Win/loss analysis is invaluable for any company looking to boost revenue. But how do you use this insight to drive competitive advantage?
Leading companies typically hire a 3rd party to conduct their win/loss analyses. Internal salespeople often need more work to retrieve truthful customer feedback.
Understand the Buyer’s Journey
With a well-executed win/loss analysis program, you’ll gather valuable insights into your market and uncover critical trends that can significantly improve sales efficiencies. In fact, according to research, companies that utilize win/loss analysis boost customer retention rates and see year-on-year revenue growth.
A vital aspect of a successful win/loss analysis is collecting feedback from buyers and non-buyers who are part of your target audience. It helps you understand why they buy (or not) from your competitors. This information can help you determine what you do best and identify areas where your team has room for improvement.
The first step is determining what stage your buyers are in their buying process. For example, a buyer in the awareness stage might be researching the problem they face. It can be done through search engines and various other resources. Ultimately, they want to make sure they’re making the best decision for their business.
A comprehensive win/loss analysis can be a powerful tool for your sales team, primarily when the interviews are conducted soon after the sale is won or lost. It helps ensure that the evaluator’s experience is fresh in their mind and helps avoid any bias from your sales team. You should also include the decision maker for each won and lost opportunity for maximum accuracy.
Analyze the Competition
With sound analysis practices, you’ll gain insight into your market and amass accurate data that can help inform your product offerings, sales processes, and marketing strategies. It enables you to increase win rates, leading to more revenue growth and improved profitability.
Win/loss interviews also allow you to analyze how your competitors market their products and services to prospective buyers. You can then leverage this information to create a more competitive strategy that addresses the needs and desires of your target audience.
The people who conduct the interview should be chosen carefully based on their expertise and experience with your business. Typically, these interviews are driven by your sales and marketing teams. Still, it’s important to include stakeholders from other departments, such as customer service and product development, to get a complete picture of the elements that go into a successful or failed sale.
While it’s critical to collect quantitative (numbers-based and measurable) and qualitative (interpretation-based and descriptive) data, it’s also essential that you keep this information in a central location for easy access. It allows you to distribute the information across your entire organization, allowing each team to focus on enhancing their respective win rates in areas that are relevant to them. It ensures that your company implements consistent improvements and can demonstrate the benefits of these changes to potential investors.
Understand Your Value Proposition
You can create and communicate a clear value proposition when your product and sales teams are well-positioned to meet your target audience’s needs. Your value can differentiate you from the competition and drive customer acquisition.
A solid value proposition allows you to identify the pain points your customers are experiencing and how your products or services solve them. It enables you to develop targeted marketing campaigns to reach your buyers in the proper channels at the most critical moments during their buyer journey.
Win/loss analysis interviews with decision-makers at won and lost accounts are the best way to understand what drove a buyer’s buying decisions. While other data sources may be unreliable, one-on-one interviews with buyers allow you to collect rich, qualitative information that can inform your sales process and marketing strategies.
When a company invests in a well-executed win/loss analysis program, it can discover several powerful insights to improve its competitive positioning and increase customer retention. These insights can be used to optimize the sales process and marketing strategy and influence the development of new product features to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Having accurate data to back up your sales and marketing efforts, instead of reacting to anecdotes or assumptions, empowers your team to deliver results that will positively impact your bottom line.
Create a Strategic Plan
Rather than reacting to anecdotes from the field, a well-executed win/loss analysis can help you understand what is working (and what isn’t). It will allow you to validate the strengths of your sales process and provide insight into what consumers value most in your products. It will also show you where the competition stands and how you can exploit their weaknesses.
Once you’ve analyzed the data, you can start to build your strategic plan. Working with a small group during the writing process helps ensure everyone’s ideas are considered and that your final product is cohesive. You must determine how your strategy will be executed and create yearly objectives aligning with your strategic goals.
It’s also a good idea to consider how your strategic plan will be communicated internally and externally. You will want to ensure your organization knows the plan and how their roles contribute to the strategy’s success.
Final Step
Once you have your strategy and a reporting process, the final step is executing it. You should regularly report on your progress as the year progresses. It can be done through a quarterly or monthly review meeting or by creating reports highlighting individual vital indicators and how they align with your strategic plan.