A few years ago, I was working for a tech company and we managed to pitch a huge sale to one of the world’s leading mobile companies. The problem? They wanted to roll out our product across the entirely corporation, and we knew the size of the deal would mean it could take months to years to close. That meant risking huge losses if something changed at their end and they decided to cancel the deal.

We took a risk and proposed breaking the corporation-wide expansion into several smaller steps, each with its own timeline and budget. Luckily, the customer was still interested, but the move very easily could have cost us the sale or been a huge loss – especially if we had gone ahead with the deal and bitten off more than we could chew.

Of course, we’d all like to avoid losses in sales, but that’s simply not realistic. Losses will happen – either because the customer simply wasn’t interested or because you weren’t prepared to handle an opportunity that came your way. That’s why instead of training salespeople to avoid thinking about loss, we should be coaching them to approach their losses strategically and thoughtfully.

That approach, it turns out, makes a huge difference the next time an opportunity (maybe even the same one) comes back around.

How to Train Salespeople to Productively Handle a Lost Sales Deal

1. Take a Step Back and a Deep Breath

After investing time and energy into a sale, salespeople may be tempted to write a nasty email in response to a rejection. Let them. Just don’t let them send it.

Give them time to take a breather, and then help them get right back on the horse. Lost sales sting, but the feeling fades if they acknowledge it and let it go rather than dwelling on the discomfort.

2. Avoid Burning Bridges

Train your team to treat even lost customers as potential future prospects, rather than as enemies they’d like to avoid (even if that’s the way they feel at the time). Salespeople should also ensure customers may consider coming back down the road, and your salespeople should be leaving all avenues open, just in case.

As the Managing Director, you could set a reminder to contact the customer down the road, to suggest grabbing tea or a pint I’ve generated sales 18 months after an initial loss by using this method; when it turned out that the company the customer chose couldn’t deliver, my sales team was there to offer a solution.

3. If You Lose the Sale, Don’t Lose the Opportunity

Encourage salespeople to ask why the customer decided against your offer. As a Sales Director and as a CEO, I’ve done this a number of times, and learned that it’s rarely something about the salesperson and more often budgetary constraints or some other logistical issue at the customer’s end.

Learning more about the customer’s rationale can help your sales team refine their approach or better understand that customer’s needs for the future. That kind of insight is tremendously valuable – especially if something falls through with their chosen vendor, as mentioned above.

4. Be Attentive to Interpersonal Dynamics

If there’s a personal issue with a salesperson, the Managing Director should have already noticed the problematic behaviour in the boardroom. The issue should be addressed before that salesperson is back out on calls. If you suspect that personality issues might be to blame for lost deals, it’s time to have a constructive conversation with the salesperson in question. Are there particular habits they should be mindful of, or strategies they should be developing?

How to Coach Salespeople in Learning From Lost Sales

1. Remind Them They Can’t Win All The Time

Life just isn’t like that. Customers are sometimes unreasonable. Circumstances change. Opinions change. There are a million reasons why a sale falls through – most having nothing to do with them, the product, or their pitch. Train them to make peace with this fact so they don’t dwell unfruitfully when it just didn’t work out.

2. Encourage Critical Reflection

Notwithstanding the above, salespeople need to be willing to recognise when they’ve done a poor job. Maybe they didn’t qualify the lead, and shouldn’t have pursued it in the first place? Maybe they went for the hard sell when a soft approach was clearly called for? Train your staff to ask themselves the hard questions and to reflect on what they could have done differently. There’s no need to pore over every detail of the pitch, but being self-reflective about where they can improve will serve them well in the long run.

These steps are not just tools to be employed as-needed; they’re skills that sales leaders should be emphasizing and practising with their teams throughout the sales process. Training salespeople to handle losses thoughtfully and strategically is an approach that pays big dividends in the long run.