As sales and relationship management professionals, our job is to win - as often as possible. When we win, our teams and customers win, too. We offer great products and solutions to help our customers do their business better. We train, innovate, practice, and persevere in our attempts to win. Yet despite all that, sometimes we lose. 

Many of us are familiar with the old adage that goes like this, 

“Give me a ‘yes’, or give me a quick ‘no’”. 

The key point here is that we want to limit the resources we expend on a loss so that we can best use our time pursuing more possible wins.

How do we “fail fast”?

• We qualify opportunities well, seeking to learn the customer's needs early on to determine if we have the right solutions for them. Qualification helps us determine if we can compete effectively.
• Through our research efforts, we gain critical insight that can help shape our sales approach and competitive strategy. This helps us determine whether we can win.
• We get in front of the real decision maker as early as possible in the sales process.
• When we meet with the decision maker, we share what we’ve learned about their business direction and how working together, we can drive critical business outcomes for the customer. The decision maker’s decision is the ultimate qualifier.

If we do these things well as early in the sales process as possible, we will have a clearer view of our likelihood of winning. Our wins and losses will all happen more quickly, and the average length of our sales cycles will get shorter. We will get more “yeses", and when we don’t, we will fail faster. That is our second-best outcome.