As a B2B organization, it’s important to understand why you win and lose opportunities. Whether acquiring new business, renewing current customers, or growing current account revenue, Win-Loss Analysis (WLA) gives insight into the decision drivers behind deal outcomes according to your buyers. These insights can then be applied to marketing, sales, and product strategies to optimize your buyer’s journey and increase win rates. 

It’s important to remember that Win-Loss findings are not just for your accounts teams. Win-Loss Analysis insights are valuable to a variety of key stakeholders within a successful business. Recent key findings from Gartner®, for instance, reveal that product marketers, who often are charged with creating win/loss analysis, can struggle to obtain accurate feedback and are often unclear as to the internal dissemination when it exists. Additionally, findings show that sales teams benefit by understanding why they lose and win deals, however, are typically poor at in-depth retrospections. 

 

So you want to start winning more today? Here are six of our tips to get you there: 

1. Involve a third party

In order to eliminate bias from your win-loss program and to save time and resources, it’s best to involve an impartial third party win-loss vendor.

Using a third party can also increase conversion rates for feedback collection as buyers may be more comfortable giving unbiased feedback to someone outside your organization.

Your buyers will also appreciate the investment in win-loss that shows you care about their experience – whether or not they choose your solution.

2. Select relevant contacts

When an opportunity is closed – won or lost – identify the appropriate contacts you’d like to collect feedback from. These contacts should have been involved in the purchase decision. Their buyer roles can range from influencer to stakeholder to decision maker. Each will have a unique perspective on why they did (or did not) choose your company. Selecting the right contacts is the first step to gathering relevant feedback for your win-loss program.

3. Automate from start to finish

Automation is key to gathering high volumes of quality buyer feedback for your win-loss program. Your Win-Loss Analysis should be executed through automated technology that handles the collection, analysis, and insight reporting of your buyer feedback.

4. Ask the right questions

The impact of data within your Win-Loss Analysis program is dependent on knowing what questions to ask and how those questions translate into actionable insights. Look for a provider who has the expertise to know which questions are relevant, unbiased, and invaluable to your win-loss program. By asking a set of standard questions to each buyer regarding your product, the sales experience, competitors, and pricing, you’ll be able to make your win-loss program scalable and see how your buyer’s perception changes over time as you implement new business strategies to increase win rates. Additional questions should be added and tailored to answer remaining “burning questions” you have about your buyers.

Primary Intelligence has over 20 years of experience in Win-Loss Analysis, and our time-tested, dynamic surveys are optimized to help you gather more unbiased buyer feedback than any other provider.

5. Use qualitative AND quantitative data

Win-Loss Analysis allows you to see both qualitative and quantitative insights through surveys and phone interviews. When responses are analyzed into seamless reports and dashboards, you can view analytics around buyer trends, strengths and weaknesses, and competitors to help you know how you can win more.

However, Win-Loss Analysis becomes even more valuable when you’re able to see the survey responses and phone interview transcripts to get qualitative context from your buyer feedback. Take your qualitative data even further by listening to call recordings to dive into the intention and context of your responses.

6. Share and apply results

Share your win-loss findings with all customer-centric departments in your organization. Ensure the insights shared are relevant to help each team internalize and act on insights. Win-Loss Analysis improves alignment within your organization and creates strategic business direction.

 

In short, Win-Loss Analysis (WLA) can uncover insights that impact all customer-centric departments and contain a well of potential insights that organizations should not leave untapped. As organizations collect, analyze and apply these strategically they truly begin to win at Win-Loss.