You can create your own win-loss reports, but the answers are almost always predictable. “We won because of superior salesmanship” or “We lost because of price and product.” You might as well have them preprinted.

The only caution or filter required to make the best use of this information is to remember that customers are making an emotional and political decision in the end. However, when they give answers about their decisions, they will say that the decisions were logical and rational.

The key is knowing how to dig down into the political and emotional dynamics of the deal. An effective third-party company calling on the customer will uncover incredible things about preparation, personality, politics, competitive strategies, failure to link into issues, and misreading of accounts. They are a treasure trove of corrective information.

Execution, rather than awareness, is at the heart of making winning a habit. Speed and consistency of execution and innovation are the path to sustainable competitive advantage (see Figure 9–3).

Feedback from all these sources and metrics should cause sales forces to continuously evaluate personnel, sales messages, product offerings, value propositions, and customer loyalty. If these are well implemented and used effectively, the result is a move from inconsistent, up and down results to perpetual advantage.

We discussed in an earlier chapter how Col. John Boyd revolutionized military thinking and maneuver warfare. His acronym for competitive cycle speed in a fighter plane and then a military unit was the OODA loop. OODA stands for observe, orient, decide, and act, and it changed everything.

Winning pilots or winning generals get information faster than the opponent, process it faster, and react more quickly according to principles to gain an advantage in every situation. It isn’t the plan but the speed and effectiveness of the adjustment process that gives them the advantage.

Speed and accuracy of information drive speed and accuracy of strategy, which drive competitive advantage. The battles of Napoléon, Nelson, Jackson, and Patton, as well as many marketing campaigns, all teach us this lesson from history.

New technologies can enable the right metrics and adjustment processes without requiring additional input from sales reps to slow them down.

If you can measure in less than one year which salespeople can drive a complex sale, if you can detect and correct deals that are out of control at each phase of the cycle, if you can improve messages in response to the competition within 48 hours, if you can improve your sales cycle model and hiring profile with every win or loss — then you and your sales organization can get ahead, stay ahead, and achieve perpetual advantage. Somebody’s going to do it right first. Will it be you?

1. Establish realistic expectations with upper management.

2. Assess your individual and organizational pains.

3. Compare these pains with your vision — identify your performance gaps.

4. Prioritize your initiatives:

• Build a management team that shares your vision.

• Upgrade quickly those who can’t or won’t improve.

• Define your own best sales cycle model.

• Build a new hiring profile for reps; repeat upgrade.

• Re-examine your messaging positioning.

• Train on the methodology using your unique sales cycle and live accounts.

• Only then automate your process, giving reps what they need to win.

• Build your methodology into your forecast, performance reviews, compensation, and hiring profile.

5. Execute change while selling; you can’t stop to rebuild.

6. Document some quick wins to build belief and trust.

7. Reinforce coaching discipline to make winning a habit.

8. Introduce new metrics for accountability, continuous improvement, and perpetual advantage without slowing the reps down.

As described in detail in Hope Is Not A Strategy, R.A.D.A.R.^® is an opportunity management process for controlling competitive evaluations involving politics, strategic solutions, competition, and decision-making processes by committees. This section provides greater detail on the six-P process, so that this book will be complete in itself. If you have already read Hope, this is a review.

The first step in the process is to understand the client’s pain (or gain). What problem is the client trying to solve? A dormant pain is a problem clients don’t even know they have compared with an active pain that they have not only acknowledged but for which they are actively seeking a solution.

Active pains already have money budgeted and teams working with vendors to find a solution. But if you can uncover a dormant problem, elevate it to an active pain, and effectively link your solution to solving it, you gain competitive advantage.