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. Strengths are HERE and Weaknesses are HERE.
Win Loss Analysis: Strengths
The major strength of Win Loss analysis is that you are learning directly from your customers and those who chose a competitor’s product or service. 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, 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, and ideally after the solution or product is implemented. 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 don’t get listened to enough in their quiet, digital work environments. Your major enemy is time. Sometimes, people don’t have enough time for 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, 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 that can help your sales force gain credibility with customers. Sales values this intelligence. Once Sales realizes their source is Win Loss interviews, sales reps will become incredibly helpful. This intelligence giving often opens up the quid pro quo with Sales. They will become a rich informant about the changing competitive marketplace.
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.
Learn more about competitive intelligence
Win/Loss Analysis book; Amazon link to Win/Loss Analysis book
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