How to set up a win loss review process (#2/3)

“The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do” said Harvey Firestone, one of the founding fathers of modern American business.

Buying patterns and customer behaviour have changed dramatically in the 100 or so years since Firestone shared his insights with us, but certain sales fundamentals have remained constant.

• It’s still critical to understand your customers’ needs and their buying behaviours
• It’s still important to know your competitors and how you’re offering differs from
  there’s
• Perhaps most importantly, it’s still absolutely imperative to understand what makes your customers part with their hard-earned money and what makes them keep coming back for more

Understanding these 3 topics can be fraught with confusion and uncertainty. How do I really know why a company decided to purchase our solution? How can I categorically state that we lost to Competitor X for this specific reason?

The answer is unfortunately we can’t know for sure... we can suspect, we can surmise, but where decision making is concerned, it’s impossible to fully understand the complex web of competing thoughts and emotions we all go through, prior to reaching a decision.

As b2b sales organisations, all we can do is focus on continually improving, refining, tweaking and finessing the way we engage with our target audience, knowing that each incremental improvement increases the gap to our closest competitors and reduces the gap to our target audience.

In the first article in this series, we looked at why it’s important for b2b sales organisations to try to understand the ‘decision making criteria’ of their clients. Now I’d like us to consider how we might go about achieving this outcome. How we can develop a Win/Loss Review process that’s specific, actionable, measurable and most importantly repeatable for our own organisation?

Step 1: Work out what you are going to measure

It sounds obvious, but it’s the single most important ingredient. We all know ‘what we measure is what we manage’, so it’s critical that we’re measuring the right metrics in the first place.
You may need to involve people from sales, pre-sales, operations, the technical and client facing side of the business at this early stage of the process. Basically whoever you feel has an important role to play in the sales cycle.

The true value comes through determining which elements in the sales cycle need to be better understood and tailoring a compelling set of quantitative and qualitative questions, to measure the specific information which you require

By involving key stakeholders from across your sales function, you ensure each area of the business has a voice in determining which measures are most appropriate to their specific functional area.

Furthermore, you benefit from their knowledge and expertise, in developing a rigorous and repeatable set of measures, to drive improvement across the entire sales function.
Done right, Step 1 will set up your WLR for success.

Step 2: How to communicate the WLR process

Internally - Decide how many sales cycles you intend to review each month, each quarter, each year. This decision may be based on size of opportunity, cost of sale, industry focus or any other relevant criteria to your business. Once agreed, this criteria should be communicated internally first, so the entire sales force understands the purpose behind this activity and the role which they need to play.

Externally – The very first meeting with a new prospect is the best time to position your WLR process. A simple positioning statement can be provided to your sales force explaining that:
“As an organisation we’re focused on continually improving and streamlining the way we work with our clients. One mechanism we use to achieve this is called a Win/Loss Review, which happens at the end of the sales cycle.

It usually takes about an hour; it’s often run by a 3rd party organisation and it’s helps us get a better understanding of how well we engaged with you through this process. Would you be comfortable providing us with some of your time at the end of this sales cycle, to assist us in improving what we do?”

Some clients, for reasons of probity or personal ambivalence will decline to participate, but if positioned appropriately, the vast majority of prospective clients are more than happy to provide their time and (often extremely candid) feedback.

Step 3: How to run your WLR program?

Broadly speaking there are two approaches you can adopt to conduct a Win/Loss Review. It can be either client led or run by a 3rd party organisation, on behalf of the client. Each approach has its own pro’s and con’s.

Client led - Pro’s

• Tends to be more cost effective
• Easier to manage and aggregate the findings and insights from the reviews
• Sales team already has an existing relationship with the client

Client led: Con’s

• Sales team already has an existing relationship with the client
• Hard to be dispassionate and unbiased in receiving and delivering negative feedback
• Can be awkward for the prospective client, which may dilute the feedback which they
  provide

3rd Party – Pro’s

• Client is more comfortable providing honest, candid feedback and often more willing to share negative insights
• Easier for a 3rd party to deliver difficult or challenging feedback to the vendor
• Can often provide the vendor with WLR support and best practice during the
  development and execution phase

3rd Party – Con’s

• Can be more costly to implement
• May not understand the specifics of your particular industry vertical upfront
• Will require an additional discovery phase with the vendor, prior to executing the WLR

In the end, it all comes down to organisational maturity. Are we comfortable enough in our people, our products and processes to do some real soul searching and try to understand what we’re doing well and how we could be better?

Now that we’ve developed a WLR program, communicated it to our clients and staff, what do we do to take advantage of all these nuggets of ‘micro intelligence’ and competitive insights we’re receiving each day, week, month and quarter. Stay tuned for the 3rd and final article in the WLR series, where we answer the question ‘now what?’....