Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: On Losing an Order

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Sometime, when selling to your customers, something will happen that will throw you for a loop. For instance, you might expect the sale to go in one direction, but then it goes in a completely different one. Sometimes you’re sure that you’ve done everything right: You followed the right steps, you got the right responses, and you picked up the right cues that indicate you’re going to get the order. Suddenly, without any warning, the sale goes to someone else. Many times that someone else is someone that you thought had been eliminated from the process a long time ago.

What happened? What caused you to lose the order? Why didn’t you see it coming?

Sad to say, but you didn’t get the order because you were never going to get the order. That order was always going to the company that ended up getting it in the end. Even sadder still was that it was planned all along.

You sit back and wonder why the buyer gave you all of the right signals. He made you believe this was going to be your sale. Maybe you should buy him one of those cheap plastic trophies and give it to him because, after all, his great acting certainly deserves an award.

But, what's even more remarkable is that the buyer did actually think he was going to give you the order. In his heart of hearts he thought you were the best supplier with the best proposal and he was looking forward to working with you. He knew you should get the order and he thought that you were getting that order. So, truth be told, he was planning on giving it to you, but something happened, something that was beyond his control and certainly beyond your own control.

He was set up by his own people and, in turn, you were also set up--unknowingly. What happened? Why didn’t you get the order and why didn’t the buyer have the power to give you the order just like he wanted to?

Simple: The deal was made by his company leaders with your competitor’s leaders and there was nothing you could do about it. They worked out a deal and that deal included giving them the project.

Now, there could be a number of reasons for this. It could be that they were paying off a debt for something that happened in the past that they had to atone for. It could be that there was some sort of other deal in the works, a deal that was kept secret from everyone except those at the highest levels.

If you think about this for a minute, there are a lot of reasons why they gave the deal to someone else. It could be as simple as the two companies’ owners being in the same frat in college and they want to start doing business together. Or, if you’re talking about Asia, if could be that the other company gave your customer a better under-the-table deal, including some kickback money or what we in this country call a "bribe."

For whatever reason, you did not get the order. You have to suck it up and move on to the next one, because stuff happens sometimes. It’s not fair, but, as we all know in the end, life is not fair.

Here's what you can do to try to salvage the situation: Cultivate your relationship with that buyer. After all, he wanted you to have the order, he knew you should have the order, and he might even know enough about the company that did get the order to realize that this decision is going to make his life miserable and could possibly hurt the company. The buyer himself has his own axe to grind in this situation.

Make sure you are as gracious as possible. This will make you stand out from other companies. Make sure you stand out as the “good guy” in this deal. You don’t get mad and you don’t badmouth anyone. Go home and kick your garbage can if you have to, but don’t let the customer see you sweat and for heaven’s sake use that new, sympathetic position you have with the buyer.

You may not realize it now, but that buyer has become a very powerful ally. He knows that you got screwed over by his own company and, in a way, feels that he got screwed by his own company.

He's going to do everything he can to give you the next order and the next one and the next one. He’ll do this to make it up to you; he will also do this because he can and he will finally also give you the order to show his own company what a mistake they made--how his choice would have been so much better.

Now, it’s your business to lose. If you can prove the buyer right by performing as well as he thinks you can things will be good for you and for him and that’s all that matters. It's only common sense.