Empowering your sales team starts with asking why.

Video Transcript

David: Any suggestions on how to report specifically on the wins, why we won or why we lost, whether it’s fields in Salesforce or somewhere else for that matter?

Rosalyn: Yeah, so I think throughout the deal cycle, you should be capturing data points, right? A lot of times it’s after the fact like after our deal gets closed-lost and we lost them, then we say “Okay why did we lose” and then we have a required field in Salesforce and then check the box right. And then that information is only as useful as, you know, at that point in time, it’s check the box.

Okay, we click that we lost because of X, but there’s a lot of indicators across the deal cycle, right? While you’re moving in opportunity through the funnel. There are things that we should be tracking, right. Not just around the account firmographics or the types of personas or how many people we talked to, who did we talk to, you know, all of these different touch points. But then also identifying throughout the process, you know, what are the use cases?

Why, why are they interested? Why did they take the call, you know, what are they trying to achieve? What are the pain points, so it’s that kind of taking your sales methodology, whether that’s medic or bant or whatever methodology you’re using and getting really gathering the information throughout the deal cycle because when you’ve lost, it’s lost, right?

It’s a finite kind of an event that happens, but throughout the deal cycle, if you’re picking up on those indicators and having those conversations to try to mitigate risk. That’s one important piece of it, but it also helps you gather the data to be able to do that lookback in terms of why did we lose — like was it because this call the technical call didn’t go well, because we didn’t identify, you know, the use cases and, you know, whatever.

There’s tons of reasons why, but capturing as much of that data as possible throughout the deal cycle versus after the event is done and going back and trying to collect.

David: Interesting, okay, and so then where would you recommend to actually capture that data throughout so that you can report on it later? Is it in that last reason field or is it somewhere else?

Rosalyn: I think it’s in your deal cycle. So in your CRM or wherever you’re tracking, typically, it’s your CRM, right, if we’re using Salesforce during that opportunity. So there’s fields that are around the characteristics of a deal. And so as things move through from one stage to another, there should be certain fields that you’re asking for that should be happening during that stage. Right, so when the technical call happens, you’re doing discovery or you’re maybe you’re doing qualification, there should be you know, three or four things that are important to capture.

Want to learn more?

Ready to hear more from Rosalyn Santa Elena, including how to set meaningful sales stages?

You can listen to her in-depth interview in Episode 7 of the Revenue Optimists series. We’ll see you there.