Eight Reasons Why a Win-Loss Analysis is Important to You

Eight reasons why a win-loss analysis is important to you
We ask why win-loss analysis in Competitive Intelligence is an important question. It’s often the first real taste of the power of Competitive Intelligence. An independently commissioned win-loss analysis programme provides nuanced, precise, and instantly actionable insights. Not from searching Google or a database but from those who know you best. The prospects who have gone through your customer journey. Those who have bought from you or those who went elsewhere. The following are eight reasons why a win-loss analysis is important to you.

What is win-loss?
Win-loss analysis is a process of identifying why you win, why you lose, why customers churn, and why customers decide not to decide at all. Win-loss analysis improves sales, marketing, product development, and competitive strategy.

The win-loss analysis is also referred to as win-loss, sales win-loss, win/loss, or lost analysis.

1. Actionable
You are talking to real customers and those who dared to go elsewhere. You are engaging with buyers. Conversations that precisely pinpoint what went wrong or right in a sales deal. Using Sherlock win-loss means you have more chance of receiving honest feedback. Use your own sales team, and you run the risk of not getting uncensored feedback. Most people are decent, and they dont like confrontation. So the buyer may not want to be too critical in front of the person they rejected. Salespeople will hardly highlight the real problems. Especially if it’s close to home. It’s only natural that they avoid any insight that will come back and bite them.

2. The big picture
Updating CRM after sales calls won’t capture an accurate picture of performance. Win-loss makes the big picture of sales performance much clearer. Inturn turning it into a qualitative and independent third-party interview.

Trusted Intelligence from genuine buyers shines a light on the whole customer journey. Win-loss is the gold medal of insights. It helps you understand where your business really is. The worts and all.

3. Sales best-practice updates
Win-loss helps develop a professional happy sales environment. It’s never should be a blame game. Instead, Win-loss should encourage and highlight outstanding sales performance. And recognising things can be improved and showing what best in class looks like.

4. Market trends isolation
Win-loss has a consistent ability to show you valuable market trends. Collect sufficient data across many interviews and isolate trends in the market. Win-loss ensures that the senior management team can only be better informed. And make better strategic decisions, refocus sales training and improve the customer journey. Improve the product, your “go to market” strategy and ultimately increase your bottom-line.

5. Spread the Word to get buy-in
Insights from any win-loss exercise are usually fascinating and occasionally astonishing but always interesting and actionable. These insights and actions can be game-changing and, if not shared throughout your business and acted on, a complete waste of time.

Win-loss program insight is of interest to your whole organisation. It will help create positive change throughout your team. From sales, product, and marketing to senior management.

6. Increase sales and happy customers
The win-loss insight gained will turn full circle by affecting your customers. The more insight, the more confidence you will have to create revenue. And beat your competitors.

7. Reviews
Buyer insights from win-loss must play a crucial part in your internal meetings. The insight will also assist with presentations, quarterly reviews and strategy away days. Before the slap on the back or the “must do better” presentation, buyer insights will provide you with the why. The why you are doing so well? Or why sales are not hitting the figures?

8. Sales training
Insights isolated from win-loss provide excellent resources for developing your sales training. Learn from what your customers and prospects think about how you sell your offering.

Eight reasons why a Win-loss analysis is important to you
We discussed eight reasons why a win-loss analysis is important to you. Including the power of win-loss has on sales training, customer journey and success. But the fact win-loss provides you with big picture insight. Above all, it gives you those nuanced, precise, and actionable insights. And from those who have brought from you or those who went elsewhere.

A Win-Loss analysis programme done well can have a massive effect on your business. The senior management is going to see the impact. Your business will become an intelligence machine. Intelligence, your competitors, can’t have. The benefits that will last for years. This activity can only help the career of the person who thought win-loss could be good for the business.

Art by James Orr