So what lost us that sale?

It’s relatively straightforward to work out the ratio of estimates that turn into live orders, and for that reason, most printers regularly do it. But what’s less often done is to track the REASON you win or lose jobs. And that’s how you measure all sorts of useful things, from identifying the weak spots of a salesman, to revising your pricing strategies.
So how can you manage this? Well for a start you could make a list of reasons why your company loses quotes (or wins them). The list will be a permanent work in progress and you will doubtless add to it as required, but for starters you could include:

 Reasons for getting the job:

1. Best price by up to 10% 
2. Best price by a mile
3. Liked the quality
4. Liked the service

Reasons for NOT getting the job:

1. Price was a little (up to 10%) too high 
2. Price was too high by 10-20% 
3. Price was substantially too high 
4. Couldn’t deliver in the timescale required 
5. We don’t have the right kit for the job  
6. The customer cancelled because he doesn’t need it now

 

You could also include your competitor's name in the reason codes so you can keep an eye on who you are losing work to, and vice versa. That might just give you the edge the next time you’re up against them.

 

So if you add them all up you could have a code such as “RW3L” where the digits stand for:
The Reason that we Won was: 3 (they liked the quality) when compared with the Local Printing Company.

You could get your sales people to enter the code as a matter of course, as soon as a potential sale is resolved either way. You could perhaps store it code in the job reference somewhere, so you’ll be able to use it to analyse your results and track how you’re getting on. It will also provide invaluable ammunition for your sales team themselves.

In this way you get more insight into the products and market segments you should be concentrating on (or not, as the case may be), and into the areas where you need to be more competitive.