Losing Is Never Fun

Losing is never fun. When you invest significant time and resources pursuing a deal and it falls through, it’s frustrating – and invariably causes some self-reflection.

Why weren’t we successful this time? What could we have done differently? Implementing a process to learn from your losses can yield great dividends – and is often the best way to lock in the next potential customer you approach.

There are plenty of reasons deals fall through. See if any of these sounds familiar:

· The price was too high

· The competition had a personal relationship with the buyer

· The product was missing a key feature

· The product isn’t a comprehensive solution

· The sales rep didn’t position our product correctly

· The lack of a reference customer in the industry

· The customer didn’t believe they have the problem you solve

· The competition simply outsold your firm

· The lack of an ROI toolkit

The list goes on but by taking the time to formally analyze your losses, you discover a wealth of valuable

information that can impact your overall vision and strategy. Here are 10 quidelines you can apply to your own

loss analysis:

1. Interview internally and externally

2. Choose an objective individual to conduct the interview

3. Don't wait to long

4. Understand the customer need

5. Get their prospective on your product

6. Get pricing feedback

7. Get competitive insights

8. Review their key decision criteria

9. Evaluate the sales process

10. Review the effectiveness of your marketing

If you build this in as a normal part of your sales process you not only will get valuable feedback, but you will

indicate to them that you are a company that is continually looking to improve your products and services. More

importantly, if you are engaged in a similar opportunity in the future, you will be armed to win.

How Can You Find the Most Promising New Opportunities? Hold an Innovation Tournament

Financial innovation is often blamed for having landed the global economy in a mess, but it has also been said that innovation will get us out of the present downturn. Still, companies can be forgiven for feeling that spending time and money thinking about the "next big thing" is a frivolous exercise. After all, every dollar counts these days, and CEOs and their executive teams are busy enough just getting their companies through the day-to-day demands of the recession.

It needn't be that way, according to Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich. As the two Wharton professors of operations and information management point out in their new book, Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities, if done with greater focus, identifying new opportunities shouldn't be seen as a luxury, but a necessity. They note that creativity and process-driven rigor can actually go hand in hand when it comes to vetting and managing new ideas. One way to do this, they explain, is by making new ideas compete with one another in numerous rounds of vetting -- that is, by running them through "innovation tournaments" -- so that the strongest and most promising ideas make it to the final round.

Rich rewards await companies that make the leap. Among the innovative firms that the professors cite is the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, whose cholesterol-reducing drug Zocor, launched in the early 1990s, has delivered gross profits of $10 billion on an investment of around $500 million.

THink of this as a Six Sigma test for your organization. Don't you think HR should take the lead on initiating this type of innovation with the product management group and the CEO?