Peter Ostrow of the Aberdeen Group recently published an insightful article titled Sales Training: Translating Tribal Selling Knowledge into Bottom-Line Productivity. In this article Ostrow clearly identifies key areas where sharing of tribal knowledge within a company’s salesforce is a necessary element create a “Best In Class” organization. But, as well written and detailed as this report is by the Aberdeen Group, it misses a critical area of application; the use of tribal knowledge to analyze and impact the sales pipeline itself and to learn from Wins, Losses and No Decisions.

This is an area that many companies don’t value enough or spend enough time analyzing. While most companies have an end of month sales meeting to discuss deals that were closed, lost, or pending, true analysis of the client decision making process is never really conducted and so opportunities to learn from the tribe is lost. These companies can’t really understand why they are winning, or more importantly why they are losing opportunities in which their salespeople are engaged. They miss the opportunity to spot trends, identify weaknesses, and share best practices. As a result, these companies are unable to capitalize on those strategies and activities that help them win business.

But Win/Loss learnings are only the tip of this analytical iceberg. One of the most overlooked aspects of the sales pipeline is those No Decision opportunities that linger and never close. Such opportunities block up the pipelines of so many salespeople. The problem is that many sales managers don’t have a formal process in place to properly analyze these stagnating prospects so that they can use them to train sales staff on identification and course correction techniques.

So, I’m curious…How many of you actually conduct Win/Loss/No Decision analysis, and what do you do with that information?

Tags: Aberdeen Group, Peter Ostrow, Sales Analysis, Tribal Sales Knowledge, Win/Loss/No Decision Analysis

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