Richard Selzer was a famous American surgeon, a Yale-educated visionary who believed strongly in looking beyond prescriptive approaches to patient care to comprehensively consider the human elements. He believed that understanding a patient’s humanity increases your chances of guiding them to successful medical outcomes. And similarly, he saw great value in understanding more than the physiological findings of autopsies by considering a patient’s humanity to determine causes of death and more importantly, as lessons learned for future patients. His famous quote regarding end-of-life analysis was, “Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth”.
Now, how does all of this relate to selling? For all of us who have made selling our career, by design or via fate’s cruel hand, we well know that losing happens, just as with surgeons. In selling, of course, we feel it often. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you will occasionally come up short. Consider your pipeline’s deal probabilities. There’s a reason why they’re not all 90%. So, from a process and structure standpoint, what are we trained to do after we lose a deal? Similar to medical autopsies, we’re trained to conduct post-mortems on deals. Are we consistent in doing so? I dare say no.
For it’s a typically difficult time after a lost deal, with grief often overwhelming logic as we wallow in self-pity. At some point, though, one of our teammates will say, “Let’s learn from this loss so it won’t happen again”. Good idea, right? So, why is it that so few selling organizations consistently perform post-mortems? For otherwise highly effective organizations, why the reticence to analyze losses? The answer? Human nature and its profound impact on the selling psyche. Think about this in terms of Dr. Selzer’s world of medicine. Most major cities have publications that award the top local physicians – the best orthopedists, pediatricians, oncologists, etc. But considering autopsies, is any recognition given to coroners? Ever? No, never. Why not? In their work, coroners analyze the details of a loss, a death. While there’s a ton of value in their lessons learned, there’s a big problem. A human nature problem. No one wants to dwell on a loss. We look away and focus elsewhere. Focus on the next patient. Or on the next deal.
There’s another very practical reason why selling organizations do such a bad job in conducting post-mortems – there are no frameworks. It makes sense, really. If an activity is so distasteful and depressing to conduct, why develop a framework? Truthfully, though, the frameworks are already in place and ready to use. And they’re built long before deals are actually lost. For post-mortems have their roots in the Go/No-Go processes that insure you pursue the deals you are most likely to win and avoid those where your chances are low. Of course, we all buy into the importance of having frameworks for Go/No-Go but how do we really get good at building them?
Start with an honest assessment of what your organization does well and not so well. Then identify what constitutes a customized profile opportunity – what makes an opportunity highly “winnable” for you. I suggest tracking an opportunity’s issues in three categories – Client Issues, Selling Issues, and Contract Issues. Then, assemble the relevant individuals in your organization to review the issues specific to the opportunity to determine how stable or risky each is. For example, do you have relationships with account contacts at multiple levels? Do you know your competition and their account relationships? Are there concerning guarantees, warranties or penalties in the contract and do you understand their gravity? Think about these types of questions. How could you not evaluate them and their implications? If your team agrees an issue is stable, check the box and move on. But if there is risk, you must decide what to do. Building practical mitigation plans is vital. No good can come from delays. If you decide to proceed on the pursuit, your due diligence increases your chances of winning. Still, though, losing happens. And if it does, the Go/No-Go framework becomes the template for your post-mortem – that missing framework for your review. If you lost, you made mistakes. Maybe you misjudged an impact, ignored a dependency or gave yourself too much credit on an issue. The information that dictated your decision to proceed was clear. At least it was at the time. Reviewing it in the clarity of the loss teaches you lessons to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Remember Dr. Selzer’s quote? Your review has given you facts, but not necessarily the truth. For this, you need to call on your contacts at the lost account. And bring with your gratitude some strong, open-ended questions to ask. Questions like “What might we have done differently to win?”, “If you were us, what would you do at this point?” or “What changes should we consider to increase our chances of serving you in the future”. Then listen. Then act.
Learning from losses is a survival skill in selling, as in medicine. Utilize your Go/No-Go framework on the front end and back end of deals. But as Dr. Selzer gained valuable information by considering patient humanity to enhance autopsies, fortify your post-mortems through your human contacts. What you learn will benefit you, your organization and most importantly, your clients.
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