Step 2: Look at lost opportunities or unhappy customers. What went wrong?

Once the above exercise has got you feeling all fuzzy and professionally capable, switch gears to one which may or may not obliterate that. Just kidding (hopefully).

Now we'll take a look at your lost sales. Would-be customers who were, in fact, not meant to be.

You may lose a prospect for all kinds of reasons outside of your control:

• Too far apart on price or scope

• Being the right person but at the wrong time

• Projects falling through at the contract stage

Grouping together this type of lost sale will help you eliminate groups from your market.

Reasons within your control that might result in a dropped sale could be:

• Botching/mishandling an objection

• Some sort of social faux pas that left a bad impression

These are legitimate opportunities you had to change someone’s mind and get them on board, that you didn’t approach correctly. From this you can learn how to tighten up both your messaging (how you say things) as well as your position (why you’re the better choice in this situation).

Review the details of these calls.

You want to explore where you went wrong and where your prospect ended up, if you have that information.

Did they simply find some way to tackle the problem themselves? Did they go with a competing service provider? Did they find a technology-driven workaround that took people out of the equation entirely?

Find the similarities between these lost customers. These are people who ostensibly do make up your market, that you haven’t targeted correctly in the past. You’ll use this information to figure out new avenues for optimization — details you can test through marketing to find what works best.

You might be able to address some of the objections upfront or work to differentiate yourself from a competitor.