Why not? Understanding lost sales
Nobody bats a thousand, so what happens when you get a “No, thanks”? Sometimes you can learn more from the sales you don't make then the ones you do.
If you haven't been analyzing your lost sales, consider starting. Finding out why customers declined to buy can give you valuable insights into your feature set, competitive positioning, value proposition, pricing model, and sales process.
How to get started? It's as simple as asking the ones that got away. If you have a big ticket product and use personal selling, the sales rep or a sales manager can call or visit the customer to get the information. Companies that sell higher volumes, or through dealers or VAR's, might need to do a mail or telephone survey to get the information.
Don't let customers think you're trying to get them to change their minds. You need to make it clear from the outset that you understand you didn't get the sale and you're not going to try to alter that outcome, but you'd like some understanding of how the customer arrived at the decision not to buy.
This is the place to ask open ended questions, not multiple choice. What did you like best about our product? Least? Think carefully how you can frame follow-up questions, too. For example, if the customer says that price was an issue, find out how much they paid for the solution they did buy. Perhaps they didn't understand that you included support with your price and the competitor didn't. You get the idea.
Make sure that the results of the survey get back to sales, as well as R&D. If it's features that are missing, put them in the plan for a future version. If it's pushy sales people, do some coaching. Whatever the block, try to see if you can fix it.
It's a worthwhile exercise.
