It is natural to want to learn from failures or lost sales situations. Companies spend a lot of time and effort training, preparing, and selling their products and services in competitive environments. When a deal is lost, it makes great sense to want to learn why. In fact, we see this all the time in new sales conversations with our own prospects at Anova. Nine out of ten times when we ask companies interested in win / loss what they are trying to get out of a research program, at least one of the organization’s objectives is to learn from their losses.
But what about the wins? Are there valuable teachings beyond knowing why you won?
Absolutely. In fact, recent Anova research revealed that 36% of win situations experience a post-sale issue. Put another way, even though the decision was a win, just over one-third of new clients have an experience that jeopardizes the long-term relationship.
These relationships begin on fragile terms and need help sooner rather than later. Do any of these common post-sales issues sound familiar?
Think of client relationships that may have encountered any of the above problems. It becomes incredibly difficult for organizations to then turn the customer into a satisfied, loyal, referenceable client after a post-sale issue. When the cost of obtaining a new customer is estimated to be 7x as high as retaining an existing one, and after the sales team has just recently undergone the effort to win the deal, it pays to make sure the relationship starts off on the right foot.
Instead, as Anova’s research shows, sales teams are often guilty of closing the deal, tallying the win, and moving on. However, that transition between prospect and client is paramount and all too often can make or break the overall success of that client engagement.
The ability to uncover which clients may be starting off a relationship on rocky grounds, and what issues may be plaguing them, are why collecting win data is so important for successful organizations. Learning from winning sales situations provides organizations with valuable insights into new client relationships and can play a critical part of the new client’s onboarding process, providing information such as:
Just because a deal is won does not mean it will be a win forever. Organizations need to have a tool available to them to ensure the transition from prospect to client is handled with the care any long-term relationship deserves.
Think of a win transcript as a point-in-time client satisfaction measure. Is the client starting off on the right foot with the organization or are there already issues and missed expectations that need attention? We can’t forget that in most wins, there was a runner-up that is one email or call away.
Here we are. It’s fourth quarter and your sales goals mean everything right now. It’s go time. Are you wishing this task was easier?
You’re not alone. Recently Salesforce published an eye-opening statistic: 57% of sales reps missed their sales quotas last year. What a huge impact falling short has on salespeople, sales teams, and entire organizations. Jim Rohn, one of America’s most regarded entrepreneurs and motivational authors, offered a different perspective on the problem when he said, “Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.”
The truth is sales is hard. It is not easy to find a prospect, establish rapport, understanding your prospects business and needs, and then pitch your solution against your top competitors. Many people just reading that narrative would walk away. But salespeople are called to the challenge and the best salespeople and best sales organizations want to get better and better at selling. They just need the means in order to do so.
Win / loss analysis will help you sell better. Consider a case study of one of Anova’s clients which demonstrates how a sales team reached its goals by learning what they needed to improve:
Anova’s client was a large, institutional financial service provider, but was experiencing a declining sales win rate. The firm was receiving informal feedback that it was losing in new business situations because its sales efforts were lacking compared to those of its primary competitors. Senior management wanted to establish the legitimacy of this feedback and understand the true depth and contour of any associated sales process problems so it could make the necessary adjustments.
The company utilized Anova’s Win / Loss Analysis program to re-vamp its sales training and to re-engineer its approach to sales presentations. The interview transcripts were used as an ongoing feedback mechanism and coaching tool for sales personnel. Additionally, the company changed how it structured and prepared presentation content by formalizing an internal review process, which included “dry runs” with senior executives, who offered critiques and advice to the company’s sales staff on presentation style, flow and how to respond to tough questions by prospects. Competitive intelligence gained from the program helped the company train its sales force on how to position, package and promote the firm’s capabilities and value proposition against top competitors. Within two years, the frequency with which the company’s sales team and sales approach were identified as a major factor in lost business fell by more than 30 percent.
As the Salesforce studies indicates, too many sales teams are falling short of their ultimate goal. In order to better enable them to hit their targets, organizations should be providing them with the invaluable feedback and coaching made possible by capturing the voice of the prospect in post-decision debriefs.
Win Loss Analysis will not make selling easier, but it will make you better at selling.
Win Loss 2020
This year, people and businesses had to find ways to navigate a crisis of tremendous scope and size. B2B businesses had to make rapid changes to their workplaces and processes to adjust to this new environment. Similar to other initiatives, win / loss programs also require careful oversight to succeed during this unconventional time.
Considering the unprecedented nature of the current crisis, making the right decisions for your win / loss program this year can be a daunting task. This blog is intended to help guide you in considering the impact of current circumstances on your win / loss program, and provide best practices you can utilize to ensure your program provides value for your organization during this time.
Considering the Impact of COVID on Win / Loss Programs
First and foremost, your business should determine if a win / loss program is possible given the current circumstances. As win / loss is closely tied to sales, the volume of deal flow in your company’s pipeline will be a primary factor in making this decision. If significantly fewer deals than normal are making their way through the pipeline, it stands to reason that your company should scale back or even pause the win / loss program as there are fewer opportunities to gather data and act on the program’s findings.
However, you should weigh this consideration against the increased relative importance of each deal. If deal flow has slowed down over the last few months, it is now more important to win the sales engagements that are up for grabs and gathering feedback on the deals that do exist is even more important.
While most industries have felt a negative impact on sales during this time, perhaps your company may be in one of the markets such as eCommerce, telehealth, or cloud services that are experiencing a spike in new business activity. In this case, it would also make sense to scale up your program accordingly.
If you decide that your company stands to benefit from win / loss during this time, you should also consider how your company’s internal resources may affect the program. Many companies have needed to adjust responsibilities for employees, sometimes in conjunction with staff reductions, and the change in workloads could affect your company’s ability to execute a successful win / loss program and drive meaningful changes.
Win / loss programs can take a considerable amount of coordination, particularly if conducted in-house. Does your company or department have the resources to carry out interviews for a win / loss program? Once interviews are completed, does your company have the bandwidth to analyze and act on the program’s findings? Even the best-executed win / loss program will have a severely limited impact if the company cannot act on the findings, and so you want to make sure if you are going to run your program you can devote the appropriate resources to making sure it drives value to your business. Otherwise it is not worth operating.
After looking within your company to determine how the current crisis may affect your win / loss program, you should consider how your company’s clients and former prospects have been impacted. The companies that you are asking for feedback may be experiencing the effects of the current crisis in different ways than you are, depending on their industries and locations. Are your potential contacts primarily in hard-hit industries such as healthcare or transportation, or are they in markets such as SaaS that have less dramatic changes? Will your program seek feedback from contacts in regions currently feeling the full force of the virus, or are your contacts in areas that have largely recovered or fended off the pandemic? If your potential contacts are in regions and industries hit particularly hard by the present crisis, it may be best to scale back or even pause your program until the situation changes. Assuming that your potential contacts are not exclusively in the most impacted regions and markets, running a successful win / loss program with a solid response rate is still achievable.
As companies have adapted to the new realities of everyday work, contacts have become more likely to respond to outreach and participate in win / loss studies. Anova saw a 280% increase in the number of interviews completed from May to June, showcasing that interviews can be completed when research programs are operated in a mindful way.
Adjusting the Goals of your Win / Loss Program
If you decide that moving forward with win / loss is the best path for your company at this time, you should then consider how the current circumstances will affect the goals for your program.
One of the main adjustments that companies needed to make over the last few months was a change towards entirely virtual sales presentations. Although this rapid shift happened to sales teams across industries, only 37% of organizations provided training or best practices regarding virtual selling. Gathering and analyzing win / loss data from these recent months can help determine how well your sales teams have handled this change and if your organization should invest in new training. Additionally, win / loss analysis can help uncover competitive insights such as understanding if competitors are using any tactics or tools to make successful online presentations. Designing your interview guides and surveys to answer these types of questions can help ensure your organization makes informed decisions to stay competitive moving forward.
Another consideration is how buyer priorities have changed since the start of the year. Because organizations now face greater uncertainty about their financial futures, companies now must scrutinize every dollar spent. In the world of sales, this means it has become much more important to demonstrate value and ROI to prospects in a concrete way. This also means that your sales teams are potentially selling into different types of contacts, such as CFOs and finance personnel at your prospect organizations. Has your sales team adequately demonstrated the ROI of your offering to these new types of contacts? Does your organization need to adjust its sales messaging to account for these changes? These types of questions should be kept in mind as your company conducts interviews and analyzes results from 2020 sales engagements.
Best Practices for Win / Loss During this Time
If and when your organization decides to move forward with win / loss, you should take the proper steps to ensure your program becomes a success. One of the most important priorities for your program should be to emphasize empathy with your outreach to contacts this year. According to Anova research about how businesses are adapting to the coronavirus pandemic, 84% of companies adjusted their communications to lead with more empathy than before. This can be particularly important in reaching out to win / loss contacts because you are asking these contacts to lend you their time and energy during a period when both are likely stretched thin. With that in mind, try to be accommodating when reaching out to contacts. Offer shorter phone conversations if they have little time or ask if they would like your organization to reach out again in a few months. These types of accommodations are relatively easy adjustments and can demonstrate that your organization values the contact’s time and feedback.
In addition to adjusting outreach, consider adjusting your surveys and questionnaires to address the current crisis. How are your company’s prospects and clients dealing with the uncertainty of this year? Do these organizations and contacts require more assistance from your company during this time? Asking these types of questions while leading with empathy can show that your organization recognizes the reality of the situation and does not seem tone deaf.
However, if may not be necessary to change your interview guide if feedback is gathered by experienced interviewers over the phone. Conversations over the phone can allow the interviewer to properly contextualize questions, address concerns, and probe for additional information on the fly, meaning that concrete changes to your interview questions may not be necessary. On the other hand, online surveys do not have this same level of flexibility, and therefore could require significant changes to properly address the current climate.
Carrying out a win / loss program during a time of high uncertainty is an intimidating task, especially without a game plan for how to address the needs of the present. However, by taking into account the effects of the crisis on your organization and your potential contacts, you can make the best decisions regarding your win / loss program and put your organization’s program in the best position to succeed.
As the business world grapples with COVID-19, the increase in video conferencing for internal as well as external meetings is trending. Microsoft Teams, just one of the many video conferencing platforms available to businesses, revealed a 200% increase in the number of meeting minutes logged on the application from mid-March to early April. Other platforms like Zoom and WebEx also saw drastic increases in usage with employees unable to go into the office, much less travel to see clients and prospects.
So, what does that mean for salespeople used to sitting across the table from their buyers? It means they will have to adapt to make sure their skills and behaviors translate to the virtual selling world, and that the dreaded, yet all-to-common, technical snafu does not occur when they are talking to their prospects.
To help, Anova has compiled a list of best practices, ranging from technical to behavioral, for sales teams adapting to the world of virtual selling:
Practice and Record Your Practice
Just as you would before going into an in-person meeting, practice your main speaking points and take extra care to rehearse the hand-offs from one speaker to another. This is especially important when you and your co-presenter are not in the same room together (and that pesky mute button always seems to get in the way – see below). When you are practicing, try and record the session so you can come back later to watch the recording. You will be amazed at the little things you pick up that you can improve on watching yourself present.
Use the Video Feature
It’s called video conferencing for a reason! It is important to make a connection with your counterparts on the call and to be able to read each other’s body language. This enables you to respond to facial expressions and pick up more intelligence than just over the phone (Is the person you are talking with engaged and looking at the screen, or is he looking off-screen? Are they nodding and smiling or seem puzzled?). Make sure each member on the call has the video on so it feels like you are all together.
Act the Part
Seeing if people are engaged or not goes both ways, so behave as though you were at the meeting in-person. Turn off all outside distractions / devices and focus on the presentation. It will be very apparent if you are looking bored, tweeting, or otherwise not engaged. It also helps to blur your background if you have distractions that may be behind you (e.g. a door for housemates to walk through, a messy room).
Look the Part
Even though you are in the comfort of your home, take extra care to come across as professional:
Look into the Camera
Look directly at the camera. It may be natural to gaze downward at your own reflection when talking but try to sit back and look directly at the camera as much as you can. To the person watching you, that will come across more like direct eye contact and help you build more of a connection, instead of having them feel like they are talking to the crown of someone’s head or to someone who is constantly looking down.
Test the Audio
Most systems give you the option of using the computer for audio or dialing in using a separate phone. Many people prefer to just use their computer audio, however there are a few downsides to be aware of. Depending on the system and computer you are using, sometimes the microphone can be static-y. Additionally, if for some reason your home Wi-Fi decides to act up and the video freezes, if you are dialed in on your phone you will at least stay connected to the call as opposed to dropping all together. Still, using your phone can result in a delay from what you are saying and what you are showing on the screen. Weigh your options and decide which is the best choice for your call, and if using the computer audio, log into the meeting a few minutes early and make sure your teammates can see and hear you clearly with no delay.
Be Aware of Background Noise
Background noise can come in many forms – dogs barking, children (or adults) yelling, keys typing, or papers rustling. Try to control these as much as you can, such as scheduling calls for when you know is a typically quiet time of day, or if you are using multiple notepads, putting a towel down underneath everything to reduce the sound of all of the papers on your desk. When all else fails, or you are taking notes on your keyboard, be quick to use the mute button. Just be sure (as we see below) to turn it off when it comes time to speak again!
Handle the Mute Button
If there is feedback on the call or you are worried about background noise, politely ask attendees to go on mute if they are not speaking. Give everyone a gentle reminder to make sure they unmute themselves before beginning to talk. Also, it never hurts to hit the mute button and take a second to make sure it turned off before beginning to speak.
Here we are together in a new reality. Now is a time more than ever where we will need to lean on each other. Anova has proudly been helping companies connect thoughtfully and strategically with their prospects, clients, and internal teams for over 16 years now, and in these trying times I and all my teammates at Anova want the readers of this letter to know: we’ve got your back.
Here’s how:
The Real-time Value of Prospect and Client Feedback Research
Anova is here for you. Just in the last few days Anova has had companies reach out to us expressing an increased need to have strategic touchpoints with their own customers. Now, more than ever, win / loss and client satisfaction research are critically valuable for B2B companies.
Anova is Your Expert
We are experts. Across the market research industry, specifically win / loss providers, the most fundamental differentiator is the quality of a company’s output and service. Companies need to choose a research partner they can rely on to provide them with the best results, and with the ever-changing environment, Anova is best equipped to rise to the occasion:
We care. A lot. All of us are in this together and I truly believe each of us has a role to play in helping to overcome these obstacles that are facing us. You can rely on Anova to do our part and be the best partners possible for your organization. We can all survive and thrive together.
Best wishes,
President, Anova Consulting Group
Exploring research programs from different perspectives introduces different ideas and takeaways. Each perspective has its own strategies, talents, and processes whether it be researching win / loss, departed client, or client satisfaction. Consider what happens at the CEO or executive level. How do these things change? The conversation below reveals just that – find out what these programs look like at 10,000 feet about the data – through an interview with Anova’s CEO and Founder, Rich Schroder.
Anova: What draws you to market research?
Rich: A long time ago I learned that gathering feedback and applying it to what I was doing produced a better result. I am incredibly results-driven and I came to transition a defensiveness to the feedback into an acceptance. Feedback, especially delivered in an unbiased, honest way, gives you the edge. It can really impact how you are doing what you are doing and the way you feel about your work.
Anova: How does that apply to win / loss or departed client?
Rich: That edge can be found in any program Anova works on for our clients. It is what links them all – whether a client is learning how to close more business through a win / loss program or find out how to retain more clients by learning from those that have already left for a competitor or even how to really listen to their clients through a comprehensive client satisfaction program. The feedback is rich, honest, specific, and actionable. If an organization wants to understand themselves better and really commit to seeing improvements, any of these programs work.
Anova: Can you give an example of how an executive can experience the material value of this kind of feedback? In other words, can it be tied back to hard dollars?
Rich: Yes, we have learned some key findings from our clients that I think answer your question. First, an executive is most likely tracking and revisiting the cost of new sales. In other words, what does it cost for an organization to move a prospect through the presales, sales and onboarding process to a new client? This is an important number. One of Anova’s clients shared with us that it took them three years to break even on the cost of a single piece of new business. We also know from years of research that 36% of new clients experience issues that threaten their overall satisfaction – a situation where that new client could depart before that break even happens. Win / loss research announces these early issues to organizations allowing them to respond in a timely manner and secure their satisfaction. The cost of any one of Anova’s programs would pay itself back if one client was saved from departing.
Anova: Does Anova run these programs on its own business?
Rich: Absolutely. We follow the same principles we share with prospects and clients. We totally understand what it takes to get a program administered and supported as well as how to communicate and learn from the feedback. We are constantly learning from our new sales situations and from our client relationships – current and departed. It is invaluable information and hopefully shows we are committed to learning and improving.
Anova: If an organization had budget for one research program, which one would be the most impactful?
Rich: That’s a great problem to have. Securing budget is a big step for any organization moving forward with market research. My answer is that it really depends on what the organization wants to learn more about. If there have been more departing clients than typical, running a departed client program would help an organization learn what happened and when during those decisions – the research would help that firm be in the know for its existing clients and help them retain them better. If the organization has new service folks or new products in the field with existing clients, a client satisfaction program would help an organization assess their success or challenges and identify their top areas of loyalty. And finally, if an organization wanted to understand its competition better or improve its win rate, I would recommend a win / loss program 100%. As a CEO, I use all three and cannot imagine making decisions for my company, employees, and clients without them.
Anova: What makes Anova stand out from its owns competitors?
Rich: That’s easy. Our people and our experience. Those are the two keys to our success together. We work for amazing clients and we are continually committing to delivering the best experience and research to our relationships. Anova would not be the same firm without our team and the mountain of experience they bring to work every day.
Gone are the days of pushing technology initiatives out to a future date or worse yet, off completely. It’s all about now — what’s happening now (and not happening) in the technology world and how businesses can amplify their processes and deliverables with those technologies. In fact, technology is a key responsibility of every modern-time business.
This is an invitation from our team to yours. Get to know what technology means at Anova and how that connects you to – our prospect, our client, or someone on a quest to learn more about our research programs one step at a time – through an interview with Anova’s tech lead, Jamie Zielinski.
Anova: It is one thing to use technology, but you help build and deploy it. What do you like about technology?
Jamie: What I love about technology is that it is constantly changing. I know that is probably frustrating for most people and certainly a huge responsibility for companies to keep up with, but I love it. It keeps me on my toes, and every day I learn something new. There is a constant evolution happening and technologies are always improving for the better. I love discovering or helping to develop technology that can make our lives easier and our business run more efficiently. That is beyond satisfying.
Anova: How has technology evolved at Anova over the past few years?
Jamie: Technology has helped make Anova more efficient. Years ago, we had many manual processes in place. We knew we needed to streamline our procedures, especially as we grew. We went into a major discovery phase. We thought through our needs as a business as well as through our clients’ needs. That process peaked with the development and launch of Anova’s own proprietary system named Viewpoint. We learned a ton about cloud systems, cybersecurity, frameworks, coding and dashboard creation along the way. Today, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the client experience whether that be modernizing the look and feel of Viewpoint, creating new competitive analysis reports, or updating the code and framework to the latest and greatest versions available.
We are fortunate to work with some talented programmers who turn our ideas into reality. I am excited to continue to work with them to evolve our technology to not only please our clients but also to help our analysts synthesize data even quicker to continue to provide actionable feedback in real-time.
Anova: You mention Viewpoint, can you share more about this technology?
Jamie: Absolutely. Viewpoint is the backbone technology of what we do. The technology meets internal and external needs. It stores, manages, and processes all the data Anova uses for its research. Whether we are conducting win/loss, departed client or client satisfaction projects for a client, we use Viewpoint for every step along the way.
Viewpoint is our interview scheduling system, our survey creation tool, and the database where all of our interview responses are stored. We initially created the system for an internal view of our client programs and expanded it to have an external, client-facing component. We launched myView – the client dashboard which allows our clients to see both quantitative and qualitative data in real-time. We have expanded the reporting on a continual basis, and clients are able to access benchmarking results, competitive intelligence reporting, strengths and weaknesses aggregation, client satisfaction scores, data exports, and much more.
Anova: What are some of your personal favorite apps or services?
Jamie: There are so many! Life is beyond easy nowadays. Within the last week, I have pre-ordered every morning coffee, had my groceries delivered, paid for my parking, tracked my steps, listened to podcasts, and read a book all via apps on my phone. I have an app for everything! But my hands down favorite is Instagram, and it has been for a long time. I enjoy photography and so many contributors take amazing travel and animals photos. I have a weakness for both. It’s great to have a resource you can turn to that instantly puts a smile on your face and brightens your day.
It’s August now – the dog days of summer. Don’t let your sales be beat by the heat. Even though lots of people are on vacation, the office may be quieter, and productivity slower, there is no better time than now to prep for a strong year-end push.
Between now and Labor Day, you have the opportunity to get out ahead of everyone else. Prep. Review. Learn. And come September 5th, you’ll have a clear path for what’s coming over the final four months of the year.
Weed the Garden
Does your pipeline need some weeding? Most likely it does. Spend time reviewing your pipeline and really qualify your opportunities. Who are the prospects that you have the best chance of closing by year-end? Which prospects have been carried quarter-over-quarter with little progression? And finally, which prospects are taking resources, but are not real opportunities at all? By knowing your real opportunities and letting go of those that are dragging you down, you will elevate your sales activity these final months of the year and give yourself more power to connect with your true buyers.
Preparation, Preparation, Preparation
Now that you know your best qualified prospects, ask yourself, “What can I do now while it is quiet to get ready for action in September?” Being proactive can be the key to getting ahead of the competition during a busy sales season. Know who you are going to reach out to and when, and put that information in your calendar including specific details about your outreach. If you prepare for those communications now, you will be freed up from having to do it next month or even later. Draft the email and hit “save.” You’ll be ready to hit “send” next month.
Back to School
The dog days of summer are great days for you to learn. Maybe your company launched a new service model or product enhancement that you need to better understand. Perhaps there is new marketing material that you simply have not had time to embrace yet and learn. Sales training is a great motivator because its sole purpose is to help you sell and service better than you have been. Going into the final months of the year is an opportune time to get motivated and brush up on skills that could use some bettering.
Don’t Forget Upsells
If you have a service team or account managers in your organization managing your prospects-now-turned-clients, they could be less busy than usual as well. Reach out to them and see what’s happening with those clients. Maybe there are upsell or cross-sell opportunities you can identify together to explore in Q4. Developing collaborative relationships with those servicing and managing existing clients can lead to happier customers, more stable reoccurring revenue, and ongoing upsell opportunities.
Envision December 2019
Where do you want to be at the end of this year? Take the time now to envision what your sales success will be at year end. What do you need to do between now and then to get there? It is not too soon to be thinking of these things. In fact, these quiet, hot days of summer offer the greatest space for you to envision, prep, and focus on your end game.
All Anova research programs culminate in a key phase of the client engagement: the presentation. Whether it be an interim program report or a full aggregate presentation at the program’s completion, the delivering of feedback, trends, and findings is a marque moment in the relationship between Anova and its clients. Learn about how Anova approaches these presentations, and positions itself as a strategic partner to clients, in a conversation with Zach Golden, Consultant at Anova:
Anova: Can you share more about moving from a vendor to a partner? How does that happen?
Zach: Being a partner with our client is a critical part of Anova’s engagement philosophy. We want to be more than a research vendor to our clients, no matter what program is being administered or how long we’ve been engaged. We know our clients expect a lot out of us, and we do everything in our power to meet and exceed those expectations. In our experience, when we can do that, the relationship becomes more of a two-way street where Anova and the client are mutually committed to the program’s success.
Anova: How often do clients review aggregate win / loss findings?
Zach: It really depends on the business and the nature of the program. For some clients, win / loss is used as a diagnostic tool. For example, maybe a new head of sales wants 30 or 40 interviews completed to understand prospect perceptions and to gauge how well the sales team they inherited is performing before changing anything. In a case like that, speed to value is critical, and so it makes more sense to focus on hitting that final number of interviews before analyzing any aggregate results. For clients who have ongoing programs, we’ve found that clients usually get the most value from having ongoing readouts with key personnel at the managerial level either monthly or quarterly, and then bringing in Anova to present to executives twice a year.
Anova: What can an executive expect from an Anova presentation?
Zach: An Anova presentation provides value in a few different ways. First and foremost, we are delivering unfiltered prospect perceptions back to the client. The presentation will give an overview of what prospects are saying on an open-ended basis about the client, such as what did they perceive to be our client’s strengths, and where our clients need to improve. But we don’t just want to dump data at our client’s door. We spend a lot of time crafting a narrative of why our clients are winning and losing, and will focus the remainder of the presentation on telling that story– diving deeper into the areas that are driving prospect decisions, and making sure our clients a) understand the data and b) know what the path forward is to acting on the feedback.
Anova: How do you help clients turn the feedback into action?
Zach: A couple of different things come to mind. Some clients look for us to make recommendations, and we do our best to point out where they need to invest more resources based on what the feedback is, or how the client compares to our benchmark. Other clients view us as a forcing function for senior leadership teams to review data and make strategic plans. The read-out of win / loss findings is the perfect opportunity for executives to debate what areas of the business need improvement to be more competitive.
No matter which way the clients sees us, we are there to be strategic partners, to know their business to the best of our ability, and to understand how the win / loss results apply to the business moving forward. Having data is one thing, but leveraging that data to drive change and improve strategy is where the real value is realized. We care about that part a lot.
Anova: Can you give me an example of this?
Zach: This is good timing! Earlier this week our team was on-site at a client’s office in New York. There were some client team members in the room with us, and a few others on the phone following on their screens. As a group we spent 90 minutes engaging in conversation, but only about 20 or 30 minutes of that was Anova presenting. We would introduce a key finding, and the client would discuss and debate. Our role was less as a presenter and more of a mediator, directing the conversation to different topics and bringing in relevant data to help the executives have a more informed dialogue when needed. It was a great example of clients getting value from having a discussion of where to prioritize resources in the organization with complete reassurance, because we were providing independent, third-party data collected in our research. Our client in this case trusted we knew the results and the program’s goals, and we were able to partner with them in those discussions.
In the most recent issue of The Pragmatic Magazine, published by The Pragmatic Institute, Anova Engagement Manager Zach Golden authored an article providing guidance for organizations just beginning to beginning a win / loss program. Below is an excerpt from the article:
Do: Institutionalize the research. Getting buy-in throughout the organization won’t happen overnight. Share program goals up front to establish realistic expectations. Be sure to note that short-term goals are to figure out how to run a program (see above operational goals), while long-term goals include using the aggregate data for strategic planning. Also, be sure to communicate to your organization that the program is meant to be a learning and coaching tool, and there’s no reason to be opposed to the feedback. Make it clear that the program isn’t meant to point out people’s mistakes. Be thoughtful about who accesses the initial interviews and encourage those people to read the transcripts with open minds. As more interviews are completed, people will become more accustomed to the research and begin to want more.
Don’t: Expect Immediate Results. Expecting win/loss research to immediately deliver transformational insights is a simple way to put unnecessary pressure on the program. The early stages of a win/loss program are about gaining operational efficiencies and trusting that the value of the research will be revealed as time goes on and more feedback is captured. A significant part of win/loss value comes from seeing how results change and improve over time.
To read the full article, click here and to read the whole magazine for even more insights on a wider range of topics click here.
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