Win-Loss Analysis - Part III

Win Loss Analysis – Part 3

In my last post we talked about the quantitative analysis within your win-loss analysis program.  In this post I will dive into the details of the qualitative aspect of the program.  Analysis from your CRM system gives you a lot of good information on metrics and their trends.  But it needs to be complemented with interviews (qualitative aspect of the program) – both with salespeople & pre-sales, as well as with customers, so you can get a holistic view into your wins and losses. 

As I mentioned in my last blog, the response rate on request for calls with salespeople and customers is higher when the opportunity was recently closed.  Also, the quality of information you get is better, if you can talk to the salesperson and customer soon after the deal was won or lost.  From my experience, response rate from salespeople is about 100% for deals you won and between 50% and 75% for deals you lost.  

Of course, there is some bias in the responses from salesperson.  Many a times I hear from them that the deal was won because they did such a great job with building a relationship with the client and convincing them of the value proposition OR the deal was lost because either our price was too high or product has some feature missing or the customer had a bias towards the competition.  By doing a 360 degree on the internal team on the account (i.e. speaking with sales engineers and anyone else involved with the account), you can begin to get a more complete story. 

The other key aspect of qualitative analysis is interviews with customers.  From my experience, response rate from customers you won is about 1 in 2 (to 1 in 3) and from losses is about 1 in 4 (to 1 in 6).  Key is to interview both the influencer, as well as decision maker, so you get two different perspectives.  Make it clear that you are not associated with sales and the intent for this interview is for your company to learn from them what is resonating, what is not working and continue to improve.

For both internal and external interviews, it is important to ask as many open-ended questions as possible and let their responses lead you in the interview (rather than have a pre-determined script).  In both sets of interviews, I start with trying to understand what the customer’s key issues were that they were trying to address and why did they want them to be addressed now rather than later?  Another area I want to explore is what they liked about our solution and why, as well as where they expressed concerns and why? This also gives me an opening into delving with the customers about the competitors - if they are willing to go there.  I also try to understand from customer their perception about the vendor before they started the sales cycle and if (and how) that perception changed during the sales cycle and feedback on what the vendor should do differently?  I ask the salesperson similar question about what they would do differently (or what additional support they would ask for) if they were to run the sales cycle all over again. 

You will surprised how much you can learn about what aspects of your messaging is resonating and what is not, where the competition is out-positioning you, the opportunities in sharpening your message (why buy, why buy now, why buy mine), the additional sales enablement needed to get your salespeople to tell the right story, your product strengths and gaps, how well your brand is resonating with your customers/prospects, how well/poorly run your sales cycles are (and opportunities to correct them), how well your sales methodology is being used in sales cycles etc

Hope this post answers some of your questions re: the qualitative aspect of the win-loss analysis.  If you have questions or comments, keep the conversation going.

Win Loss Analysis - Part II

In my last post we talked about the overall scope of the win-loss analysis program.  In this post I will dive into the details of the quantitative aspect of win loss analysis. 

For a recent SaaS client, who is growing at a very rapid clip, we wanted to track the following quantitative information (win-loss was focused on new customers):

• Overall win rate for the quarter, as well as win rate against each competitor
• Number and $ value of wins and losses against each competitor, as well as number and $ value of wins in non-competitive deals (i.e. no competitor was in the deal)
• Trend chart of overall win rate against each competitor
• Trend chart for win rate by each sales region for top 4 competitors
• Trend chart for win rate by each segment (e.g. enterprise, mid-market etc.) for top 4 competitors
• Trend chart in non-competitive deals (aggregate, by sales region and by segment).  This statistic spoke to the reach of marketing programs, as well as brand equity.
• Number and $ value of non-competitive losses (i.e. opportunity closed lost due to a number of reasons such as customer non-responsive or no budget etc.

The data in the last bullet is critical to improving the opportunity qualification process.  Once the opportunity is qualified and pursuit starts, expensive pre-sales and other resources are applied to that pursuit.  Even 10% improvement in opportunity qualification allows you to divert resources to the most qualified (and likely to close) opportunities, improving your overall win rate and quarterly bookings.  By closing the loop of this analysis with sales operations, you can improve the use of current sales methodology in the sales organization.

One question typically gets asked is if you should count every lost opportunity in win-loss analysis.  My answer is no.  Many opportunities get closed (as lost) in early stages when the salesperson is qualifying it.  By including in win-loss analysis, you will distort your counts.  My recommendation is to only include those opportunities that reach a stage in your sales process where resources have been applied and pursuit has started.

Another question on your mind is perhaps – should you do this analysis at the end of the quarter?  It all depends on the linearity of your bookings, but I would assume that 30% to 40% of deals may be closing in the first two months of the quarter.  Since you want to combine quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis (based on surveys and calls with salespeople and customers), the response rate on request for calls  from customers and salespersons is higher when the opportunity was recently closed.  Also, the quality of information you get is better, if you can talk to them soon after the deal was won or lost.   But to identify such conversation opportunities, you need your quantitative analysis to be continuous.  If you only do your analysis once a month, you will end up batching all the calling opportunities until after the end of the month and would lose out on the quality of information from such calls.

Hope this post answers some of your questions re: the quantitative aspect of the win-loss analysis.  If you have questions or comments, keep the conversation going. 

Win Loss Analysis - Part 1

Working as a demand generation and product marketing consultant for SaaS and Enterprise companies for over 15 years, I have done a fair share of win-loss analysis engagements for my clients.  I decided to share my experiences and recommendations on this topic through multiple posts.  In this first post, I will share a high-level perspective on win-loss analysis.  In subsequent posts, I will do a deep dive on several subtopics related to win loss analysis.

#1. Win loss analysis must be comprehensive.  It must cover the entire portfolio of wins and losses in the quarter and must cover both – quantitative and qualitative information.

• The quantitative information must cover quarterly view, as well as quarter-over-quarter trend charts.  You should be able to visualize the analysis at an aggregate level, by competitor or further sliced by region, segments or even channels.    (for example, your win rate against all competitors in EMEA region in all accounts or just against Oracle in EMEA, or against Oracle by EMEA in enterprise accounts, as well as how this has trended quarter over quarter). Your CRM system would be the primary source of such information.  I will share more on this topic (things to watch out for, example trend charts etc.) in a future blog post.
• The qualitative information provides you some key nuggets – what messages are working and/or not working, what type of sales campaigns the competition is running, where is the friction in the sales cycle,  are there any new purchasing drivers that should be packaged into your messaging etc. This information is obtained from emails and phone calls with sales and pre-sales where you won or lost a deal, as well as conversations with some of the customers who recently selected you or decided to go with the competition.  In a future blog post, I will share with you some of the open-ended questions I have asked sales, pre-sales or customers, that gave us some deep insights, which could be immediately packaged by product marketing into campaigns and messages.

#2. One of the most important deliverable in win-loss analysis is a report that should not only show these charts and summary of interviews, but more important, make it actionable for various audiences – sales, field marketing, product management etc. Each of them is looking for something different from the analysis.  For example, for one client, I discovered through customer interviews that selling into universities with a specific value proposition (because of a very unique feature) would yield them a huge advantage over the competition. Their field marketing team used that insight to launch a campaign into an industry that was not even on their radar before that analysis.  Yes, those trend charts are interesting, but what is more relevant is what each of these stakeholders can do with this information. This is what makes win-loss analysis a strategic investment, otherwise it is just a recurring reporting activity that needs to be done at the end of the quarter.  More on this topic in a future blog post.

#3. Win-loss analysis and competitive analysis are two different sides of the same coin.  They should be done on an ongoing basis and not left to the end of the quarter analysis.  Insights gleamed from win-loss analysis informs the competitive analysis.  Similarly, competitive insights can explain changes in trend charts/win rates and can be further validated with seller and customer interviews.  

I look forward to sharing many details on this and other topics around demand generation, product marketing, content development or marketing operations in my blog.  

Your thoughts?  Keep the conversation going.