Blog

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Practice? Who, me? Yes, you.

Practice? You can probably think of dozens of reasons why not to practice.

It takes too much time.

Practice is boring and is a drain.

You don’t need it. You’ve been selling to prospects and clients forever…

Even as kids growing up, practice seemed like a pain. After all, did any of us want to practice the piano or multiplication tables? As we mature to adults, the reasons to not practice evolve from reasons to excuses, and from excuses to barriers to success.

Practice matters. It makes us better. Just listen to a couple of world renowned athletes like Pele and Michael Jordan.

Pele, widely regarded as the greatest soccer player of all time, said, “Everything is practice.” Michael Jordan, credited with being one of the best basketball players ever and was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation said, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

But what does this have to do with Win / Loss research?

Anova’s team views itself as athletes. We are dedicated to training each of our client’s sales muscles so ultimately their level of competition rises. If you understand why you are winning or losing, you can find out where you need to practice.

Inevitably, feedback from prospects will include commentary about your salesmanship and sales techniques. You may know the product inside and out, but maybe your sales presentation wasn’t customized to the prospect’s unique needs. You may know the pricing structure better than anyone else on your sales team, but perhaps the upfront needs analysis wasn’t good enough and the competition asked more relevant questions, allowing them to come up with the perfect pricing solution. Maybe you came from the service side of your business and are selling because you know how good the implementation and on-going service will be, but you exposed limitations because you were unable to involve the right people during the sales process – and the prospect ended up feeling not as important as they wanted.

Anova’s research identifies the areas needing more practice. If you know where you need to improve your fundamentals, you can practice. If you practice, you will improve. If you improve, you will win more business.