How AuditBoard Uses Win-Loss Data to Drive Growth and Customer Obsession
AuditBoard partnered with Clozd to supplement CRM data with detailed win-loss interviews, uncovering that their main losses stemmed from failing to articulate ROI, which led to cross-functional alignment around an ROI-focused value framework, resulting in a 5% increase in win rates and fostering a company-wide culture of customer obsession and continuous sales improvement.
AuditBoard uses win-loss data to understand why they’re losing—so they can turn things around
Summary
Key takeaways:
- AuditBoard sought deeper insights into why and how they were losing deals, aiming to use that data to drive business change. By partnering with Clozd, they gained actionable data, achieved cross-functional alignment, and saw a 5% increase in win rate after a year of disciplined work and sales team buy-in.
- CRM Data Lacks Context: AuditBoard used Clozd interviews to discover that their inability to articulate ROI was the true root cause behind "no decision" losses, a critical insight their CRM missed.
- Cross-Functional Action Drives Win Rates: Aligning sales and marketing around a new ROI-centric value framework based on buyer feedback increased a struggling product's win rate by over five percentage points.
- Democratized Insights Build Customer Obsession: Company-wide access to objective win-loss data fostered a culture of continuous sales improvement and customer obsession.
Your CRM tells you what is happening—win-loss data tells you why
AuditBoard's CRM data revealed that most losses were due to "no decision" rather than to a competitor. However, the CRM did not explain why these losses occurred.
Win-loss data from Clozd provided direct buyer feedback, helping AuditBoard pinpoint the exact reasons for lost business. This data is now used broadly to drive action throughout the organization.
"Getting the data is not success. Success is when that data is used to make decisions, when it’s driving strategy—and not just one-time strategy, but on a cadence of strategic changes and influences where it’s influencing different functions. When it’s impacting decisions at a senior level and also at an organic, team level. That’s been the goal, and we’ve had some really good success there.”
AuditBoard used CRM data as a starting point, then leveraged Clozd's win-loss data to uncover deeper insights for strategic planning.
"I didn’t usually think that you could get great data out of your CRM, but we’ve been able to. We’ve been able to see—directionally—what’s driving win-loss from our CRM and use that to complement Clozd, which gave our executive team confidence in how we’re using that data together."
The Clozd data revealed that AuditBoard was losing because sales and marketing teams were failing to articulate value and ROI to prospects’ decision-makers. Two specific products were identified as struggling the most.
“Once we identified those two products, we dug deeper to really understand what was driving these results. Where we were struggling to get to the decision-maker and where we were struggling to articulate compelling value to create urgency in the sales process.”
Turning feedback into action
Based on win-loss data, AuditBoard asked, "What do we need to do in sales? What do we need to do in marketing?" They committed to significant cross-functional changes:
- Launched a value framework, focusing sales kick-off meetings on it.
- Created a playbook and trained the sales team for value-based conversations.
- Hired an analyst to conduct value studies and ROI assessments for clients.
- Changed marketing materials to focus on value metrics.
- Ensured customer stories highlighted value and ROI metrics.
“There was no silver bullet. It was all hands on deck for multiple quarters and multiple initiatives—testing, learning, filling product gaps. We kept at it for nearly a year.”
By the end of the year, AuditBoard saw a significant increase in win rate, especially for the previously struggling product, which had its best quarter ever and a win rate increase of more than five percentage points.
"By Q4, it had become the reason we were winning. So it went from being a weakness to a strength. Now, we understand that’s just one quarter of data, but directionally we could see it. We were getting better at that thing, it was showing up in our results, and Clozd was helping us show the progress against it."
Sharing data broadly & fueling customer obsession
Win-loss analysis at AuditBoard started as a top-down initiative but quickly evolved to include a strong bottom-up element. Initially cautious, AuditBoard soon provided broad access to win-loss data, which different teams used in various ways.
"We got as many people into the platform as we could. And it started to change the way people think about winning the deal at a granular level. There’s a lot of organic, bottom-up initiatives that are happening, which is a good thing for us. It’s becoming part of our DNA, and it’s helping us become more customer-centric. One of our company values is being customer obsessed. If you think about it, win-loss data is the ultimate customer-obsession metric. When you’re making a decision, it doesn’t matter what you think; it matters what our customers say."
AuditBoard's culture of trust, accountability, and low ego enabled this open approach. Sales reps were trusted to use honest feedback to improve, benefiting both the company and themselves.
“The sales leadership really wanted access. They were like, ‘Hey, everybody should be seeing this.’ They didn’t want to inhibit this organic movement toward using Clozd. I didn’t want to get in the way.”
AuditBoard's culture is described as low ego and highly data-driven, with a strong ethical focus on doing what’s right for the customer. This openness to feedback and humility supports continuous improvement.
"Our culture is very low ego, high propensity for data. We want to know why we’re having success and why, in other cases, we’re coming up short. There’s also a degree of ethics where we want to do what’s right for the customer, so if the customer tells you you’re wrong, there’s less fear. We’re not worried about it, because our culture helps us be a little more humble. Now, I’m not saying that there’s nothing wrong—we certainly have our own unique problems. But these elements of our culture certainly help.”
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