The Important of Doing A Lost Proposal Evaluations | The Art of Consultative Selling Skills Training

After you have invested time in the proposal process and have lost, it is crucial to learn why. This gives you something in return for your efforts. If you can meet with the key decision makers to ask questions, you most likely will be able to gather a strong sense of what really occurred. If you cannot meet, set up time to conference call the key decision makers (all of them, if possible).

In some cases, it may be better to ask a savvy marketing director, another partner or an outside consultant to make the contact. Some clients will be less reluctant to tell a third party potentially sensitive information about you or the process.

Look for Consistent Patterns

You need to look at your track record over a number of proposal processes to really obtain a clear picture of how you are doing. Also, you must use your best judgment when evaluating comments. For example, on the same proposal, a CEO said it was too short and didn’t fully address his issues and the CFO said it was too detailed. The real information we learned from a brief CEO interview was not about the length, but that the key issues of the CEO had not been addressed.

How to Analyze a Lost Proposal

Introduce yourself as follows: “Mr./Ms. Client, I’m ___________ of _______. As you may recall, we recently proposed to for your company. We were disappointed that we weren’t chosen, because we invested a great deal of time in the proposal. However, we are happy that you feel you have a good solution for your situation. After we have proposed, we like to learn from the process in order that we may get better the next time. Would you take about 5 or 10 minutes with me to candidly answer some questions about the proposal we submitted. Your answers would be most helpful, and I would be most grateful for you responding. May I ask a few questions?”

Conclusion

If you have lost a “beauty contest” for a new client, the biggest factor is usually that the prospect perceived lower risk in selecting your competitor. It is important that you evaluate the perceptions of the prospects and the risk perceptions they used to make the final selection.