Sell More by Losing Faster

In my last two VP of Sales roles, I found a surprising trend.

There was a high degree of correlation between my team’s win rates and the amount of time spent in the discovery phase of the sales cycle. In fact, the relationship across dozens of sales reps in different geographies was clear:

Reps who most efficiently moved customers through the discovery phase of the sales cycle, had higher win rates and quota attainment. In other words, those who won more, lost faster.

In my last role specifically, I found that the time spent in the discovery phase for the deals we ended up losing to a competitor (or the status quo or “do nothing” option) was a whopping three times longer than the time spent in deals we ended winning! What’s more, the sales reps in the lower third in terms of time spent in the discovery phase of their sales cycles had 48% higher win rates.

This doesn’t mean that the secret to increasing your win rates is to rush customers through a hastily orchestrated discovery process. But these statistics did raise questions as to why this correlation existed.

Lessons Learned from Losing

When I dove deeper with my reps, we found that the majority of the elongated discovery cycles in deals we ended up losing stemmed from a consistent set of reasons:

  • Customer was elusive, ghosted us, “went dark,” or never called us back.
  • Customer didn’t seem to understand or take an interest in our value proposition.
  • Customer indicated interest but kept pushing out subsequent discovery conversations.
  • Customer deferred to other stakeholders within their organization whom we couldn’t reach.

Simply put, customers who didn’t end up moving forward with us didn’t demonstrate the positive interest, responsiveness, and buying signals of those who did.

On the flip side, the opportunities that progressed in due course did so briskly.

Key customer stakeholders engaged when needed.

Next steps were agreed on and adhered to.

Mutual close plans were tight.

 

Could the negative results have been caused by poor execution or lack of persistence on the part of the rep in some cases? Absolutely. However, in almost all instances, the sales reps admitted to hanging on to deals they ended up losing for longer than they should have in the face of evidence that they should have given up long before.

This means that if your sales motion is consistent, you’re engaging in the right behaviors, but still finding you’re spending too much time in the discovery phase of a given sales cycle, it could be a clear signal that you’re better off focusing your attention on better-fit opportunities.

This is especially true when selling during times of uncertainty where your limited bandwidth is best spent with higher probability customers.

While it might be tempting to cast the net wide and reel in every opportunity. Paradoxically, it’s better to narrow your team’s focus and go forensic, not far and wide. Look at your historical sales data, team performance, and really internalize which types of customers can get the most value from your solution during times like these. Then, double down on them (and yes, to the exclusion of others).

Related video: Stop Wasting Time on Bad Fit Customers!

 

After I had this very discussion with a client who provides network infrastructure software to managed IT service providers, one of their sales reps decided to embark on a ruthless pipeline cleanup. He cast off his “happy ears,” took an objective look at his book of business, identified the customers who were spending too long in discovery, and cut down his opportunity roster from 300 to 75. He focused on the opportunities that really mattered and reported back to me the very next month, completely amazed. “My results were instantaneous!” he said.

“I focused my attention on buyers who showed higher degrees of initial intent, and the result: I hit 304% of my quota last month!”

The trend continued into the subsequent months as well.

 

4 Tips to Stay on Track

The good news is that there are simple ways you can gain insight and visibility into how efficiently you are qualifying bad-fit customers out of your sales cycles and promote higher degrees of focus.

 

1. Figure out where YOU stand

To understand how you’re doing in your quest to lose faster…

  1. Login to your CRM
  2. Run a report that tells you how long you’re spending in the Discovery phase of sales cycles for deals you end up losing
  3. Run the same report for the deals you end up winning
  4. Calculate the ratio of those average time frames (i.e. #2/#3).

If the answer to #4 is greater than 1, move on to the steps below. If it isn’t, congratulations! You’re in good shape.

 

2. Measure your “losing efficiency”

While many leaders tend to measure the length of time it takes to win a deal, it can also be very helpful (although counterintuitive) to measure your “losing efficiency” as well.

One of my friends is a senior sales leader at e-commerce giant Shopify. She shared with me that, as part of their focus on sales execution and continuous improvement, they measure a statistic called “Time to Lose” or TTL. By incorporating statistical standards for how long an opportunity should be open before it either moves up or out of their sales pipeline, they are more easily able to maintain an objective view of the efficiency of their sales team.

 

3. Take off the “happy ears”

Many cognitive biases cause sales reps to spend more time losing deals than winning them. Among them, confirmation bias (AKA: “Happy Ears”) is one of the most common. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or strengthens one’s prior personal beliefs or hypotheses.

For example, if a customer who showed initial interest in your solution hasn’t returned your dozens of calls, you might assume that they are “just busy” and fully intend to respond soon.  If you’re struggling to look at your sales opportunities with objectivity, I’ve shared three counter-intuitive declarations you can make to your customer during the initial stages of the discovery process that will immediately help you find that much-needed resolve.

 

4. Revisit your pitch

One of the biggest reasons your opportunities fail to progress past the initiates stage is because your pitch failed to spark high enough levels of engagement and interest in the mind of your customer. In short, they couldn’t figure out how you could help them!

This can happen when you:

  • Overload your buyers with product or technical information
  • Parrot high-level value propositions that lack clarity or differentiation
  • Fail to manifest the confidence and conviction your customers crave.

The good news is, this is easily fixable! By leading your sales pitch with problems instead of products and elevating your value proposition beyond your solution, you can quickly win their hearts and minds and have them self-select in or out of your sales process.

 

Discovery is arguably the most critical stage of any sales cycle. Besides the content and context we reap during this stage, the amount of time we spend in it can tell us a great deal about our probability of success later on.  The key to ensuring you stay on track is using data to stay focused when happy ears and cognitive bias threaten to derail your sales cycle. This will not only preserve your precious bandwidth but ensure you have a cohort of wildly successful customers to advocate on your behalf.

 


PS – Did you find this approach helpful and want to learn more like it? Check out the popular Cerebral Selling Sales Academy training program!

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