Lost-Deal Postmortem

---
name: lost-deal-postmortem
description: Use when running a post-mortem on a closed-lost sales deal. Triggers on "lost deal", "deal post-mortem", "why we lost", "deal review".
---

# Lost-Deal Postmortem

Closed-lost reasons recorded in CRM are usually wrong. "Price" or "competitor" are easy answers that mask structural issues. A good post-mortem surfaces the real one.

## Required inputs

1. **Deal context** — account, ASP, sales cycle length, who else was involved
2. **Stated reason for loss** — what prospect said, what AE wrote in CRM
3. **Timeline of the deal** — key milestones, when things felt good vs. wrong
4. **What competitive activity occurred** — who else was in the deal, when they engaged
5. **What we'd commit to do differently** — not yet decided

## The 5-question audit

### 1. Should we have been in this deal in the first place?
- ICP fit — were they actually our target customer?
- Buying readiness — did they have budget, authority, pain, timing?
- The signal we missed: what would have told us early this was a poor fit?

### 2. Did we have a real champion?
- Champion test: would they have advocated for us in a meeting we weren't in?
- If no — when did this become clear? Could we have built one?
- If yes — did they actually have the political capital to win?

### 3. Did we run good discovery?
- Did we understand the problem in their terms or ours?
- Did we know who else needed to approve?
- Did we know the competitive comparison they were running?
- The deepest question we did NOT ask that we should have

### 4. Did we deliver proof that mattered?
- Demo / POC / reference call — were they tuned to this prospect's concern?
- What proof did the competitor provide that we didn't?
- Did we have the right case study / number / customer to cite?

### 5. Did we read the room?
- Late-stage signals we missed: slow responses, fewer stakeholders, scope changing
- Did we push too hard when we should have paused, or vice versa?
- The point in the deal where we should have either escalated or walked

## Output

```
## Honest reason we lost
[Not the CRM reason — the real one. 1-2 sentences.]

## What was true 4 weeks before the loss that should have warned us
[The signal that, in hindsight, was clearly the lose-flag]

## What we'd do differently
- In qualification (would we have even taken this deal?)
- In discovery (the question we'd ask earlier)
- In proof (the asset / call / reference we'd line up)
- In close (the move we'd or wouldn't make)

## What was outside our control
[Honest. Sometimes the reason really is "they had a different need." Don't manufacture self-blame.]

## What this means for the pipeline
- Are other open deals showing similar patterns? Name them.
- Should we change our ICP / discovery process / proof library?

## Update to the playbook
[Concrete: what we'll add to the team's process based on this]
```

## What this is NOT
- A blame exercise
- A "the prospect was dumb" venting session
- An excuse to relitigate company-level decisions (pricing, packaging, ICP)

## Cadence
- Per-deal post-mortem on losses > $50K ASP
- Quarterly batch review of all lost deals for patterns
- The patterns are usually more valuable than the individual deals