Sales Coach Justin

A few years ago I had the amazing privilege of coaching high level travel youth sports. In between the development, the parents, the expectations and the overall silliness I learned a valuable lesson from one of my assistant coaches. That was “you either win or you learn.” And let me tell you we learned A LOT that year. Like all weekend long for a long year.

In all seriousness this mindset really stuck with me and is an incredible way to rethink how I go forward. Taking chances, engage on opportunities, put yourself out there. You can either win or you can learn. Make adjustments for next time and figure out how to better your chances.

The industry I am sitting in relies on RFPs and formal bids for much of their purchases. We can track RFPs and win rates. There is a high amount of focus put on doing more bids- if we do more and we know our win rate then we can actually win more business. But what if we looked at the inverse- let’s figure out how to win MORE of the bids we do, not just do more. What did we learn from our losses- and our wins- that tell us where to focus our time? Can we spot a problem we are not solving that resulted in losses- and fix that? Or can we profile better and focus on adding more bids that are within our core, differentiated offering? Can we identify the race to the bottom, value extracting ones and just don’t spin our wheels? Increasing the win rate on the deals we respond to should accelerate us much more quickly and with less expense. That means not only are we winning more deals, but we are even more profitable when we do!

This shift helps me not dwell on the times I did not get my desired outcome and allows me to find a path so I don’t keep doing the same things. This works at home and at work- in the office and on the field. I am grateful for Kirsten for teaching me this and think of her every time I lean back on this.