WHO IS JASON?

Jason’s career has been defined by taking the path less traveled. He has consistently accepted challenging positions that did not have a clear path to success, taking his companies and teams into new markets and opening up new sales channels. Jason enjoys the thrill of navigating new and emerging opportunities where success is not guaranteed, and teams and processes must evolve over time. He compares it to being an entrepreneur within a large company. His entrepreneurial spirit and refusal to accept the status quo have been key to his growth and success throughout his career.

A Sales Success (or Failure)
We Can Learn From

Jason admittedly has had more failures than successes. He believes that the best learnings come from failure. Jason shared a story of one such failure that was highly visible and quite painful.

He had just started with athenahealth and was working on a multimillion-dollar community health center account that would have been athenahealth’s largest at the time. He was new to the role and had not yet established himself or his reputation. The deal evolved over a 12-15 month sales cycle and involved leadership at the highest levels of the organization. The co-founder of the company traveled with Jason onsite to meet with the prospect’s executives. Both Jason and the co-founder listened carefully to the prospects’ needs, interviewed decision-makers and influencers throughout the organization, and ultimately put together a thoughtful, creative, and aggressive proposal to secure their business.

Despite these efforts, they lost the deal to a competitor. There was an uncomfortable moment at a sales meeting where one of the sales leaders prematurely congratulated Jason in front of the entire sales organization because it looked like they were going to win. Not two weeks later they received the “Dear John” letter.

Jason felt like he let the company down and began to doubt his ability and sales approach. How could a deal that seemed so likely to fall his way have been lost to a competitor?

Upon reflection, Jason identified several “blind spots” that ultimately caused him to lose the deal. This included key influencers that were not identified earlier in the process, pressure from the local health system was much more influential than expressed from the prospect, and political factors at the state and regional level all came into play. Additionally, Jason realized that he had involved key resources throughout his organization and they had collectively missed some of these factors. That did not change the outcome, but it allowed Jason an opportunity to debrief with the team – without embarrassment – and to learn from this loss. Jason continues to use these learnings in deals to this day. Losing as a team will always provide more meaningful learning than losing alone.