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You can create your own win-loss reports, but the answers are almost always predictable. “We won because of superior salesmanship” or “We lost because of price and product.” You might as well have them preprinted.
The only caution or filter required to make the best use of this information is to remember that customers are making an emotional and political decision in the end. However, when they give answers about their decisions, they will say that the decisions were logical and rational.
The key is knowing how to dig down into the political and emotional dynamics of the deal. An effective third-party company calling on the customer will uncover incredible things about preparation, personality, politics, competitive strategies, failure to link into issues, and misreading of accounts. They are a treasure trove of corrective information.
Sustaining advantage requires continuous improvement and change, not a static solution in which strategy can be set and forgotten.
Speed has become an important element of strategy.
Execution, rather than awareness, is at the heart of making wi
Feedback from all these sources and metrics should cause sales forces to continuously evaluate perso
We discussed in an earlier chapter how Col. John Boyd revolutionized military thinking and maneuver warfare. His acronym for competitive cycle speed in a fighter plane and then a military unit was the OODA loop. OODA stands for observe, orient, decide, and act, and it changed everything.
Wi
Speed and accuracy of information drive speed and accuracy of strategy, which drive competitive advantage. The battles of Napoléon, Nelson, Jackson, and Patton, as well as many marketing campaigns, all teach us this lesson from history.
New technologies can enable the right metrics and adjustment processes without requiring additional input from sales reps to slow them down.
If you can measure in less than one year which salespeople can drive a complex sale, if you can detect and correct deals that are out of control at each phase of the cycle, if you can improve messages in response to the competition within 48 hours, if you can improve your sales cycle model and hiring profile with every win or loss — then you and your sales organization can get ahead, stay ahead, and achieve perpetual advantage. Somebody’s going to do it right first. Will it be you?
1. Establish realistic expectations with upper management.
2. Assess your individual and organizational pains.
3. Compare these pains with your vision — identify your performance gaps.
4. Prioritize your initiatives:
• Build a management team that shares your vision.
• Upgrade quickly those who can’t or won’t improve.
• Define your own best sales cycle model.
• Build a new hiring profile for reps; repeat upgrade.
• Re-examine your messaging positioning.
• Train on the methodology using your unique sales cycle and live accounts.
• Only then automate your process, giving reps what they need to win.
• Build your methodology into your forecast, performance reviews, compensation, and hiring profile.
5. Execute change while selling; you can’t stop to rebuild.
6. Document some quick wins to build belief and trust.
7. Reinforce coaching discipline to make wi
8. Introduce new metrics for accountability, continuous improvement, and perpetual advantage without slowing the reps down.