What Are the Strengths of Conducting Win/Loss Analysis?
Updated: Aug 24
This blog will outline the strengths of Win Loss analysis. This is the first step of the widely used SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to assess the value of Win/Loss. We will share weaknesses, opportunities and threats in future blogs.
Win Loss Analysis: Strengths
The major strength of Win Loss analysis is learning directly from your customers and prospects. Customers are the fuel that keeps your company in business. They buy based on their perceptions and what’s important to them, and that’s what you learn during Win/Loss interviews.
This conversation is another precious customer touch point for sales and marketing, product marketing, even product development.
Act on Undecided Customers
You also get some ideas about why customers remain undecided. You learn how to convert more of your undecided customers into wins or to recognize when they are no longer an opportunity.
Improve Your Sales Process
You can make changes to any part of your sales process based on customer feedback. You learn what works, what doesn’t, what customers value, and what they don’t. From loss interviews, you can learn what factors led the prospect to take your company off the short list.
Timing: After the Sale
Another strength is the timing of Win Loss interviews. They take place after the sale. Customers and prospects are past the pressures of decision-making and know you are not pitching to them. Since you aren’t trying to change their mind, they are usually happy to share how they decided on their service provider. Most people aren’t listened to in their quiet, digital work environments.
Your major enemies are time and desire. Sometimes, people don’t have time for this conversation. Other times they are uncomfortable for various reasons to have this conversation.
How the Competition Sells Against You
Another strength is the competitive intelligence you learn, such as details on how a competitor sells against your company or what a competitor tells customers about your product’s performance or your salesforce, which may or may not be true.
What the Competition Says
Win/Loss interviews often uncover competitors’ specific product promises that they don’t deliver. Similarly, they uncover traps laid out by the competition’s sales force, often using FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) rather than facts to win the business. Pointing out these facts and tactics help your sales force gain credibility and avoid making false promises.
Your Sales Force Informs You About the Competition
Silver bullets can be developed from Win Loss findings to create battlecards that will help your sales force gain credibility with customers. Salespeople value this intelligence. Once they realize what a great source of intelligence Win/loss is, they often become incredibly helpful. This intelligence giving often opens up the ‘quid pro quo’ with Sales. They will become rich informants about the changing competitive landscape.
Improve Your ROI
I know of no other process that gives your company as much intelligence to make improvements as when you make the changes that emerge from Win/Loss analysis. Over time, you gain the confidence to be a more proactive player.
The ROI of Win Loss analysis is easy to measure:
• You retain more business.• Increase average deal sizes.• Gain more business and revenue.• Develop products sooner with better customer input.• Enhance existing products with better customer insight.• Change processes to improve the customer’s experience when they do business with you.
Read more about Win/Loss Analysis.
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Ellen Naylor
Conversation Elicitation Expert
(303) 388-1452
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