“If a key player in your deal ever gets let go. Reach out to them and offer to help.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 399
So what have you had to learn the hard way?
Join the conversation below and share those stories!
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. This week a listener reached out to me and made a really great suggestion, and I always appreciate these suggestions especially if they can help me make this show better for you. He said; Have you ever thought about doing something along the lines of “sales failures”? I ask this as sales folks typically learn more from lost deals than wins. It could be pretty interesting.
I totally agree that this could be pretty interesting and I’d love to give it a shot, but of course, I’ll need your help. In order to keep this up, I’ll need some good stories from you. Of course, you can go to DailySales.Tips/submit to submit a failure story like this the traditional way, but in this case, I’m happy to take on anonymous stories as well if you just want to send an email to [email protected] and describe your story and what you learned from it. I’ll then be happy to anonymously share that story for you and if you like these and it works it might even become a regular feature on Saturdays. Call it #SalesFailSaturday.
I’ll start. For whatever reason, I’m struggling to come up with a specific example. Probably because most of them were traumatic and I know I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way a few times, and that is to never be single-threaded in a deal. If you’re only talking with one individual and something happens to that person, it can be game over. At best you have to start your process all over again, and at worst you’re never able to get that prospective client to re-engage with you. I’m much better about this now and thank goodness because so far this year I’ve had one or more key players either leave or get let go from at least 4 different client companies. Had I not had more relationships in these accounts I’d potentially be dead in the water, but again having learned this lesson the hard way several times in the past I’m always working to insulate myself and building relationships more broadly within these stakeholders groups. A little bonus tip here that has also served me incredibly well over time. If a key player in your deal ever gets let go. Reach out to them and offer to help. This has be genuine, this isn’t some fake sales tactic, but a caring about humans type approach. If they were somebody that you like and thought was professional and competent. See if you can help them find their next opportunity. If you can, or even if you can just be there for them through the process, this can often mean more business for you in the future. If they were in a position to help you in a deal in one company, the odds are that they’ll land in a similar role with another company and there you go, a brand new opportunity with a really strong champion.
So what have you had to learn the hard way? Share those stories. Either record them yourself and send all of the details that are listed at DailySales.Tips/submit or email me your anonymous story to [email protected] and let me know if you like this #SalesFails idea.
Thanks for listening and come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip!