Understanding the changing needs of your customers is important. One of the best ways to understand what they are looking for is to listen to feedback during sales meetings. A good sales meeting is a conversation so their side of it should give you the feedback you are looking for.
This sounds good in theory but the reality is that most sales meetings are not an open forum but are focused on a particular approach to market. If you walk in talking about the exact wrong thing then you’ll receive broad feedback that you are in the wrong direction. But if you walk in and are discussing something very different or hard to understand, the feedback may not be as valuable as you think.
The sales conversation doesn’t start with a client telling you what they really need – often they don’t even know the answer to this question. It starts with them providing a blanket direction, you putting together an approach and then both of you discussing this approach. Within the context of the approach you bring to them you will get great market feedback. But whether your approach is the right one or not in general terms is not feedback that you will receive. Losing more projects than before with an approach is a sign that the market is telling you that your approach is wrong. Winning is a sign that it is right.
There are many great market solutions that receive rave feedback but don’t sell. Just take a look at Nokia. They made the best classic phones on the market. Within the context of their solution, they were the best. It just happened that fewer people wanted this solution over time.
Be careful of the feedback you get and be sure you put it in the right context.