A week ago I delivered an IntelCollab webinar on win loss analysis, and have now posted my win loss analysis slides on my Slideshare account. At the conclusion we had time for a goodly number of questions, which I have recapped below. For those who are unfamiliar with win loss analysis, it is the process of interviewing customers and non customers, usually over the telephone, as to why they chose to do business with you or another service provider. You tally up the results of these telephone interviews, and provide quantitative and qualitative analysis based on what you learned from the interviews. It is my favorite tactical competitive intelligence practice since you learn so much from these short interviews, much of which you can take action on almost immediately.
How do you validate that you are talking to the right person, the decision-maker for the win loss interview? I usually get the right connection at the customer’s company from the company’s sales force, who usually knows the decision-maker. If I am not talking to the right person, I can usually tell. They are uncertain of how to answer my questions, and they are happy to tell me who the right person is, on the rare occasion when that happens. Sometimes the decision-maker has left the company. Those are some of my favorite win loss interviews since their replacement must live with another person’s decision, which perhaps might have been different had they been the decision-maker.
I am just starting a win loss process: are there some tips you might share about how to set it up? First I find out what Sales is already doing, and build off of it. Many sales forces do some abbreviated form of win loss through automated systems like Salesforce.com. You will save yourself a lot of time by working with Sales. Note Sales’ culture: how responsive will they be to this win loss interview process? Will they feel threatened? How will you sell them on the benefits? Usually they will win more deals armed with better knowledge about why customers buy or don’t. That usually works. They also need to clearly understand that you are working with them, not behind them. They are not going to lose their job based on what you uncover. You are not going to undermine any customer relationships they have developed. You are another customer touch point, and most customers are happy to participate. On occasion, I have uncovered new marketing opportunities from win loss interviews. Sales people love this. That said, win loss is not for everyone. Sometimes your customers don’t want to be queried.
There are 5 minute surveys and there are win/loss interviews. How long should the win loss interview be? I like to limit these interviews to about 20 minutes although sometimes they go for a half hour. People are too busy today for much longer. You need to get all the relevant information from Sales before the interview: how they left it with the customer, who won the business, why they think the customer decided the way they did, and who else competed. That way you don’t waste the customer’s time with these small questions. You can get right to the meat of the interview, which they really appreciate.
My sales force is resisting my efforts to interview customers when they lost the business. How can I bring them around? This is usually not so tough, unless this loss of business is part of a bigger piece of business from that customer. Even so, Sales has only to gain if they are armed with why the customer decided on a competitor or made no decision to upgrade your company’s software, for example. Your sales person will be armed with a better approach to use with other customers who are considering your solution, from your win loss findings. Sometimes I find out the customer is considering my client for another piece of business that Sales doesn’t know about yet. Another way to bring Sales around is to make sure to interview customers where they won the business. It can be depressing to Sales if all you interview is lost business. You are also missing out on a great opportunity to learn about how your company treats its customers from implementation moving forward, which is absent when all you interview is lost business.
Sometimes Sales won’t acknowledge that a deal is actually lost: how do we contact these customers? I suggest that you don’t contact customers until the deal is clearly won or lost for win loss analysis. There are certain touch points along the way in the Sales process where you engage with customers, but that is for another discussion along the lines of pre-sales due diligence.
What is the best model for conducting win loss analysis? Should internal people conduct the interviews or should they all be outsourced to a 3rd party? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach?
Either model can work. Here are some of the plusses and minuses of each.
Internal people are already on the payroll, so that keeps the cost down. No one knows your company’s culture, industry, products and services like employees do. This helps when it’s time to probe for additional details around product features, for example. A consultant, unless they worked at your company quite recently, will not have all that company understanding. They might have the industry experience or can learn enough about your industry to make these phone calls. I have a checklist of things I ask a client to share with me so I can learn the industry; the sales process; and how to organize a win loss process quite effectively since I have done these since the late 1980s. Most internal company employees are not so organized with this process in my experience, but they sure have the product and sales knowledge.
Your customers are usually more open to telling a 3rd party all the reasons why they chose to do business with your company or not. Somehow they are more at ease sharing with a 3rd party. In fact, I find in some cases they actually almost gush with all that they share. Consultants that do a lot of these win loss interviews are skilled at getting people comfortable with sharing. In my practice we teach elicitation skills, and use them quite effectively during these interviews. Consultants will charge a fee to conduct these interviews and to analyze the findings, so you need to have money in the budget. Consultants often find things and pull things out of these interviews to analyze that your internal people won’t think about, since this is not what most internal people do most of the time. The consultant also doesn’t have your company cultural blinders on, which is helpful both in conducting these interviews and writing up the analysis.
I notice that I am most valued by companies who are just considering a win loss process; have never done it before; don’t know how to organize it or how to explain to Sales what this win loss process means to them; and why it’s a good idea. When I walk in with my process and organization, I notice it’s most appreciated.
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Filed under: Competitive Intelligence, connection, Cooperative Intelligence, Elicitation, Ellen Naylor, interview, telephone, win loss analysis | Comments Off on The Why, What & How of Win/Loss Analysis
I have been realizing how much choice I have for just about everything I do in life, especially how I spend my time. The same thing is true when I prepare to conduct a telephone or in-person interview when gathering information to help clients make important strategic or tactical decisions.
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