Samenvatting

Despite the fact that the AdTech industry is experiencing continuous growth, losing deals in the sales process is a major challenge for Clearcode, impacting their revenue and growth potential.
The main issue to be handled is customers who choose not to work with the company at all. That kind of lost potential customers are internally called “lost deals” (appendix 1.8). Undoubtedly, there are many reasons why the deal could be lost, however, they are not always known to both Clearcode’s Sales Representatives and the other departments. The internal statistics (appendix 1.9) show that in 2022 out of 123 potential clients, 78 were marked as “lost”, which makes more than 63 % (Clearcode, 2022). In 2023 the company hasn’t managed to close any deal yet. However, it has to be said that selling customised technology is not easy (Bibikar 2021), since the product being offered doesn’t physically exist yet. Naturally, Clearcode offers many case studies, showing what kind of tech they have built, but it varies for each client and depends on so many factors that there is no single "formula" for such a platform. Depending on the components that are customised, for ex. the price of DSP can range from about $300,000 to several million, and construction can take from 3/4 months to many years. Unknown factors often cause customers to back out, but Hubspot tool helps sales representatives group possible reasons for no customer engagement. There is an internal meeting every month to discuss what and why was “lost” but “not always the action is taken” (Personal communication, 2023). According to the internal research in Hubspot (2022) there are many potential reasons why this problem could occur, among which we find: pricing/no budget, lack of need for custom services, unresponsive lead, competitor’s choice, etc.

The more in-depth analysis of those reasons is going to be conducted later in this report.
Moreover, the 6W approach is applied to help comprehend the issue better. With this approach, the who, what, when, where, why, and how are all specified.
● Who: Clearcode
● What: The problem is losing deals. The goal is reducing the number of lost deals and increasing the revenue
● Where: This report will focus on Europe and North America since this is where most of Clearcode’s clients come from (appendix 1.10)
● When: The problem has been always noticeable, especially in the recession. First improvement is expected to be seen within 1 year after implementing the potential changes
● Why: The company wants to generate more revenue and has noticed that few leads go to "customer" status
● How: It’s not known how this problem exactly arised. This challenge could be tackled by addressing the common causes of customer resignation, together with defining the significant
gaps in the sales funnel (appendix 1.11) and sales system. Additionally, out-of-company expert's advice is crucial for objective problem analysis and valuable recommendations.

In order to investigate the topic of lost deals the following research question and subquestions need to be asked:
What can Clearcode do to reduce the number of lost deals in order to increase the revenue of the Sales Department by July 2024?
Sub questions:
1) What are the reasons for the lost deals in the company?
2) What is the current sales process and when does the problem of losing potential customers occur in it?
3) What steps can the business take in order to improve its sales process and avoid future missed deals?