The last three weeks has been more about loses rather than wins. We all love to celebrate the wins with our peers, however when it comes to losing that's a song we don't want to sing about.
With every lose I'll always ask the client why we (I) lost. Three weeks ago I did a Better Call Art video about the benefits of losing. That was the week where I lost 60K in opportunities and one of those was a $25K net new.
I had a good shot at winning this because the client was not happy with the current sales person. In addition I've been contacting them off and on for four plus years.
Appointment
Push comes to shove and I have my opportunity. I ask all the right questions about what they need and the pain points. The major pain point was the sales person/vendor they had. Nothing stood out during discovery, and there was no knock out feature that I could leverage. Of course I promoted our IM technology and decided to offer two MFPs with one for color and one for black. Basically a direct replacement of their current 55 ppm color and 50 ppm black A3s. I responded with a 60 ppm color and 50 ppm black A3.
I Tried
I was not able to able to get the appointment to bring the quote and review with the client. I tried several times but was not able to secure that meeting.
What I should have done is refused to give them the quote, however knowing that they had pain with the current provider I opted to send them the quote. Mind you, this is why I lost.
Losing
After losing I question the client about why? I was told that after reviewing the quote from the existing vendor (I still don't understand why they even entertained a quote from the existing vendor) that our prices were almost identical in price. They choose to stay with the existing vendor because their devices would print twice as fast as mine 
and since we were about the same cost they wanted to stay with the same vendor.
Yes, I was like what? I asked, "so you bought 120ppm color and 100 ppm color MFP for the same price we offered?" I know this competitor and they don't have MFPs that fast for the cost we offered. There's just no way. The clients response was we already signed the order. I countered with nothing is set in stone until the MFPs are delivered. I'm here if you need me.
The moral of this story? I should have pressed for the review meeting and walked away from delivering the quote. I understand how hard that is to walk, however I should have done a better job because that review meeting would have flushed out what the competitor was doing.
Yes, so even with all of my experience I can still lose because I did not stand my ground and thought I had the advantage. Stupid me and this won't happen again.
I am no fan of celebrating a loss, but this loss teaches me a lesson, and from time to time we need to be reminded that we can't cut corners when we want to win.
-=Good Selling=-
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