29
Oct
2024
•
5 min read
Introduction
Performing win-loss analysis is more and more the norm in B2B companies. Win-loss analysis means receiving feedback at the end of an opportunity about why we win and why we lose it. Performing qualitative interviews with the buyer directly gives incredible data to organizations as to why they lost or won deals. This data does not come from salespeople only, which changes everything. Also, participation rate is a lot higher in interviews than surveys. Interviews mean flexible conversations that give real impactful verbatims from buyers. This new data triggers real action plans based not on hypotheses but on real data and helps improve win-back opportunity rate. All of this explains why lots of studies have shown that performing win-loss has a real ROI.
You get valuable data as it’s directly from your buyer
Stay close to your buyer, not your salespeople
The step 0 of win-loss analysis is to implement a CRM field, generally a dropdown designated as “closed-lost reason” and “closed-won reason”. Each time an opportunity is closed, salespeople have to fill in this field.
Some B2B companies make them mandatory, some don’t. Some B2B companies don’t have a “closed-won reason”. Some decide to add a text-field if salespeople would like to give more information as to why they lost or won the deal. Each quarter, Revenue leaders extract this data and try to draw conclusions.
This step is a good starting point but absolutely not enough for top-tier B2B companies. Here is why:
- Big bias as salespeople are emotionally involved in the deal: their input is important but they don’t have the full picture about why their buyer decided to choose their solution or not. If you were the buyer, would you tell the truth or would you find excuses to escape from the discussion with salespeople ?
- The reasons mix up the causes & consequences: you don’t lose for the reason “Lost to competitor”, you lose because of multiple decision drivers that lead to the decision to work with another competitor
- Not actionable: what can you do with reasons such as “Pricing”, “No budget” or “Project for later”?
- Lack of context and information
Analysing CRM data is a good 1st step but I know I only get 20% of the real story
Constance Morales
Product Marketing Manager @Scaleway
Thanks to interviews, you talk to the people who directly made the decision to go with you or not. You avoid situations such as “we lose because of the Product” or “we lose because we were too expensive”
High participation rate versus classic surveys
If you receive a simple survey following your decision, you give less attention compared to receiving a personal invitation for an interview with a real human, particularly if the motivation is for improvement.
We can also see post-mortem interviews as a natural process: you, as a provider, spent time understanding your prospect’s situation and offered the best proposal. In the end, if the buyer does not work with you, it’s totally right but also natural to explain why in detail.
When I launched win-loss analysis in my previous company, the interview participation rate was about 20%. Without surprise, the survey participation rate was less than 10%. This data is quite similar with all of our clients at Diffly: it’s harder to say no to a real person versus an impersonal email.
A high participation rate means you get valuable data as to why you win and lose opportunities. This leads to more insights about your weaknesses and strengths. This also means you receive data directly from your buyers about:
- Your product
- Your sales experience
- Your company reputation
- Your ICP
- Your competitors
- Your pricing
- Etc.
You get valuable data as interviews give richer insights
Real buyer verbatims means you can’t do wrong assumptions
Win-loss qualitative interviews is the process of spending 30-45 minutes with your buyers to understand why they decided to buy or not your solution. During this interview, the interviewer is generally covering all the topics that could have an impact in the final decision.
Typical discussion follows the buyer journey to give a 360° comprehensive feedback on what happened:
- Deal origination: “What was your role in the final decision?”, “How did you perceive the company before reaching out? How did you describe the reputation of {Company name} in the market?”
- Selection criteria & buyer requirements: “For which reasons (decision criteria) have you chosen to work or not with {Company name}? What were your alternatives?”
- Product evaluation: “Can you explain to me what were your key product requirements in this project?”
- Sales experience: “Did the sales team and their actions have any influence on your final decision?”
- Pricing: “How did you justify (in terms of ROI) the decision to spend money on a solution like this?”
- Competition: “How did you position {Company name} compared to other competitors?”
Performing interviews will lead to real buyer verbatim that is so valuable for B2B companies. Here are 4 examples of verbatim that we received in the last month:
Skilled interviewers mean flexible conversations
This is actually a job. Asking questions and performing in-depth interviews is a learning process. Read between the lines, be flexible enough to dig deeper on a particular topic while going back to an uncovered topic and making sure this is a real conversation are real skills. We call them “Program Manager” at Diffly.
Flexible conversations make it possible to find unexpected but crucial insights. These interviews also offer a way for observing patterns.
All in all, interviewers’ job is to make sure, at the end of the interview, they understood the drivers that impacted the buyer’s final decision. This is the end question every B2B organization would like to know: why they win and why they lose.
You get valuable data that you can leverage afterwards
A new superpower thanks to buyers interviews’ transcripts
Imagine, you get in real time a dashboard as to why you win and lose. You get this data globally or segmented, depending on where you would like to improve (versus a particular competitor, on a particular sales rep, on a specific industry, ICP, etc.).
If you want to really understand how this decision criteria makes you lose deals, you just have to look at all the verbatims collected from buyer qualitative interviews. This means you can adjust your action plan based not on hypothesis but on real data.
Do you mention “win-back rate” in your GTM strategy?
This is a ratio you should add in your strategy. Win-back rate is the % of closed-won opportunities that were previously lost. In the B2B world, you can’t always win the first time. You can win a client after having lost it 2, 3 or 4 times.
Two different situation, depending if you implement win-loss analysis or not:
- Situation 1: you lose the first time and you try to win this prospect in the future
- Situation 2: you lose the first time, you get a post-feedback about why you lost and you try to win this client in the future, using the valuable data as to why this prospect decided not to work with you the first time
2 different situations, a big impact at the end.
AIt’s a lot easier for us to improve our win-back rates thanks to win-loss analysis. The data we collect at the end of the closed-lost opportunities helps us win better the next time.
Yann Guilleux
Head of Sales @Lemlist
Conclusion
Staying close to your buyers is necessary in today’s B2B world. Competition is becoming a thing. Product’s developments turns out to be easier. B2B companies could be lost due to too much data. If we keep it simple, I would say that listening to our buyers, their needs, requirements & motivations is key to perform in the long term.
