someone else got the client. do you know why?
by august j. aquila
price it right: how to value accounting services
this is not another sermon that tells you that each “no” gets you closer to a “yes” when you are selling. the purpose of this post is to improve your proposal success ratio so that you get fewer “nos” and more “yeses.”
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i am an advocate of doing client and prospective client satisfaction surveys. if you aren’t doing followup surveys with lost prospects and clients you have lost to other firms, i suggest that you start now. you can gain a better understanding of why you lose prospects and clients, and then you can change whatever it is that you are doing wrong and be more successful in bringing in new business and keeping it.
while there is no definitive checklist, here are the types of questions you want to ask prospects who got away:
- how did your decision-making process work? get them to explain their thought process. who were the people involved? who were the final decision makers? what influenced them in the process? how important was the fee?
- what did the winning proposal team bring to the process? free offers, fixed price, satisfaction guarantees, experts, etc.?
- how important were referral references? very important, somewhat important, somewhat not important, unimportant?
- what were our key strengths?
- what were the key strengths of the winning proposal team?
- what were our key weaknesses?
- did the winning proposal team have any weaknesses?
- how much did personal chemistry play into the decision-making process?
- was there a major turning point in the decision-making process?
- of all the firms competing, where did we rank in terms of choice and fees?
- what could we have done differently throughout the process?
- will you consider our firm if a future opportunity arises?
go back six months and interview every proposal opportunity you lost. this is critical marketing information to help you become more competitive. you will learn a lot about your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and about your firm’s strengths and weaknesses. above all, you can now start to make changes so you will be more successful in future proposals.
remember, we always learn from our past mistakes.