You’ve just lost a bid. It might be the ultimate “pain for gain” exercise, but now is the ideal time to lay the foundations for a stellar performance next time, by finding out what went wrong this time.
In a highly competitive bidding arena, tomorrow’s success is often directly proportionate to how well you learn (or are prepared to learn) from today’s loss.
To make the most of the valuable learning opportunity a loss represents, you need to ask the hard questions . . . of your own people, of the prospect, and of anyone else who will give you “no holds barred” feedback.
It can be downright stomach-churning to request and receive the type of detailed “give it to us straight” information you need . . . but it can also be truly empowering. The deeper you drill down into the reasons you lost, the quicker you become adept at not making the same mistakes again (or at improving in the areas in which the competition did sufficiently better than you to take the prize).
