Pragmatic Marketings Jim Foxworthy asked me recently, Is our objective in Win/Loss to learn what to build next, or to learn how to sell more of what we have already built?

We both agreed that win loss programs should be addressing both types of opportunities. However, more often than not, I see win loss programs focused more on what to build next rather than how to sell more of what they already have.

Jim went on to ask, Sales organizations obsess about their selling process (as they should), but win loss analysis keeps a team current to any changes in the BUYING process. And if you know the Buyer Persona and the steps they take to buy, wouldnt you want to mirror that to how you sell?

In recent product management discussions on Twitter, a few product managers commented that personas are usually an ineffective waste of time. This generated some interesting comments and in the discussion Gunjan commented that personas are just assumptions and hence dangerous unless real buyers and users help you prepare them and verify them.

Keep in mind that Buyer Personas are FOR sales primarily. Yes, they can be great tools in helping us make product-related decisions, but there is a tremendous need for accurate buyer personas in the sales process. Consider the following research observations from CSO Insights 2009 research:

1. 50.6% of organizations agree that they need improvement in understanding where they should be focusing their selling efforts.
2. Only 9.1% of organizations report that they are exceeding expectations when it comes to understanding which accounts to focus selling efforts on.
3. More than 40% (41.2%) of sales representatives are not making quota.
4. 61.5% of sales revenue is generated by top 20% of sales reps.
5. 27% of organizations report that analyzing their customers buying process was a top sales effectiveness initiative.
6. 20% of organizations report that revising their sales tools to match buyer needs was a top sales effectiveness initiative.

We can infer from the data above that there is a staggering need for accurate buyer personas based on real-world win loss data. In fact, we recently helped a customer uncover an astonishing revelation about their actual buyers (they have agreed to let me share this anonymously). They indicated that they targeted two key buyers in accounts they were selling to and that these were their primary buyers:

1. C-level executives
2. Sales leaders

With this information in hand, we analyzed their most recent 50 competitive wins. What we found shocked them, but uncovered a considerable opportunity to improve their sales effectiveness through the creation and implementation of accurate buyer personas.

When we analyzed their deals, we found that only 40% of their confirmed buyers fell in the two categories of buyer personas that they had previously identified (C-level and Sales Execs). The other 60% of their buyers fell into two other key buyer roles, with one of those roles making up nearly 40% of all of their actual buyers (as much as the other two roles they had identified as their primary buyers!).

This is a lot like shooting for the corner pocket in pool, only to have your ball bounce around the table and unexpectedly go in the side-pocket. Youre pleased with the result, but the result occurred more from luck than skill. The opportunity for this customer was hugethey could create buyer personas for the newly identified buyers and train the sales force on how to effectively target these two additional buyer types.

This is just one example of how your win loss analysis program can help you build and/or validate conclusive buyer personas. There are numerous other key areas where you can leverage your win loss program to create compelling buyer personas that will not only help you with product-related decisions, but will resonate with your sales force and improve their sales effectiveness.

There are twelve key buyer persona elements that will help a sales person target the right people, align your product’s benefits with the buyer’s needs and help them do these things using your buyer’s language. Each of these elements can be found in your win loss data. These elements are:

1. Buyers key responsibilities
2. Buyers demographics (years of experience, typical team size, who they report to, etc.)
3. Buyers organizational demographics (employees, revenue, industry, growth rates, etc.)
4. Buyers description of their problems and needs (the problems you can solve)
5. Your buyers buying process, in their words
6. Understanding the time it takes your buyers to make decisions (your sales cycle)
7. Buyers perceptions and expectations around the price of your solution
8. What your buyers value most about your solution and why
9. What your buyers identify as the weaknesses of your solution
10. What your buyers see as missing from your solution
11. Sales best practices (from the buyers perspective)
12. Any additional potential buyer personas

The real power in this best practice is that it will improve the probability that you can align all of your resources (product development, management, marketing and sales) to focus on the right buyers, with the right problems, in the right accounts.

So how do these things help a sales representative? The best sales people in an organization are going to have a pretty solid understanding of this information already, but the other 80% of the sales force can get a tremendous amount of value from buyer personas built with your win loss data. A well written and researched buyer persona can undoubtedly help a sales person in both their prospecting efforts and with the deals theyre actively pursuing. Specifically, this information can:

1. Help the sales rep target the right peoplethe appropriate buyers of your solution
2. Improve the sales rep’s ability to uncover buyer problems and needs
3. Boost the sales rep’s ability to speak the language of the buyer more effectively
4. Improve the sales rep’s understanding of how your product helps these buyers
5. Help the sales rep identify other individuals they should be selling to
6. Enhance the sales rep’s knowledge of your buyers’ buying processes (more on this in a future blog post)
7. Increase the effectiveness of sales strategies by refining them to align with what your buyers value most

Buyer personas that are based on data from your win loss analysis program will have much more credibility with your sales force (and the rest of your organization). Make sure that you reference the deals that you used to build the personas.

So how does all of this lead to more sales? If you can help 60% to 80% of your sales force better understand your confirmed buyers, whats most important to your buyers, and how they buy, could having this information help an under-performing sales representative win a deal they would have lost this year? Could it help them win two more deals? Run the numbers on the impact you could have on sales if your win loss analysis-based buyer personas helped sales representatives struggling with their quota close just one additional deal this year. It is a pretty powerful ROI story.

So what do you need to do to get started?

In order to build a good foundation for accurate buyer personas, we recommend, at a minimum, talking to buyers of the last 20 deals you won or lost. Keep in mind that it is important that you try to get an equal weighting of the deals where you won and where you lost. In preparing your win loss interview instrument, be sure that you incorporate the 12 key buyer persona elements Ive identified above.

If you would like to see an example of a buyer persona written using our win loss analysis data, drop me an e-mail.

Defining and validating buyer personas through win loss analysis is a convincing and important best practice that every organization should be doing.

Is your organization following this best practice?

About the Author: Ken Allred, Founder and CEO of Primary Intelligence, is a thought leader in SaaS-based sales intelligence, analytics and sales enablement solutions. He is committed to the optimization of sales, marketing and product management teams through the implementation of advanced Sales 2.0 intelligence solutions.

A case in point: a few months ago, after speaking with our sales team, I had been thinking about our sales process. At the time, I thought, I need to make sure that we get our Account Consultants involved early in the sales process.

Our Account Consultants are the folks that work hand-in-hand with our customers to implement and run their win loss analysis programs. When it comes to win loss analysis, these are the experts that are deep in the trenches, evaluating purchase decisions with our customers and helping them solve their business problems every day. I realized that if we had our Account Consultants involved earlier, we would potentially be doing a better job in helping customers evaluate how our solutions can help them achieve their goals.

As with my other ideas, this change to the sales process went on my list. Unfortunately, that is where it has remained. Then this morning, as I was reviewing a review we did on one of our recent losses to a competitor, I see a response to the question, What were the primary reasons you did not select Primary Intelligence? The decision maker commented:

The only thing I would say about Primary Intelligence was that in the initial part of the sales cycle I was talking with more of a client executive, someone who was more of a relationship manager. I understand that model. I understand why you have it. It’s not a bad model. But with [PIs competitor] I was speaking directly with the partner who was going to actually execute the work. There was no middleman. We were nose to nose on the discussions, and I felt that the sales cycle with [PIs competitor] moved a little more quickly because there was no middle salesman. That was really the one slightly negative thing that I had toward Primary Intelligence. I definitely would have preferred to speak with the person who would be working directly with me on the project during the sales process.

Ugh. Yeah, I had that sick feeling in my stomach. If I had only acted on the idea to improve the sales process earlier I would have positioned us better and given us a much better opportunity at this customers business.

I am pleased to report that I officially checked this idea off my list after a couple of conversations with our Director of Operations and our VP of Sales. They are in the process of formalizing the change to our sales process so that our customers will be working directly with our experts right from the beginning. Our customers will have full and immediate access to both their sales contact and our subject matter expertstheir Account Consultants.

The point here is that even after doing this for the past decade, we still consistently find important, even critical, intelligence on how to better meet the needs of our customers through our own win loss program. If it wasnt for our win loss program, I am fairly certain that this idea to improve our sales process would still be on my list and we would continue to miss opportunities.

About the Author: Ken Allred, Founder and CEO of Primary Intelligence, is a thought leader in SaaS-based sales intelligence, analytics and sales enablement solutions. He is committed to the optimization of sales, marketing and product management teams through the implementation of advanced Sales 2.0 intelligence solutions.