Looking in the Mirror: How to Be Accountable Even When You Lose

“We’re in a bad economy…”
“We’re experts. We’re never wrong…”
“We’re up against tough competition…”
"Our point of contact was a jerk..."

…but what if it’s not them? What if it’s you?

In this episode, John and Mark dissect what it truly means to be accountable when you lose a prospective client. We dig into the obstacles that professionals encounter when owning up to losses and present actionable strategies to transform setbacks into stepping stones for growth. 

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why do we default to the ‘blame game’ ?
• The role of firm culture in nurturing or stifling accountability
• Why losing is a pivotal opportunity for growth
• Strategies for effective internal reflection and owning outcomes
• How mindset, preparation, and continuous learning can help you overcome setbacks.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

Transcript

John Tyreman: 0:19

All right. Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. As always, I'm joined by my co host, Mark. Mark, how you doing today?

Mark Wainwright: 0:27

Um, well, John, thanks for joining in, you know, for everybody who, who doesn't know kind of here's, here's the behind the scenes is that you and I record these episodes first thing on Monday. Well, first thing for me, cause I'm in the Seattle area and you're in Virginia. So you get a couple more hours to warm up to this, but. We record this first thing. So from my perspective, you know, the coffee is still settling in. We're still shaking off the weekend. My wife and I went out and saw a show last night. We had a great time. So. You know, we're just going to see how this goes today. So I think, I think we'll be all right

John Tyreman: 1:02

Well, you know, let's, uh, I like having these set recordings because it, it helps to hold each other accountable to the podcast.

Mark Wainwright: 1:10

Right. right, right. That's the theme du jour today. And I hope that some of the people who appreciate and listen to, uh, Breaking Biz Dev, we'll take a listen to this because this is, you know. Kind of a bitter pill. I think this is this is one thing that I see, with the organizations that I work with, you know, with just in the larger industry, with professionals of all types. and it touches on that tricky word accountability.

John Tyreman: 1:39

Yeah. And so today we're going to break down what that problem really means and how it can kind of rear its ugly head to people who are involved in sales and marketing, who, have a hand in sales and marketing. and then I think we're going to kind of peel back that onion a little bit. Right. And we're going to start to understand, you know, why is it so hard to be accountable to different outcomes? And then ultimately what can you control? In this whole equation. So that's, that's our agenda for the episode today. That's

Mark Wainwright: 2:09

right. And just to put a fine point on this conversation, we're talking about being accountable when you lose because that, you know, being accountable for, your work, your job responsibilities, your life, all that. There's a lot going on there. There's a lot that we can be responsible and accountable for. But, You and I talked about this some time ago. We wanted to do an episode about it, but yeah, this was specifically about in that situation when you lose, right. Cause a lot of times in professional services, these firms are in situations where they're, you know, either it's a public competition or, a potential client is just sort of vetting different, different firms. And somebody is going to win. Somebody is going to lose.

John Tyreman: 2:53

Look, no one's batting a thousand out there. Right?

Mark Wainwright: 2:56

nobody,

John Tyreman: 2:57

it's going to happen.

Mark Wainwright: 2:58

Come across organizations that say, Oh, our win rates is, you know, through the roof we win 80 percent of everything that we pursue. And I actually scratched below the surface on some of those numbers and there's a little gaming going on. And yeah, I'm not really sure that most firms can operate at that level. Some can,, but I would say it's kind of one of those six of one half a dozen of another, you know, you win some, you lose some. So at least half of the time, at least for a lot of firms out there, you're going to lose, right? So this. episode is focused on the losing losers who lose and how you can be accountable.

John Tyreman: 3:39

even the losers, right? Get lucky sometimes, but it's important to look yourself in the mirror. And that's really what this whole conversation is about.

Mark Wainwright: 3:47

Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna get to that. So, so let's talk about what we're seeing out there. What's the, what's the problem? I'll give you kind of an example. this is kind of, an amalgamation of many different scenarios that I probably see out in the marketplace is that, a firm, whether you're a consulting firm or an engineering firm or whoever you are, you find yourself in a situation where you are competing. Let's say it's a, public, solicitation, where you've come across, there's a request for proposals. maybe you are well positioned, oftentimes, maybe not, and your firm decides to pursue this new business opportunity, you put the team together, you put together a proposal, you learn everything you can, likely not enough, and you, send your proposal off, with your fingers crossed, and Maybe you shortlist, right? You're selected for an interview and they bring you in and they give you a little bit of stuff to prep for. And you come in, you need to do your best. And a lot of times I'll talk to firms after the proposal process. And then after the interviews and they're saying, Oh yeah, it went great. And lo and behold, someone else is selected, right? You hear the bad news that another firm, maybe a firm, you know, maybe a firm you don't know was selected, right? So. You lost right the immediate reaction for most firms. Actually, I talked to is they want to understand why, know, so maybe they're trying to find an opportunity to go talk to the prospective client and say, Hey, why'd you pick those other folks. but that leads to what you just mentioned there, John, is that suddenly. The blame game starts, you know, and in my household and probably in many others and I'm being kind of funny about this is that we find these blame seeking missiles flying around the household looking for a home, right? And that's That's what happens, right? I see firms and individuals when they lose, just detach themselves from any level of responsibility and accountability, and they look outward. Those blame seeking missiles get fired off.

John Tyreman: 5:55

Yep, it's, it's the economy, right? It's the macro economic environment. What are some examples? I guess maybe that's one, but what are some other examples of like those were those blame seeking missiles tend to like hone in on,

Mark Wainwright: 6:08

Sure, sure. That's a good place to start, right? It's the world, right? just fire off some missiles into biggest target you possibly can. Oh, it's a bad economy. It was going to be a tough pursuit to begin with because of, all these big, huge things in the world that are, not headed our direction. And, it's a bad time to be doing anything. you start looking as far away from your organization as possible. It's the world, the world is against us. The next layer to that is You blame the client, right? You look at the prospective client. Yeah, it's their fault, right? They picked the wrong firm or, you know, Oh, they, they made a bad choice. they were asking for the wrong things. Their process to select a consultant, was sideways. It was the client. They just. They chose poorly,

John Tyreman: 7:00

They didn't have the right people making the decision. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 7:04

right? All that stuff. Then it's the competition. It was, Oh, those, they came in the X, Y competitor. Cause we know those, we know those guys, we compete against them all the time.

John Tyreman: 7:20

Schwab, right? You see those commercials

Mark Wainwright: 7:23

commercial shweb. We compete against those consultants, those architects, whoever they're all the time. Oh, and they're, they probably came in. To this competitive situation and they were pulling strings and they pulled out their sort of fancy, you know, whatever interview process, oh, the competition was, overwhelming and they were, it was the competition

John Tyreman: 7:52

or maybe they were, they were selected first before they even went out. And the client already had the firm in mind and we were just a formality. Right. it was rigged.

Mark Wainwright: 8:03

for them. Right. Right. then there's the, uh, it was the price. Oh, they,, the client's requests were ridiculous. And their stated budget was absurd. Right. And we came in too high, right? Cause we're, uh, we're a high priced consulting firm and if they don't want to pay for that, then, you know, they're naive and it's their fault. Right. So it was the price and we checked through all of those things and I hear them all the time, the world, the client, the competition, the price. And I never hear it was. Us, right? So it comes down to that, the blame seeking missiles get fired off into the world, but none of them ever turn back towards you, and that I think is what I see, and that I think is the core of the problem, is that we just deflect everything, we look externally, and we never look in the mirror. So that's, that's what I see, and I think that's the root of the problem. And a lot of times is out of your control. And when we look in the mirror, we can start to define and understand the things that are within our control and then learn from that. So we will dig into that. But I know that you, you and I talked a little bit before this, John, about why does this happen? Why is it so hard? Why is it so difficult for experts who are in competitive situations and they lose? Why is it so hard for them to take responsibility and accountability for these situations?

John Tyreman: 9:42

In order to break it down, I'm more of a visual learner, and so I've got to like look at things and kind of try to map it out to make sense of these questions. There's this visual that I've seen floating around on social media and I've kind of taken to, and it's really kind of helped me understand the world around me a little bit. And it's this, there are these. Concentric circles, almost like a bullseye, where at the very center, there's the comfort zone, and this is where, you know, you're operating in a familiar environment, everything around you is familiar, you're at ease, you feel safe and in control, and then outside of that, you step outside of your comfort zone, and then things get scary. Right? You, might feel like an imposter, like you don't belong, or like you play the blame game, like we were just talking about. And so I think that's kind of the zone in which people, if they lose, they're fearful of what might happen. And so they're, they're operating in that fear zone. And I think that's why the blame game happens, but the layer outside of that fear zone is where you can start learning. And when you learn. And you start to deal with challenges and you start to deal with problems, you end up acquiring new skills and you extend that comfort zone and become more comfortable in your skin and learning new things. And that's when growth happens. And that's that, that layer outside of the learning zone. So I think accountability happens in that learning zone. But why it's so hard is because it's, it's really hard to break that barrier between the fear zone and learning.

Mark Wainwright: 11:18

Yeah, I love that visual. And, that barrier between the fear zone and the learning zone. You can see it play out when I talk to people is that they are unwilling to look at a particular situation, accept responsibility and accountability for the loss. Right? Because likely a little fearful, concerned, afraid about what they'll find. You know, or what they'll uncover about themselves, maybe individually, but also maybe organizationally and then sort of that is a laid bare in the organization. Oh, yeah, I, we, we, or I. Didn't do sufficient discovery. We did a lousy job of investigating the, the prospective clients ahead of time. We had planned to go talk to them at some point in the last year about their future plans, you know, how we could help them, et cetera, and we never did. Right. We just didn't. It just slipped off of our calendars,

John Tyreman: 12:20

We didn't ask the right questions.

Mark Wainwright: 12:22

right, Right? We didn't ask the right questions. So that, that, they're, they're afraid of wandering into that fear zone because of all the stuff they're going to find about themselves and about their organization. It's like, oh my gosh, there are so many things we did wrong. Not enough things we did right to position ourselves for that, win.

John Tyreman: 12:41

And so that first step is, is just that sobering moment where you realize what you did wrong, and you're able to kind of list those things out or, shine a light on it, I guess. and then I think from there, what can you do about it and, or how do you apply what you learned to the next rep that you have, the next opportunity, the next campaign that you're running if, if you're doing marketing?

Mark Wainwright: 13:08

Yes.

John Tyreman: 13:09

And so the, the question that we asked kind of wandering into this segment was, you know, why is it so hard to take responsibility and be accountable? if I were to separate the reasons out into two buckets, first one would be that internal mindset. And that's kind of what we were talking about, kind of like that fear of failure operating in that, uh, that fear zone. Perceived lack of control over outcomes. And then we talked about the blame game. I think the other bucket that I would take a look at in terms of, you know, why is it so hard to hold yourself accountable is the cultural environment that you're operating in. would be easy to say, oh, well, the business culture at my firm is, is horrible. And, you know, that's why, you know, and it's easy to play the blame game that way. But I think that it may be not completely within your control, but I think that anybody in an organization has the ability to influence culture.

Mark Wainwright: 14:01

Sure.

John Tyreman: 14:01

is where like, I, I think of that quote from Mahatma Gandhi, you know, be the change you wish to see in the world.

Mark Wainwright: 14:06

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, an organizational culture is, is, you know, nothing but an assembly of, of individual cultures that are maybe, or maybe not roughly aligned. Right. It's, I mean, that is, that is culture. There's, there's rarely this singular thing that we can call firm culture. Firm culture is, You know, an assembly or an amalgam of everybody, all these individuals and somehow they, they, they end up in a, in a place where you can kind of draw a circle around it and say, this is our organizational culture, but it all begins with those individuals. And yeah, I like how you put it in those two buckets. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 14:42

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 14:56

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 15:06

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 15:12

and now back to the show. So there's this internal mindset. That, either holds us back or can, you know, launch us forwards. Right. and there's this organizational mindset, you know, things like, organization training and support, shared, or misaligned incentives that can throw this, whole thing out of whack, the organization. not focusing on the right things, lack of empowerment in the organization where they're presenting opportunities for people to jump ahead. and, you know, make decisions and, act on those, those decisions. So, the culture absolutely has an impact on this. And, you know, since, we work with organizations, we're speaking to the organizations as much as we are the individuals, right? There's so many things organizations need to do in order to set these individuals up. For success or for failure. I mean, if, if I'm an individual and I'm operating within an organization that has sort of this built in, culture where, we're always putting ourselves under the microscope, trying to find opportunities for, process improvement, continual improvement, then everyone's going to grow. Right. But if the opposite is true, we're in an organization where we're constantly blaming the economy, the client, the play, the price, the competition, then no one's going to grow and we're going to stay in that sort of, comfort zone and we're never going to grow and we're never going to learn because really, for me, this is one of the biggest opportunities for learning and growth happens when you know how to deal with it. Lose. I think all too often when we win, the immediate reaction is, Oh, we got it. Perfect. We nailed it. Right. I think even when you win, there's opportunities to learn and grow and question yourself and, improve. It's not as, explicit, but when you lose, I mean, it's. It's written on the billboard. You screwed up and there's, a lot to learn here,

John Tyreman: 17:11

You bring up a really interesting point, Mark, that, looking in the mirror shouldn't only happen when you lose. You should also be asking similar questions when you win. Why did we win? Right? Maybe, you know, maybe winning. You won the wrong way. And what I mean by that is maybe you priced your, your services too low, and you're not going to make as much margin on that revenue. And that might not be a good thing. If you, you know, take that and look and project it out over the broader, goals that you have you can always be learning and growing and improving by reflecting on your performance, whether it's good or bad. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 17:47

one of the benefits of winning among other things is that you have this, you know, and a lot of the firms I work with are project based firms, and when they win, they have an immediate long-term relationship created with the client. So they have access to them. So they're able to understand, what they did right, what went well, all those types of things. When you lose, you lose access to that client.

John Tyreman: 18:13

That's a good point.

Mark Wainwright: 18:14

you don't get the weekly update meetings so you have to, push yourself to. Re establish and gain that, that connection with the, client organization when you lose, but yeah, both are viable ways to learn. people underestimate the importance of learning, whether you win or lose, losing is harder to. You know, gain those footholds, with the client organization to really learn, but you're really, you have to, you have to learn from them. You have to learn from yourselves. You have to take a, you know, a really, really good, look under the microscope about what happened in your, in your organization. I think that we wanted to kind of wrap up towards the end of this talking about, when you do look in the mirror, and of course there are factors involved in all decisions, that your prospective clients will make, right? They didn't select you, right? There are factors that are outside of your control. That is true. That is absolutely true. The more we learn and understand and know about the client, the more we can kind of reduce that or mitigate those things. But there are always things that are out of your control. But there are way more things, I think, than people really believe that are within our control, and we have to maximize and enhance those things that are within our control because that, mitigates or eliminates the blame game, right? It's, okay, we have to identify the things that were actually within our control in this situation and What could we have done better? What did we screw up? Or, what happened there with all those things that are within our control that we can now improve on?

John Tyreman: 19:56

Yeah. What can you control? Firm leadership, whether you're a solo business owner, whether you're a partner, you have the ability to create that culture and shape that culture, you know, culture starts at the top. So, kind of underneath of that, like, what can you do, to help? Establish that culture while there's operational models, EOS or EOS scaling up, you know, these are frameworks that businesses can put into place to help kind of create structure within an organization. That's a good step. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 20:28

are good ones that provide a, a framework for responsibility and accountability, you know, the 90 day rocks and, you know, all those processes where, you know, it's built into the system that people are constantly setting and seeking to achieve. Goals

John Tyreman: 20:41

I think another one is kind of setting realistic expectations and going through a goal setting exercise. You know, we talked about, I think we've touched on smart goals in the past. But, setting goals that are time bound and realistically attainable. So when you're looking at marketing, for example, if you're investing in a brand marketing campaign, you're probably not going to see return on that investment within the first 90 days. And so like, that's just one example of, mismanaged expectations on a specific type of marketing campaign. the same could be true with, having a short term focus on sales goals. You know, finding the right expectations for marketing and sales performance, I think, is another way that firm leaders can contribute to creating a healthy culture.

Mark Wainwright: 21:27

agreed read. one of the things that happens, you know, on the sales end of things is the big revenue number. Hopefully they have a big revenue goal number gets written up on the board. And that's all everybody stares at all the time,

John Tyreman: 21:38

All right.

Mark Wainwright: 21:38

but that as an individual contributor can be a little frustrating. So. You know, the, the right way for an organization to incentivize the right types of behaviors and activities are to focus on those things more, you know, focus on the incremental steps towards that big number rather than constantly just staring at the, at the big number that's written up on the wall,

John Tyreman: 22:00

Yep. I'm cracking the whip. Yep. And so that's why, again, much like the operational frameworks, we talked about EOS and scaling up, you know, there are programs for marketing and for sales. That's how you and I both serve professional services firms. We bring those marketing and sales programs. And then I think, you know, as a firm leader, reinforce that culture of learning, growth, and teamwork and. Remind people that it's okay to fail give people a safety net for them to learn and grow so that they don't operate in that fear zone. Because if your entire team is operating within fear, then they're not going to learn. They're not going to grow

Mark Wainwright: 22:40

right? One of the things I run into all the time is that I work with these really, really, you know, smart, capable. Experts, right? And experts do not fail, right? they are people who are given tasks and they complete those tasks really, really well. And when they start wandering into this world of sales and marketing, you win some, you lose some. And, it's almost like the wiring short circuits a little bit, you're like, wait a minute, I'm going to invest all this time and energy and effort into this and we're going to lose, wait, what, what just, what just happened? So, yes, you're absolutely right in that, creating a culture specifically led and modeled by the senior leadership that says we're going to fail. It's going to happen. The only thing that we can do from that is that we can learn and we can question what we did previously and improve on that. So, creating that firm culture around learning, a growth, you know, letting people wander into that growth. Sort of place moving through the barrier between fear and growth is super, super critical. And that needs to be led and modeled by the senior, most team members.

John Tyreman: 23:54

a But if you don't have an equity stake in the company. And then you just still have your own intrinsic motivation that's under your control. Now I'm a big football fan. so I love listening to like the coaches talk about teamwork and you know, what you can control. And I think one of the, cliches, I guess in football is kind of applicable here and it's control your inner ape and ape stands for your attitude, your preparation and your effort. So those are all things that if you can, those are things that are within your control, you know, you can show up with a positive attitude. You can be prepared when you come to meetings and come to, to come to work and the effort that you put forward, that's absolutely within your control. So those are the three things that as an individual contributor, you can control your attitude, your preparation, and your effort.

Mark Wainwright: 24:44

Yeah, we, we talk a lot about mindsets and we've done this in some previous, episodes, you know, about how the wrong mindset is one of the things that's broken in, in, in business development, but yeah, absolutely having the, right mindset. Particularly at the moment in time where we are focused on with this episode is that having the right mindset when that situation occurs, when you lose, right? When, when you receive the notification for this competitive pursuit and you were not selected, you were second place. You guys were great, but you weren't picked, right? What is your immediate, you know? individual internal sort of reaction. Are you looking outward? Are you looking inward? Are you trying to understand your, your sort of attitude, throughout the process? Did you prepare well enough? Did you bring all the effort you needed? So, yeah, I think that's a good, that's a good acronym.

John Tyreman: 25:43

And then I think finally, the, the last bucket that we have here under what you can control is investments that you make in yourself. And I think we've talked about having. An innate sense of curiosity on past episodes. And I think that can be channeled here. If you as an individual want to step outside of that fear zone and operate in a learning zone, you know, channel your curiosity, do research on how you can improve your craft. Um, folks that are listening to this podcast right now are probably doing that. They've sought out a resource that's free. You know, this podcast is on all of the different channels and YouTube, Apple, Spotify. or you could make an investment in coaching programs or courses. There's all sorts of things out there. Mark, I think you've got a course that you're building. And I offer coaching to folks that want to do podcasts. So, you know, there are resources available for individuals to hone their craft.

Mark Wainwright: 26:40

right. And there's even stuff beyond us. And a lot of them have these central themes of curiosity, and we've talked about curiosity in the past. And, you know, hopefully that is one of the things that comes to mind for each individual when they kind of run into this situation, when you run into a situation where you have lost, what is your immediate reaction? Are you suddenly curious about? What happened, what happened with our team? What happened with me individually? Did I, did I do everything that I could have? What could I have done differently? What am I going to do differently next time? So just having that, that mindset, and we've talked how curiosity can help throughout the entire sales process and help, when you're, approaching. Your marketing, because curiosity inevitably, creates this sort of empathetic sort of posture, where you're constantly seeking, to get into the inner workings of someone else's head. But yeah, it's critical that, you know, you just don't. Well, we lost flip the switch. it was their fault. They made a bad choice. It was the competition. And then you move on to the next one.

John Tyreman: 27:43

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I, I think that there is, there's importance to, to flushing, right? You know, like absorb the loss, learn from it, move on. Because at the end of the game, you know, there are more opportunities to be won and you don't want to dwell on one opportunity that you lost,

Mark Wainwright: 28:01

right? Right. And, and, you know, the, you're, you're absolutely right. You need, you do need to kind of move on to, you know, again, that sports analogy thing where they, you know, they have a, they have a bad, bad play, a bad situation, and they have to kind of move on. But if you don't show up for that next opportunity, that next rep, having acknowledged You know previous failures and then being very explicit and conscious about what you're going to improve this time you haven't gained anything. So that's the trick right you you learn from it You take everything you learned and you apply it to that next opportunity And hopefully you have better results

John Tyreman: 28:42

All right. Well, Mark, I think we've successfully broken down how to be accountable when you lose. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we want to close out with?

Mark Wainwright: 28:51

No, I think this was, this is a good episode. you know, we wanted to talk about it because there's such a, a huge, important opportunity for individuals and organizations to look at losing differently. You know, look at it as something that is one of the things that can happen in any situation and, and you have to make the most of it. So I think this was good

John Tyreman: 29:13

Yeah, I do

Mark Wainwright: 29:14

next time, John.

John Tyreman: 29:15

Until next time, Mark.