307: What About The Deals We Lost

<p>I am a big fan of Victor Antonio who is a sales coach in America. He has an excellent show called the Sales Influence Podcast.  In a recent episode I listened to he had some very interesting statistics.  According to US research, salespeople, on average, close about 40% of the deals they are seeking.  That means they lost 60% but what happened to that group who didn’t buy?  The shocking component of this research was the fact that only 20% went with a rival offer in preference to our genius effort.  That leaves 40% who didn’t buy from us and didn’t buy from the competition, so what were they doing?</p> <p> </p> <p>Victor mentioned that of that 40%, 10% didn't move because the price scared the hell out of them and they became immobile, frozen in the headlights.  Okay, then we still have another 30%, which is a big group of buyers who didn’t take any action and the reason wasn’t related to the price we offered.  So what was the issue?</p> <p> </p> <p>Victor believes it was a matter of the value we were able to offer wasn’t attractive enough for them to move.  Price and value, as we all know, are not the same thing.  The buyer needed to feel the size of the gain they would receive was worth it, based on how they measured the gain.  That gain could be measured in a number of ways.  It could be reducing costs, speeding up delivery times for their solution, integrating with another solutions they already have, making themselves more attractive to their buyers, etc.</p> <p> </p> <p>One of the problems with Japanese sales teams is that they have no clue about what the client values.  How could that be?  Simple.  They don’t ask questions or if they do, they don’t ask the right questions.  We teach sales to employees of Japanese companies who want to improve their sales results.  When we get to the question design part, invariably, it is a new concept for most of them.  They have been taught to get straight into the nitty gritty of the spec, the data, the features of their solution.  They are throwing mud up against a w