I was thinking recently about sales loss analysis and how important it is for successful sales growth. The biggest issue we have is communicating why it is so important. It was at a football match that I started thinking about this. We are already a couple of months into the season with some teams doing well and other starting badly, my own, Nottingham Forest are just managing to hang on in the mid-table. But one thing is certain: every manager, player, owner and back room staff is involved in analysing their own performance, team performance and the competition. What could they have done better? What mistakes have they made? Where can they improve? How can they maximise their chances of promotion, or avoid relegation?
The beauty of being in football is that all the information is available and everybody has access to the information to help them improve. However, with sales, this isn’t the case but it is still just as vital to understand what mistakes have been made, what you’ve done well and where you can improve to ensure you continue to grow and achieve your sales targets.
So, have you ever thought about doing your own analysis but not really sure why you should? Well here’s the answer. In this blog, I’ll go through my top 7 reasons why your company should be doing it.
1.) Identifying training needs of sales staff
It allows you to see where your sales staff are under-performing so you can provide them with more training to better their technique and approach. As a result, your sales staff will become more suited to your sector and will therefore land more sales.
2.) Competitor analysis bench-marking
By doing sales loss analysis, you can compare your sales process to your competitors’ and fully understand why they were chosen over you.
3.) Re-igniting lost prospects
This is the best way to re-connect with any lost prospects as you can clearly see where they felt you didn’t quite meet their needs and whether the project has started again. For our clients, we generally find that 20%-30% of ‘lost deals’ go back to market within 18 months.
4.) Look at individual sales people
Sales loss analysis allows you to look at the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team and their overall team performance. By analysing these, you can see where each sales person works the best and place them accordingly.
5.) Insight into sales process
You’ll be able to see how effective your sales process is and see if there are any weak links in your strategy. In addition to this, you can look at your competitors’ sales process and see why theirs works.
6.) See how effective your marketing is
Sales loss analysis allows you to see where your leads came from and which aspect of your marketing campaign caught their attention. If it shows that your marketing efforts haven’t been as successful as you’d hoped, you can adapt them to ensure you attract your target market.
7.) Enables you to see if you’re selling the right products/services to the right markets.
Sounds daft, but the market that you’re targeting might not be right for your products/services. Additionally, your products/services might not be marketed in the right way for your audience to acknowledge that it’s something they need. Sales loss analysis allows you to fix these mistakes.
Sales loss analysis is crucial to keeping your business successful and ensuring you hit your sales goals for the coming year. If you would like to talk to us about how we could help or our approach please get in touch or visit our services page.
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