Rocket Fuel - Didn't win the sale? Ask for feedback!
So, I've had an interesting conversation with one of my clients over the past few days; I've been helping them sort out a pitch to pitch for a piece of business, and the pitch went well but unfortunately, he didn't get the business and what he did next was what I wanted to talk to you about because I think this is really important.
Hi everybody, Julie here, the Sales Ace, bringing you another sales tip to help skyrocket your business.
So, I've had an interesting conversation with one of my clients over the past few days; I've been helping them sort out a pitch to pitch for a piece of business, and the pitch went well but unfortunately, he didn't get the business and what he did next was what I wanted to talk to you about because I think this is really important.
So, he didn't get the business. They gave him a little bit of a reason as to why however, what he did was he reached back out and he thanked them for coming back to him and then he said, “would you mind if we could have a meeting? Just have a catch-up and a chat just to see where I went wrong. It's a learning process and it's going to help me for the future.”
And as I record this, I believe that actually that meeting has been put in the diary.
So here's the thing: he hasn't won the business. That's fine. He's quite comfortable with that. But what he wants to do is he wants to learn and he wants to learn what he can do to improve, and where possibly he's gone wrong.
Now, this is a really good thing.
It's a learning curve for you in the business. It helps you develop your skills. And it kind of gives you an insight into the psyche where you may have missed something. However, it's a really, really good strategy move, because you're still keeping a relationship with the customer. The customer’s still talking to you. And if they don't find what they want... you've built that relationship. You've built a bit more trust and you can go back in and reopen the conversation and maybe start to talk to them about how you could help and work together to achieve what they want.
So this is my sales tip for this week:
Just because you don't win any piece of business (and look, it happens, you know? That’s life. We have to suck that up as I like to say) but how can we turn that to an advantage, how can we continue to learn from that, and keep that customer relationship going?
So just follow up. If you don't get a piece of business, follow up and see if you can have a follow-up conversation.
That's it for this week, and I'll see you next week with another sales tip!
