What do You Learn From Winning?

Winning in Sales

Yeah, I get it. There’s an old cliche about failing forward. We learn, oh, so much from losing, right? Yes, we do, but we also hate to flipping lose. Here’s my question for you today. What have you learned from winning in the recent past? That’s the topic of today’s article:  What have you learned from winning?

The Mindset

As we headed into 2020, I thought about how I was going to approach this year, and I’m a massive fan of leadership books and self-help and everything I can do to sharpen the saw. One of the things that we hear continually is you have to fail forward. There are no losses, just lessons. I can give you a million of those cliches, but here’s the thing I want you to ponder. When is the last time you learned from winning? That’s what I focus on in 2020. I understand I’m going to lose. I know I’m going to have to fail forward. I’ve got that part on locked down. I have lost in life way more times than I’ll ever win. The fact is, if you’re a major league baseball player in the Hall of Fame, you’ve got out seven times out of 10, and you still hit 300, which is all-star status.

Learn From Every Deal

I don’t care about the number of losses that I have as long as I win enough to make up for that. What I need to do is understand what I did to win. If you’re not taking the time to ask your clients why they chose to do business with you, how are you going to replicate that exact scenario when you pitch to the next person? I agree that we need to ask people why we lost. And I’ve done that before. I’ve even gone out as agency principal, and I’ve called on accounts that one of my producers were not able to close. And I’ve taken that business owner or decision-maker to lunch simply so I could pick their brain and find out what my team member could have done better.  What could we, as a firm, could have done better?  And we do learn from that. But in the same token, we need to do the same when we win.

Tell me Why

Tell me why I won. Tell me what I said that appealed to you. Tell me what in my value proposition made you decide to fire the person who’s represented you for the last decade and hire my firm. I submit that you can learn just as much from that as you will ever learn from losing. The difference is, we never asked the question when we win. Start asking why you won, and I promise you’re going to kill it in commercial insurance.

Until next time:  kill or get killed.

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