I was recently debriefing with a friend about a sales meeting where the potential client didn't buy. Apparently it was a great meeting but at the end they said they would try to do the work themselves and didn't need my client's help.

It's a very familiar situation to me – I can see that they would really benefit from what I'm offering, but somehow they don't.

It's tempting to diagnose them – What's wrong with them that they didn't buy? Not that useful, unfortunately.

A much more powerful perspective to take is that there wasn't enough value. Not actual value, but perceived value. The person somehow didn’t believe they would be getting enough bang-for-buck from buying from you. While this isn't necessarily true – you'll never know what is really going in a person’s head – that’s a much more useful place to reflect from.

So, when someone says that they don't have the time or the money, or they just decline for some other reason, I always think that somehow I didn't do a good enough job of demonstrating the value of the program, and then I review the conversation from that perspective.

The trick is to do that while staying light. Learn from it, but don't beat yourself up.