The sales team assured the Executive team that “this one was in the bag” when in fact, it was far from the truth.  So, they hired me to meet with the prospect to find out why they did not buy, thus the term, “sales post mortem.”  After meeting with the decision-making team about their concerns and from my report to the client, here are some of the prolific reasons why they lost the sale.

This could be a great learning piece for us all.

1. They pushed for the appointment which we gladly gave them. But once here they did nothing to motivate me to meet with them again

2. We did not believe they had an interest in what “we” were trying to accomplish

3. We felt they saw us as strictly a buyer or someone to sign the order

4. They truly came here with an agenda but the agenda was theirs and not ours

5. It was obvious they had taken all the right classes on how to get to prospects and get around gate keepers, in fact they even bragged about it, which was offensive to us

6. They tried to find our hot buttons and when they think they had they kept pushing them over and over

7. They were just out of sync with our needs

8. They could have learned more about us before they walked through the door while trying to close a multi-million-dollar contract

9. We know our sales people look for great leads every day. [WE] happened to be a great lead but they did not spend time cultivating the lead, understanding us, and communicating [THEIR] capabilities to match [OUR] needs

10. They were not customer driven, they were sales quota driven

Folks let me tell you these 10 points have a great deal of commonality. Listening, communicating, problem solving, integrity, honesty and of course LISTENING before you go for the close. This team could have made this sale and the close would have or could have come from the prospect saying, “by golly I believe you’ve got it and we’ll take it.”

A Post Note to This Story: The prospect was impressed enough that the company cared about their business to send me in to find out why and see what they could do better, that they in fact got a second chance at another project and although smaller in nature than the first, they ended up with a contract.