Win / Loss Analysis is a market research practice that focuses on understanding a company’s go-to-market approach from the prospect’s perspective. A Win / Loss program usually entails conducting in-depth telephone interviews with new clients or lost prospects. The objective of the Win / Loss interview is to gather information about the prospect’s business needs, evaluation process, decision criteria, and perceptions of the competitive landscape. Findings from Win / Loss interviews are then synthesized in order to facilitate continuous improvement across an organization.
A Win / Loss Analysis program can help your organization acquire valuable perspectives on why your prospects buy or reject your products and services; how your company is perceived relative to your competitors; capturing sales performance metrics and measuring the effectiveness of your go-to-market approach. The reality is that 60% of the time salespeople do not have a complete and accurate understanding of why they lost a deal. A Win / Loss Analysis program helps to close that gap.
Executive level support of the program is imperative for its success. Without the active backing of senior management, and particularly sales leadership, your win / loss analysis program may produce sub-optimal results. In building executive support, advocates of such a project must clearly and concisely present a compelling cost-benefit analysis – one that accentuates that Win / Loss Research can have a decidedly positive impact across nearly every functional area, ranging from improved sales performance metrics to crisper marketing, more clearly articulated pricing, and improved differentiation and customer success / client service delivery.. Another key success factor in availability and accuracy of CRM data. To put it simply, Anova will need accurate contact information for decision-maker level contacts in order to conduct Win / Loss interviews.
A Win / Loss Analysis program will help you:
Typically a Win / Loss Analysis program runs on an ongoing annual basis, but we can customize the timeframe to your needs (e.g., a one quarter or six month pilot program).
In addition to Win / Loss Analysis, Anova Consulting Group regularly conducts Client Satisfaction and Loyalty Studies, Customer Churn Analysis, Advisor / Consultant / Intermediary / Channel Perception Analysis, and Client Onboarding / Implementation Analysis.
Anova focuses on sophisticated B2B industries with complex sales and service requirements. Our largest practice areas are enterprise technology / SaaS, financial services, professional / business services, and healthcare.
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Anova has an elite team of Executive Interviewers specialized for each industry based on their tenured backgrounds. Our Executive Interviewers are familiarized with each client’s specific study needs and understand the value of a prospect’s time to complete an interview. Anova’s experienced analysts then synthesize the information to report overall trends, as well as trends within specific segments of those interviewed.
While our team is U.S.-based, Anova Consulting Group has global clients and interviewing capabilities. Anova is able to accommodate all geographic regions and local languages.
The client provides the names of the individuals directly involved in the decision-making process to be interviewed by Anova’s Executive Interviewers. Depending on the client and situation, Anova can either conduct a single Win / Loss interview for a given situation or in some instances conduct separate interviews with different committee members or influencers in order to gain a well-rounded view of the situation.
Anova Win / Loss Research has three key deliverables: the interview transcripts themselves, the myView dashboard, which contains keyword search, raw data export, and real-time aggregate trend analysis, and periodic executive readouts. These executive readouts contain an in-depth analysis of the qualitative and quantitative program data. Typical reports include an executive summary of findings, segmentation by relevant aspects (e.g., potential deal size, demographic variables), peer benchmarking, obtained both directly from the study as well as from other relevant Anova client studies, and key takeaways.
An Anova Win / Loss Analysis client typically nominates a program owner to spearhead data collection and disseminate insights from the research across the organization. Most clients also have a steering committee of executive stakeholders representing the different business functions that benefit from Win / Loss Analysis. Examples of functions who are beneficiaries of Win / Loss interviews are sales, sales operations, sales enablement, sales training, product marketing, product management, pricing, competitive intelligence, and C-suite leadership.
Successful Win / Loss programs need executive buy-in and openness to receiving and acting upon feedback, not all of which will be positive. Without visible support and appropriate messaging from executive stakeholders, Win / Loss Analysis programs can face executional obstacles and a slower path to improvement.
Another key success factor in availability and accuracy of CRM data. To put it simply, Anova will need accurate contact information for decision-maker level contacts in order to conduct win / loss interviews.
Often the results of the Win / Loss studies are surprising to clients. Implementing an internal discussion and an action plan after the study has been conducted will ensure that you make most of the analysis. Click here for examples of how clients have turned prospect feedback into positive results.
In addition to better understanding and quantifying your firm’s strengths and areas for improvement, Anova provides benchmarking analysis, allowing for direct insight into your competition from prospects’ points of view.
Though it is true that understanding the reasons for losses is important to developing a winning strategy, it is equally important to understand the reasons for winning or retaining business. Is it a matter of inconsistent sales execution, or is there something fundamentally different about the prospect or opportunity? What particularly resonated with the client/prospect that you won versus fell short with the client/prospect that you lost (i.e., what are some insights that your sales team can learn from)? Feedback from your newest clients can provide a template for success, be a rich source of competitive intelligence, and provide an early-warning signal for potential future retention or reference-ability obstacles.
Win / Loss Research from a position of independence and objectivity is a powerful tool for salespeople and sales leaders. Win / Loss interviews can be used as coaching tools for individual sales reps. Program level data can be used to identify and share best practices, such as successful sales tactics and messaging around differentiation and value proposition articulation. Win / Loss data is also useful for maintaining competitor battle cards with the freshest possible examples from the field. When Win / Loss Analysis is conducted with discipline and rigor, clients can see the improvement in their sales performance metrics against Anova’s proprietary industry benchmarks.
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