The deal is signed and sealed and your salesperson is ready to celebrate the win and move onto the next opportunity.
But in order to grow your business and set your sales team up for future success, you should hit pause after a win and analyze what went right. In fact, sitting down and figuring out why you won a deal is just as important as assessing why you lost one.
Get intentional about your win reviews, and commit to using the information to make strategic advances over time.
Here are 5 questions your salespeople should ask after every win:
1. What are the characteristics of the buyer?
Become familiar with the details of your ideal buyers to help your sales team build and refine your buyer personas.
You’ll want to include information like Job Title, Industry, and Company Size, but pay attention to the small details as well. (You may even go as far as including personal details, like age, leisure activities they enjoy, number of kids, etc.)
The more realistic and human your persona is, the easier it will be for your salespeople to keep your ideal customers’ goals, behaviors, and motivators in mind.
2. How would the buyer describe my company?
It’s easy to describe our own business. But the way your customers describe your company is what truly defines your brand.
Once you know how your ideal customer views your company and offerings, you can win over new prospects by highlighting those specific brand attributes.
3. What benefits are most important to this buyer?
Your product or service probably has a lot of benefits. However, some of those benefits are more important to particular prospects than to others.
Find out which ones matter the most to the opportunities you’re closing on, and you’ll know where your sales team should focus.
4. What made these benefits appealing to this buyer?
Benefits do different things for different prospects, so it’s important to find out why a particular benefit appealed to this buyer.
It’s easy to assume, but a bit of inquiry can sometimes reveal a new perspective. What you may discover are slight (but important) differences that will impact how your product or service should be pitched to be successful again in the future.
5. Where can we find buyers just like this one?
Of course, knowing how your salesperson connected with the buyer in the first place is key. Whether it’s a virtual or physical location, identify it and send your sales reps there!
Share What You’ve Learned with the Sales Team
Sharing tribal knowledge not only improves the performance of your sales team as a whole, it also strengthens team dynamics and adds to a healthy sales culture. Incorporate the information you gather from a win review into your sales meeting agenda.
To be truly successful in sales, you need to be methodical, critical, and constantly improving. So be sure that your sales team is taking advantage of every opportunity to grow and improve–even (or especially) after a win. Remember, winning feels good, but standing still won’t move your forward.
The activity with the greatest impact on sales performance is sales coaching. Attend an upcoming Sales Management Symposium to learn the most effective approach to coaching your salespeople—including specific high-gain activities, correct cadence, and methods to customize coaching for each individual sales rep.
The Five Qualifying Characteristics of a Legitimate Sales Opportunity
Coach your salespeople to quickly and objectively evaluate whether a prospect is truly qualified by using these 5 Qualifying Characteristics.
