Learning from the Nos
I’ve written about how people are afraid of hearing a NO — the door definitively shutting on a deal (“No seems to be hardest word”), and discussed that the costs of “Maybe” are (a) wasting time and (b) missing goals.
Recently I’ve pondered another cost of a “Maybe”, which is losing the opportunities to learn from the “Nos”.
Reasons for “No”
Before we go to what you can learn from getting a “No” from a deal (in other words, a “deal loss”), we’ll first dive into “Reasons for a No” to a sale or partnership between two parties. Note that there can be multiple reasons for a deal falling through, but generally most reasons fall into this framework.
Reason 1: Change in company priorities
Product priorities may change due to circumstances beyond one’s control (eg the economy, people changes — leadership, advocates). What happens is then there is no staffing to push through the technical integrations, or legal support to bring the deal to completion.
Reason 2: A competitor won the deal
This one will sting, but is a great learning opportunity. The loss could be because:
(A) A competitor has better product/product bundle.
The competitor’s product was better and they could show it. Your product had clear gaps and is behind a competitor’s in multiple ways, and it did not meet the customer’s needs. Or your competitor has a better suite of products, so they’re able to fulfil a greater range of customers’ needs with that product bundle than with your singular product.
(B) A competitor has better Go To Market motions.
The competitors Go-To-Market was better (sale cycle management, finding the right decision maker), strategic selling, partner ecosystem, marketing etct. This helps these two scenarios.
- The competitors product was ~about the same, but their grasp of the customers’ needs was better, and the competitors were able to demonstrate the ROI of their product.
- The competitors product is actually worse, but their go to market motion was better. Eg their sales/partnerships teams simply did a better job than you (ouch).
Reason 3: Deal was poorly qualified
Maybe the reason why you “lost” was because there was no deal in the first place. I dive a bit more into the deal qualification CHAMP framework in this post about how you tell if a customer is really going to use your product. The summary is that if you missed any of the below CHAMP deal qualification points, you might have wished the deal into existence, but it might not exist.
Here are the qualification definitions
- Challenge — What painpoints are your customer facing?
- Authority — Does the person have the authority to make the decision to buy your product?
- Money — Does the buyer have budget for this? How much is this budget?
- Priority — Is integrating and using your product a priority for them?
What you can learn from a No
Nos are hard. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes I find myself inexplicably trying to avoid that difficult conversation. But there’s opportunities to learn from a No.
Lesson 1: Goals and priorities of the other party
This is arguably the most fun part about sales and partnerships. It’s a privilege to listen and discuss goals, priorities, and plans and figuring out how two parties interests can align together to form a deal. If you were listening well, then hearing the NO and getting to the “Why” is still an insight, a light shining into another party’s priorities and what success looks like.
Lesson 2: Feedback about your company’s product and GTM
A “Maybe” means you’re getting feedback in drips, with an unengaged buyer or partner. Driving to a “Yes” (Win) or “No” (Loss) gets you real feedback about your company’s offering. Overall, it also helps one better refine your “ideal customer/ideal partner” profile.
I dive more into the “how” in this post about “How to Get the Most out of Win/Loss Data”.
Lesson 3: Learning about how you handle rejection and disappointment
How do you deal with rejection? Probably “not well”, for most of us. I have deep respect for cold callers, sales development reps, account executives, who take repeated and harsh Nos often. We have much to learn from them, which is to build a much thicker skin.
Getting out of the “Maybe” mire into a “No” is a strenuous effort, but worth the learning opportunities. Don’t miss out!
