Whatever business you are in, it is worth considering cause and effect whenever something good or bad happens.
It’s a bit like a doctor diagnosing the illness that is causing the fever, not just treating the fever, but far too often we focus on preventing the bad stuff, not repeating the good stuff.
The same principle applies to quality systems. There are procedures and processes like root cause analysis and the 5 whys principles that help you determine the real cause. Once you have done that you can prevent the root cause, which prevents the effect.
I am at least as interested in what went well as I am in what went badly. Eliminating errors and preventing problems is great, but doesn’t move the business forward.
A few months ago I had a meeting with a prospect who was initially quite hostile, so much so that I struggled to get him to agree to a meeting at all. I’d been introduced by a colleague, so he had expressed an interest in getting his business ready for sale, but even so he was difficult.
The meeting went OK. It was not the most positive experience, and I think if you’d asked me to rate my chances of securing work immediately after the meeting I would have said perhaps 30%.
Two days later, I had a phone conversation with this same person. He was really enthusiastic, telling me that he was just off on a business trip but that he would be in touch and we would be working together.
I like the effect – having a prospect tell me that he will be engaging with me is good news, but without knowing the cause I could not repeat it.
When you have a sales meeting that fails or a marketing campaign that didn’t work, I suspect you have a review process to determine why. Do you have the same process when you win?
(By the way, I think my prospect became my fan as a result of reading my book, Deal Finance)