A Framework for Creating the Right Win-Loss Analysis Questions
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Win-Loss Analysis Questions Framework with 30+ Sample Questions
3 min read
Andrew Peterson
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- Principle 1: Start with broad, open-ended win-loss interview questions to let the buyer tell their story.
- Principle 2: Determine core topics and questions to cover in every interview.
- Principle 3: Formulate additional drill-down questions for specific scenarios.
- Principle 4: Avoid closed-ended interview questions.
- Principle 5: Adapt on the fly.
- Win-Loss Survey Questions: When and How to Use Them
- Getting Started With Win-Loss Analysis
Good question design is a crucial ingredient to any successful win-loss analysis program. In this post, we explore basic principles for conducting effective win-loss interviews, the best win-loss analysis question design methodology, and sample questions to help you get started.
When executed well, a win-loss analysis interview is the ideal method for determining why you won or lost a specific sales opportunity. As you track insights across a large sample of interviews, you’ll uncover specific ways to improve your solution and win more.
This guide covers both the interview questions you'll ask live and the survey questions you can use to complement them at scale.
For a free, comprehensive guide to win-loss analysis click here.
Principle 1: Start with broad, open-ended win-loss interview questions to let the buyer tell their story.
Every buyer’s use case and evaluation experience is unique in some way. For that reason, you should start your buyer interview with broad, open-ended questions that encourage them to tell their unique story. This general context should then influence the nature and order of interview questions you ask during the rest of the conversation.
Consider starting your win-loss interview with questions like:
- What prompted you to evaluate ________ solutions at this time?
- How did you first learn about _________?
- How did you structure and run your evaluation?
- What was your final decision?
- Why was that the right decision for your business?
Principle 2: Determine core topics and questions to cover in every interview.
Next, you’ll want to leverage the momentum and learnings from the introductory questions to dive deeper. Determine several core topic areas that you wish to probe about (i.e., solution requirements, pricing, competitive landscape, sales experience, etc.). Develop a few open-ended questions for each topic area. Here are some common examples of topic areas and win-loss interview questions:
Product or Solution
- What specific requirements did the product/solution need to meet?
- Which capabilities were most important to you?
- What were your impressions of ________’s product/solution?
- What were its most significant strengths? Weaknesses?
Sales Experience
- What was it like working with ________’s sales team?
- What did they do well? Poorly?
- How did the experience compare to working with other vendors?
- How did the sales experience impact your final decision?
Pricing & Packaging
- How did you react to ________’s initial pricing quote/proposal?
- How did ________’s price compare to that of other vendors?
- Did ________’s pricing model align with your needs and expectations?
- What methods did you use to determine the value or potential ROI of a solution like this?
Competitive Landscape
- What other vendors did you include in your evaluation?
- In what ways did _______ excel in comparison to the other vendors?
- In what ways did _______ fall short compared to the other vendors?
- Win: Which vendor offered the strongest alternative?
- Loss: Which vendor did you choose? Why?
- How clear was it to you what made us different from the other options?
- Did your perception of our brand change between the start and end of the evaluation?
Buying Committee & Stakeholders
- Who was involved in the final decision, and what role did each person play?
- Did all stakeholders agree on the outcome, or was there internal disagreement?
Implementation & Onboarding Expectations
- What did you expect the first 30-90 days after signing to look like?
- What concerns, if any, did you have about getting up and running?
- What would have made you more confident in a smooth rollout?
Decision Timeline
- What internal or external factors sped up or slowed down your timeline?
- Was there a specific event that triggered the final decision?
- Looking back, was the timeline realistic for a decision this size?
Principle 3: Formulate additional drill-down questions for specific scenarios.
To ensure success, spend time preparing additional win-loss questions that will help you dig deeper in specific scenarios. For example, if your company sells marketing software, you have probably seen how vital the software’s ability to integrate with other platforms is to some buyers. You should develop targeted questions to ask whenever a buyer mentions integrations as a critical feature in their decision. Avoid asking a question like, “Are integrations important to you?” Instead, ask an open-ended question like, “What are the most important integrations to you and why?”
Principle 4: Avoid closed-ended interview questions.
Throughout the interview, make sure that the majority of your questions are open-ended. Our favorite win-loss interview questions are what and why questions. They tend to introduce less bias and keep the interview conversational.
Avoid asking quantitative, scale-based questions (i.e., On a scale of 1-5, how helpful was our sales team?). These questions are time-consuming because they require lengthy explanations to clarify the rating scale, and interviewees get confused easily. Quantitative questions also distract from the ultimate goal of hearing the buyer’s full story. Preserve as much time as possible for qualitative discovery. If there are quantitative questions that you need to ask, for trending or benchmarking purposes, ask them after the interview using a short survey.
Principle 5: Adapt on the fly.
The most important principle for an effective win-loss interview is adaptation. As you listen to the unique story of each buyer, adapt your questions according to their responses. Skip irrelevant topics and questions. Spend extra time probing in areas that were particularly influential for them. Go out of order. An effective win-loss interview is conversational and adaptive. Avoid conducting a rigid, survey-like interview. Simply put, have a conversation that reveals the real reason you won or lost the deal.
For example, if an interviewee mentions a specific product gap that influenced their decision, pivot to questions about that product capability. Ask more in-depth follow-up questions, right then, to uncover why that capability was necessary for their use case and what the ideal solution would offer.
Win-Loss Survey Questions: When and How to Use Them
Interviews are where you'll get the richest qualitative insight, but they don't scale to every deal, and they're not built for tracking trends over time. That's where a short, structured win-loss survey comes in — not as a replacement for the interview, but as a complement to it.
When a survey makes sense:
- As a lightweight follow-up sent after every closed deal, to capture signal on opportunities you can't interview
- For benchmarking and trending specific metrics quarter over quarter
- To quantify themes that emerged qualitatively across many interviews (e.g., confirming how widespread a specific objection really is)
Unlike interview questions, survey questions can and should include some closed-ended, scaled items, since the goal here is measurement, not storytelling. Keep the survey short (5-10 questions) and focused.
Sample win-loss survey questions:
- On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your overall experience with our sales team?
- How would you rate our product/solution compared to the vendor you ultimately chose? (Much worse / Somewhat worse / About the same / Somewhat better / Much better)
- How likely are you to consider us again in the future? (1-10)
- Which factor had the greatest influence on your final decision? (Price / Product fit / Sales experience / Vendor reputation / Other)
- How would you rate the clarity of our pricing? (1-5)
- Did you feel we understood your business needs? (Yes / Somewhat / No)
- How likely are you to recommend us to a peer, even though you didn't move forward? (1-10)
A good rule of thumb: if a question requires a rating, it belongs in the survey. If it requires a story, it belongs in the interview.
Getting Started With Win-Loss Analysis
During each win-loss interview, listen actively to the buyer’s story and then adapt your line of questioning.
As one last tip, we suggest not doing your first win-loss interview with an actual buyer. It may help to do a couple of practice sessions with people internally that have a good sense of how a buyer might answer some of your questions.
For more information about win-loss analysis, explore these additional resources:
Clozd’s Definitive Guide to Win-Loss Analysis
How to Conduct Win-Loss Interviews: A Complete Guide
Webinar: How to Conduct an Effective Win-Loss Interview
Workflows by Clozd from Clozd on Vimeo
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