For every successful deal, there are multiple lost opportunities that never see the light of day. Losses aren’t shared as readily as wins. And that’s natural. No one wants to lose out on a deal, least of all your reps.
But when you treat every loss as a failure, you’re missing out on a chance to build a more motivated, productive, and effective sales team. With the right approach, you can minimize the damage and reap some serious benefits.
In this article, we’re taking a look at what you have to gain by rethinking how you handle losses, plus a few tips to help you maximize the ROI of lost opportunities.
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Why you shouldn’t view losses as failures in sales
The word “failure” is often used to describe something that doesn’t meet expectations. If we apply this definition to the world of sales, and treat each lost opportunity as a failure, we’re subconsciously telling our sales teams we expect them to win 100% of their deals.
It sounds ridiculous, right? We admit that loss is a necessary part of sales, but then develop negative responses to losing. The truth is, if you ignore losses or use shame and guilt as a motivation tactic, your negative impact as a sales leader may be more far-reaching than you realize. Let’s explore some of the consequences organizations face when they mishandle losses.
The integrity of the sales process suffers
Reps feel the impact of lost opportunities in their bank accounts. They don’t need additional guilt, humiliation, or pity to get the point across. These tactics aren’t just ineffective, but they also pave the way for a “cover up” sales culture. In a cover up culture, teams are more likely to brush missteps under the rug instead of mining them for valuable insights.
This not only hurts the trust between you and your team, but compromises critical components of your sales process, like CRM integrity and forecasting. After all, it’s difficult to have an accurate sales forecast if your reps are terrified to lose – and share the truth when they do lose.
If every loss is seen as a failure to be held against a sales rep, losing becomes a vicious cycle. Think about it: if your sales team is reluctant to flag at-risk opportunities or hesitant to ask for help handling objections, they’re more likely to lose important deals. Then comes more shame, and the cycle starts all over again. Failure begets failure.
Less opportunity for reps to learn from their mistakes
Lost opportunities contain valuable information. But it’s difficult to highlight and dig deeper into a source of shame. How can reps thoughtfully examine what went wrong, and why, if they feel like it’s a personal failure rather than a valuable lesson under the microscope?
If your team believes any data they bring to the table will incriminate them, they’re deterred from gathering and sharing valuable information when deals don’t materialize. This is a huge missed opportunity — especially since these insights can vastly improve your sales process, identify gaps, and prevent other reps from making the same mistakes.
Being able to detach emotion and objectively analyze undesirable outcomes is critical in the face of complex buying journeys.
When reps are contending with gatekeepers, champions, influencers, blockers, and decision-makers, lost opportunities may require a more nuanced explanation than “getting outsold.” You’ll never identify areas of improvement if your reps are too afraid to talk about their losses.
Decreased morale
Reps can’t perform at the top of their game if they feel stressed, burnt out, or undervalued after every lost opportunity. As individuals, we each have a hierarchy of needs. In order for us to be truly engaged and successful at work, we need to feel like our needs, ranging from safety and security to reliable pay, are being met. Sales teams are no exception.
When morale suffers, so does motivation, productivity, engagement, and ultimately retention. Research shows that happy employees become 12% more productive and unhappy workers become 10% less productive.
So, sellers who operate within a culture that looks down on losing will be more susceptible to stress and sales burnout – and subsequently struggle to generate future wins.
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The benefits of reframing loss in sales
Instead of treating every loss as a failure, try reframing losses as learning opportunities. If, as a sales culture, you bake this mindset into your onboarding, training, and management style, you’ll notice a dramatic shift in how your team operates.
Let’s look at some benefits of reframing loss as a positive.
Actionable insights and teachings become more readily available
Lost opportunities can also produce some valuable takeaways, from competitive intel to how to improve your product, process, or both. When a product makes a buying decision with a competitor, it tells you a lot about your target buyers, your products, selling methods, and competition.
Your team can also gain insights from no decision at all. When you move on from a prospect who doesn’t make a buying decision, it can feel like a loss – or it can give you incredibly valuable information about your buyers, as you can draw correlations among opportunities that close without a decision.
Quick tip: Before parting ways with prospects, ask for a 10-minute sync — not as a last ditch effort to convince them to buy, but to learn what your team could have done better, both from a sales process and product perspective. Sales leaders who write off missed opportunities as losses don’t learn and grow nearly as much as leaders who take the time to analyze losses, gather different perspectives, and draw valuable conclusions.
A more supportive and collaborative sales culture
A supportive, collaborative environment isn’t just a “nice to have”. Creating a healthy, transparent sales culture is crucial to minimizing burnout, keeping morale high, and ultimately retaining your top sellers.
How you respond to lost opportunities actually says a lot about the culture on your team. You can either berate, punish, or shame reps for “failing” – or you can signal that you still value effort, learning, and continuous improvement, even if it doesn’t result in a sale. The latter approach will motivate your team to share helpful information and strategies more freely, rather than hide any information that might reflect poorly on their selling efforts.
Quick tip: A great way to promote a culture of transparency is to lead by example. Demonstrate that losses, weaknesses, and gaps are learning opportunities by putting your own shortcomings under the microscope. Don’t just coach your team as if you’re an all-knowing, infallible leader. Tell them what skills you yourself want to improve. Share stories about times you’ve failed to win a big opportunity. Relate to their losses with lessons you’ve learned from your own.
Leave the door open for future wins
Not every lost opportunity is a permanently closed door — unless, of course, your reps are internalizing lost deals and treating them as failures. If your reps live in fear of losing deals, they’ll be more likely to have a heightened and emotional reaction to rejection. In a culture that runs on fear of failure, a rep is more likely to take their frustration out on the prospect delivering the news.
If you train your reps to build rapport with prospects and treat them with respect throughout the entire sales cycle, you’re setting them up for future success. Whether the prospect moves into a more senior role, changes companies altogether, or revisits your solution down the road, it pays off for reps to have left on positive terms.
When a lost deal doesn’t mean personal failure, the stakes are immediately lower and reps don’t suddenly see the prospect as their adversary. This makes it much easier to maintain friendly and open communication.
Quick tip: Operationalize your call reviews. Set aside dedicated time to review lost opportunities together as a team and in one-on-one meetings. Get your team comfortable talking about their shortcomings so it becomes second-nature. The more experience reps have with discussing losses on neutral, calm terms, the more this comfortability will translate across the future interactions with prospects.
Learn from every loss and you’ll create more wins
Lost opportunities are frustrating, for both you and your team. But while you can’t control every deal, you can control how you respond to loss as a sales organization. To maximize the ROI of losses, treat them as an opportunity to improve your insights, culture, and processes. Find what you need to improve and course-correct, so you can avoid repeating the same mistakes. Remember: the faster you fail, the sooner you can learn and move on.
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