Obstacles to an Effective Win Loss Program

Win Loss research is a very strong part of a complete voice of the customer system. Not only does it provide a first view into the hoops that prospects go through to do business with you, it also uncovers many hidden issues such as:

Competitive intelligence on positioning in the marketplace
Initial perceptions of your company’s ability to meet the market’s needs
Why companies do business with you in the first place
Processes that need to be modified to make it easier for companies to do business with you.

However, Win Loss is not a simple research project to start; at least not compared with other research projects such as client satisfaction, market needs and the like. There are some obstacles that are unique to Win Loss that have to be addressed if this research tool is to provide you with all of its potential value:

• Sample issues
• Pushback from sales
• Confidentiality concerns
• Unrealistic expectations
• Poor communication

By far, the biggest problem is sample (In other words, finding the opportunities to study so that you can call and interview). Without these opportunities, it is impossible to reach out to your recent sales engagements and gather the necessary information.

Why are these so difficult to gather? Two reasons: 1) Sales won’t give them up and 2) Sales is too disorganized to give them up.

Either way, the problem can only be solved if sales is involved and acting as a wiling participant.

You’ll note that the second obstacle is also based on sales. If sales thinks that Win Loss is a witch hunt, or even suspects that they will be evaluated based on the information in the Win Loss program, the sales reps will make it very difficult for you to get their sales history information?

“How can this be?” you ask. “We use an enterprise-wide CRM/SFA tool. The information is in there and we should be able to pull it anytime.”

This would be a logical thing to say. But, it doesn’t hold true. An SFA system only holds what the sales reps put in there and if they don’t mark their opportunities as losses, you won’t have anything to research. You’d be surprised at how long a sales rep can work on a sales opportunity before reporting it as a loss if they think that such an action would be detrimental.

So, to solve the first two points above (sample issues and getting sales on board), you have to design your Win Loss program from the ground up as providing value to the sales reps without being a form of discovery or punishment.

If sales is on board, Win Loss runs 100% more effectively. If sales doesn’t know about the program, you will only have moderate success. If sales is against the program, you won’t get anything done at all.

And that would be a shame, considering the immense amount of sales and competitive intelligence that an effective Win Loss program can produce.

If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)