Guide To Running Competitive Loss Review Sessions
- by Elay Cohen
- May 1, 2022
- Sales Coaching
Today we ran a session with a group of sales managers on competitive selling and how to coach and mentor their sales teams to drive up competitive intensity in every sales campaign. Besides covering the regular topics like “respect thy competition,” “don’t bash the competition,” and “only the paranoid survive,” we had a great discussion on losses. We dove into how to use loss reviews as a way to share best practices across sales teams.
No one wants to lose a deal. Yet, losing does happen. It’s inevitable. Even market leaders only have a thirty to forty percent win rate. Like everything in life, how a sales team handles the loss is what makes some sales professionals just good and others fabulously great. Also, you never know what may come from a loss review. By engaging the broader sales team, new competitive strategies emerge that can be used on other deals or even the one that was lost. I’ve been in many loss reviews that helped turn a loss into a win in the future.
We asked a question of this group of the sales managers on the call this morning: “How many of you have conducted a competitive loss review with your teams in the last ninety days?” The answer was…crickets. Not one sales manager of the ten had ever conducted a group competitive loss discussion with their sales teams. Most keep the competitive loss review discussion to their one-on-ones.
It got us thinking that this is a great best practice for sales managers to consider doing quarterly if not monthly with an entire sales team together.
Work closely with your sales leaders to roll out a Loss Review process.
Be the leader who appreciates and respects learning from losses. Win as a team. Learn from losses. Remember, a loss is a potential win-back.
Explore SalesHood’s turnkey Sales Coaching Huddles including how to create win stories at scale and how to run collaborative competitive loss reviews. Click to learn more.