Learning From Your Hits & Misses

18 Apr 2017

Humanity seems to thrive on failure. The news pages are filled daily with stories of defeat, misadventure and mishap. Business launches that flop spectacularly or a tech invention that goes wrong – for whatever reason we love to read about that kind of thing. In fact, at certain levels we have come to expect failure. Sporting fixtures for our national team or the Eurovision Song Contest are occasions where we almost relish the prospect of not winning.

But lack of success is not necessarily something to be despondent about. In the words of Johnny Cash:

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone”.*

Business opportunities are a prime example where winning or losing are both great sources of information and learning. Winning business from your client is great – it is essential in maintaining a thriving organisation not to mention keeping your bank manager happy. However it may not always be apparent what the deciding factors were and often you’re happy to win the business and leave it at that.

You can learn from your Opportunities not won. A couple of simple questions will help you establish if your offer was too expensive, if a competitor had a better solution for your prospect’s needs, or if the reason was completely different. That is all information you can act upon – whether you need to review your pricing strategy, widen your product range or provide better user guides, missed opportunities give you the ability to assess your business on many levels.

So whilst enjoying the fruits of your labour in business you have one, let us also enjoy failure and the lessons that can be learnt.

* Johnny Cash Quote: http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0143599/quotes