Fending off Closed-Lost Deals

Written By Kymberli Cassidy and Matt Van Vleet

When it comes to closing a sales deal in the services industry, timing is key. The faster you can get a deal closed, the better. But once you close it, can you deliver? Any obstacles that may get in the way of a timely sales process need to be eliminated.

But what many services industry companies don’t acknowledge is how big of a role knowing the status of your people and utilization can play in keeping a closed deal closed. In this blog, we’ll share why understanding your people’s availability and utilization can play a big role in whether you make or break a deal—and what it takes to fend off closed-lost deals.

Promises You Can’t Keep

Does your sales person have full visibility into your utilization and available people? If you or your sales team aren't aware of who you have available and when, you run the risk of selling something you can’t deliver on. Or maybe it’s not that you can’t deliver at all, but there will be a delay before you can—either way you are putting your deal at risk.

For example, a salesperson may tell your client that you have a team available to come onto a project in a month, then you come to find that you’ve promised them something that isn’t even possible. Then you have to scramble to pull from resources you probably needed to use elsewhere or have to hire a new team—thus delaying the process of getting started in the time frame you promised.

Delays and Eroded Trust

Because time is of the essence in a sales deal, you want to keep the ball in the client’s side of the court as much as possible so the next actions to take are always in their hands. So, you don’t want your salespeople keeping the ball in your court by answering client questions with, “I don’t know.”

The time it takes for a salesperson to find an answer can cost you. And it also gives the client time to then reach out to others who may have the immediate answers your salesperson didn’t.

Even if you overcome delays and misinformation, you will have to either pull people from elsewhere to make the deal work—or push the work back to later than agreed upon time frame. These aren’t real solutions because they can both still erode trust and put the deal, or future deals, at risk.

The Certainty of Accurate Data

The right information and the ability to properly manage your client’s expectations can make all the difference. Clients want and need some level of certainty and trust to move forward with you.

But they aren’t going to just bet on an “I don’t know.” They want to be able to ask you when a team can start, when they can add a team to a project later on, and know the answers they get are accurate.

Deal timing can be more of a science than an art when you have the right data in front of you. Having accurate data at your fingertips, curated as part of your normal cadence, avoids lost deals due to “not knowing” your current reality, and can help you to know if you need to speed up or slow down a deal.

When you ensure your salespeople have easy access to the accurate information necessary for them to make real decisions and commitments in the moment, you can make promises you can keep—and fend off lost deals.