As a sales leader, I’ve often told my teams that, while I want to close every deal we can, it’s perfectly fine if we don’t, as long as we understand exactly why the buyer didn’t buy.

As a seller, I used to have this mindset during sales conversations: I wanted to be sure that if the buyer didn’t buy, I could explain why in great detail to anyone who asked.

The trick here is that forcing yourself to understand why a buyer didn’t buy also forces the right sales behaviors. You have to do a bunch of good things to be able to do this well. You have to:

Talk to the right people.
Understand their role.
Understand their decision/buying process.
Understand their incentives and priorities.
Understand their problems
Understand what other solutions they have.
Understand what they like/don’t like about the product.
Understand how they view the competition.
Understand how they think about ROI for the product.

You can’t understand these things if you’re not having good conversations. And good conversations are the thing that drives sales. Sellers should be less interested in making the sale and more interested in deeply understanding the mindset of the decision maker, regardless of the ultimate decision. This mindset, repeated over time, leads to better and better high-quality conversations. And better conversations = higher win rates.