, but only if you choose to see them that way. In doing so, you and your team will maximize the fruits of your many wins and minimize the sting of your rare losses.