Mutual close plans were tight.

[rifat28dddd]

In my last role specifically, I found that the time spent in the discovery phase for the deals we ended up losing to a competitor (or the status quo or “do nothing” option) was a whopping three times longer than the time spent in deals we ended winning! What’s more, the sales reps in the lower third in terms of time spent in the discovery phase of their sales cycles had 48% higher win rates.

This doesn’t mean that the secret to increasing your win rates is to rush customers through a hastily orchestrated discovery process. But these statistics did raise questions as to why this correlation existed.

Lessons Learned from Losing
When I dove deeper with my reps, we found that the majority of the elongated discovery cycles in deals we ended up losing stemmed from a consistent set of reasons:

Customer was elusive, ghosted us, “went dark,” or never called us back.
Customer didn’t seem to understand or take an interest in our value proposition.
Customer indicated interest but kept pushing out subsequent discovery conversations.
Customer deferred to other stakeholders within their organization whom we couldn’t reach.
Simply put, customers who didn’t end up moving forward with us didn’t demonstrate the positive interest, responsiveness, and buying signals of those who did.

On the flip side, the opportunities that progressed taiwan telegram data in due course did so briskly.

Key customer stakeholders engaged when needed.

Next steps were agreed on and adhered to.




Could the negative results have been caused by poor execution or lack of persistence on the part of the rep in some cases? Absolutely. However, in almost all instances, the sales reps admitted to hanging on to deals they ended up losing for longer than they should have in the face of evidence that they should have given up long before.

This means that if your sales motion is consistent, you’re engaging in the right behaviors, but still finding you’re spending too much time in the discovery phase of a given sales cycle, it could be a clear signal that you’re better off focusing your attention on better-fit opportunities.

This is especially true when selling during times of uncertainty where your limited bandwidth is best spent with higher probability customers.