Four Ways To Level Up Your Win-Loss Analysis Program
The article outlines four strategies to enhance win-loss analysis programs, emphasizing improving data quality by prioritizing unbiased buyer feedback collected through adaptive third-party interviews, expanding pipeline coverage to include feedback from every closed deal rather than just statistically significant samples, and thereby enabling deeper insights across all business segments for more impactful organizational improvements.
Together, Clozd and Pragmatic Institute surveyed hundreds of B2B companies on the current state of win-loss analysis and found that 79% were already doing some sort of win-loss analysis.
With a large majority of companies investing in win-loss analysis, the question becomes: how can you level up your current program to drive a more significant impact for your organization?
Andrew Peterson, co-founder of Clozd, gives four ways you can improve your win-loss analysis program.
1. Level Up Your Data Quality
The value of win-loss analysis comes from the quality of your data—and the highest quality data comes from buyer/customer feedback rather than internal sources. Companies often rely heavily on internal feedback sources, which can be useful but only provide one perspective and incomplete answers about why you win and lose.
To promote candor and minimize bias when asking for feedback, involve a third party for feedback collection. Ensure your feedback approach is adaptive and probing—not scripted. Being flexible in your interviews will allow you to receive better, more detailed feedback.
2. Level Up Your Pipeline Coverage
Many win-loss analysis programs start by covering one segment of the business, one region, or one product line. However, the best approach is to have your win-loss program cover as much pipeline as possible. The more feedback you receive, the better results you’ll get. Every closed won or lost deal should be surveyed to get the best data. For example, Delta Airlines tries to capture feedback from every passenger after every flight to drill down on their dataset and see where they can improve.
If you only collect feedback to hit a “statistically significant” number, you miss the opportunity to drill down into specific segments, product lines, or regions to see what areas need improvement. The best way to do this is to interview as many closed opportunities as possible, then survey the rest. The goal is to make sure you don’t leave any buyer untouched without an invitation to provide feedback. From there, you can augment buyer feedback with internal data (CRM, sales reps).
3. Level Up Your Speed to Insight
Set up your win-loss analysis program so you invite feedback immediately after a deal is closed. This will increase the quality of insight as well as your participation rates. Automate the invitations by integrating with your CRM. Alert stakeholders immediately when feedback is received. Key stakeholders will be more interested in feedback from recently closed deals, and it’s easier to make timely and relevant changes.
4. Level Up Stakeholder Engagement
It can be difficult to receive feedback that contradicts initial go-to-market, product, or pricing strategy. If you receive buyer feedback like that, it’s essential to have your c-suite on board to help push through necessary changes. Culture starts at the top. If your organization can culturally embrace transparency, you can all take the necessary action to improve where needed.
Leverage technology that can help you with widespread sharing of win-loss data in real-time, organization-wide. Set up your program with tools so that your data can be available to everyone, in every department. That will enable them to have the right data points to make the best business decisions for each specific organization and the company.
Click here to learn how you can level up your win-loss analysis program.
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