Win/Loss Analysis (Product Management Framework Element)

Question 1

Key takeaways

Knowing why a company wins or loses is important to improving business performance as well as the company’s ability to predict its business outcomes

Answer 1

• Few organizations know why they succeed or fail at sales.
• To find out, study your sales efforts and report on that knowledge in win/loss reviews.
• Your sales team knows more than anyone else about your deals and customers, so capturing their knowledge about sales results is essential.
• Establish specific criteria to determine how many deals to analyze.
• Apply a standardized process to capture and dissect sales results and to study patterns in wins and losses.
• Your win/loss review should probe the factors that influence sales decisions, including the competition, your service, your product and your negotiation tactics.
• Your system must be transparent and accessible so everyone can participate.
• A well-designed win/loss reporting program is useful for sales, marketing and strategy.
• Create a simple, standardized reporting process. Select software that facilitates reporting. Integrate these reports into your business intelligence practices.
• Enlist internal or external experts to reveal the lessons in the data you collect.

Question 2

New tool to your existing market studies

Answer 2

Seller-generated win/loss reviews:
Your salespeople, the staff members who are closest to the moment of sale and know the most
about your clients, are the ones who will write these reviews.

Note: Naturally, the reviews salespeople create will have some bias, so take that into account; however, biased first-hand reports from your experts in the field are still highly useful.

Sift through the report to level out the bias and produce practical, lessons learned findings. An in-house routine that makes your sales team members into reporters can be more efficient, and they will learn hands-on the benefit of collecting and applying this data.

Question 3

Seller-generated win/loss reviews (Contd..)

Answer 3

In-house electronic intelligence speed up reporting. Range of vendors provides “business intelligence” (BI) software options. The win/loss review process differs from typical business intelligence gathering because the sales force writes the reports for their own use and the use of others in the company.

Finding functional ways to filter and visualize this information maximizes its effectiveness.

Advantage: When you make insights from the field
readily available, the people in your company can apply this “just-in-time research” instantly, improve their overall knowledge management practices and transform BI into “competitive intelligence” (CI).

Question 4

Points to remember

Answer 4

The first action [of] the core win/loss review program team is to create the program goals and objectives.

The information gathered from the seller-generated
win/loss review process should complement, not
replace, market and competitive intelligence reports, sales analytics, and direct customer interviews.”

The strength of a broad stakeholder-oriented
win/loss review process is its capability to inform…sales strategy and to provide a strong bridge between sales and marketing

Question 5

How to Identify a Win and a Loss

Answer 5

Several factors shape whether your team makes a sale. Examine them in categories, such
as your offering, your competitiveness, your service and your relationships. Use these
categories to analyze wins or losses methodically.

Examine your reports’ results and review each analysis in the context of your sales performance and forecasts.

Use win/loss reviews to assess

(i) walk-away opportunities
(ii) delayed deals

Note: Each narrative from Sales-person should give a sales call’s context and results.

Question 6

Gathering Data, Generating Insights

Answer 6

Companies must articulate and codify Sales force tacit knowledge in a standard format to make it understandable and beneficial. Capture four core kinds of information smoothly and easily with a structured framework

Question 7

Structured framework for data-gathering

Answer 7

1. “Opportunity details”:
   who was involved, what happened, who were the clients and what did they buy?
2. “Outcome factors”:
   Examine the “offering factors,” such as
   cost, the product’s features, its alignment with the customers’ needs and its value.
3. “Competitive factors”:
   Relate your offering to your competitors’ merchandise (prices and products, their customer’s reports). Pay particular attention to your salesperson’s initial offer, since that shapes all later interactions. Analyze your staffers’ communication skills as negotiators.
4. “Relationship factors”:
   Study the strength, quality and nature of your relationships; Determine which negotiation tactics your staffers applied and how they interacted with customers during the transaction.

The report ends with a subjective “narrative section”, Here, they summarize a deal and explain how they dealt with its challenges. This is the place to capture and report any “golden insights,”
direct lessons on how to sell better.

Seek help of CI specialists help to prioritize valuable data and identify the applicable lessons.

Question 8

Organizing and Using Your Win/Loss Information

Answer 8

It should also inform your larger sales strategy, show ways that sales and marketing can work together, provide information on managing customer accounts, and help find and organize prospects.

Question 9

Implementing and Evaluating Your Win/Loss Review Process

Answer 9

In designing your procedures around review, setting up the right “baseline criteria” for wins and losses is crucial.

1. Implement your win/loss review process the same way you would introduce other new programs. Identify Process owner.
2. Collect and publish the “business requirements” the program will address
3. As you develop from planning your reporting system to using it, shift your team’s focus from the start-up phase to sustained management.