Many mid-market B2B firms have a discipline around Win-Loss Analysis. Approaches vary widely, but almost always, the impetus is based on a simple concept:
We need to learn more about what’s driving deal outcomes, e.g., “Why are we winning, and why are we losing?”
The birthplace of Win-Loss Analysis
It was a hot June day in New Orleans in 1999 – you could have fried an egg on the pavement. It was the site of the annual conference of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.
Through the Lens of Winning
As a provider of Win-Loss Analysis, we interact with quite a few companies about their opportunity set. Depending on who you speak with, they may refer to it as their …
The Fabric of Opportunity in B2B Selling
As companies wrestle with the pain and disappointment of losing a sale to a competitor, especially when confidence was high that they would win, some interesting psychology comes into play.
Winning and Losing – At the Same Time
Usually we think of win-loss analysis as something we do to put losses under the microscope. That way, the common thinking goes, you will see what you did wrong and fix that, in order to win more often in the future. A worthwhile motivation to begin the exercise if you’re not engaged in it already.
Family Factors – What’s Really Driving Business Development Outcomes?
Perhaps a better title for this post would be Family – OR – Factors. Regular readers of my posts know that Win-Loss Analysis is a central theme. After all, if you’ve been focusing on something for over 20 years, you tend to – I’ll admit it, ‘obsess’ a bit about that something.
It’s Not Surprising
So, why are you surprised? As hard as you work on closing significant sales, you think you might know better. Yet, even as a finalist, you find yourself sweating bullets while waiting to hear if you’ve won the deal.
Landing on an Asteroid
The importance of customer feedback in achieving sales success
Deep Listening – Sales Discovery as an Ongoing Process
All companies are committed to winning – but sometimes leadership teams don’t act like it. As much energy that goes into strategy and planning, CRM deployments and sales analytics – you would expect spectacular results.
Explaining the Unexplainable
Making sense of the seemingly random things that happen in business and in life is just part of human nature. It’s how we’re wired. When a significant sales opportunity is lost to a competitor, that instinct goes into hyper-drive. There is a lot of explaining to do.