Why Win/Loss Reporting is Essential
Vendors of E/CTRM software operate in fast moving and highly challenging markets. Buyer requirements are shifting and changing all of the time as customers seek new ways to make or protect profits and respond to their shifting regulatory, technical and business environments. It’s also really competitive with many solutions on the market that at least sound like they can do the job. Even acquisition hasn’t helped in the competitive arena as ION, for example, still offer all of its platforms – none have been end of lifed. The favorite way to procure software remains the RFP – although things are changing there. None the less, selling and marketing is expensive and time consuming. Months can be spent chasing an opportunity only for it to be lost to a competitor. Margins for vendors can also be very thin and as one person I spoke to recently put it, the industry is replete with ‘ vendors losing money and looking to be acquired.’ It makes it all the more critical that vendors make the most of their opportunities to be the best that they can be.
One way to do that is to conduct win/loss reporting. It seems a logical thing to do, but I’m unsure how many vendors actually do conduct win/loss reporting. I suspect not many based on my interactions with most of them. Having spent time and money trying to earn a prospect’s business, the easiest thing in the world is to spend an extra hour or so discovering what went right/wrong and why? The information that can be gleaned from win/loss reporting is, to my mind anyway, essential in making improvements and becoming more competitive.
How does it work?
Well, the first thing is to interview the won/lost prospect and to be prepared for that with a good set of questions. Having spent a small fortune in money and time trying to win a prospect’s business, the least they can do is to provide some honest feedback over the phone for 30 minutes!
The questions ought to focus on several aspects of the bid including;
- Understanding and analysis of the customer purchase decision factors,
- To obtain more information on the actual buyer/decision process,
- To document reasons for winning and losing the deal,
- To enhance sales force performance with more targeted sales tools and information,
- To gain an improved understanding of the target market trends and needs at that time,
- To understand marketing reaction levels to marketing mix changes,
- General exploration of key issues in marketing and sales that may need revision,
- To map the competitive landscape and the company’s perceived positioning and understand the competitor’s strengths and weakness in the bid,
- To gain a customer perspective on which product features are most important or critical to make a sale.
It’s a lot of questions but if they are formulated well and expectations set, they can be dealt with in a 30-45 minute interview. It is also important that the interviewer is someone capable of making an assessment – i.e. understands the sales process and so on.
What you will Learn
The results of the win/loss report can feed into areas like,
- Developing and reinforcing best practices in the sales cycle,
- Identifying, correcting, or eliminating any obstacles, stages or practices in the sales cycle that are perceived as ineffective or inappropriate,
- Provide real-time analysis and feedback on competitive intelligence.
In conducting win/loss reporting both as a vendor and for vendors as an independent analyst, I have encountered a whole host of often quite surprising feedback. For example, for one vendor, we discovered that a particular employee behaved unprofessionally during a meeting with the prospect and in another example, discovered that it was the look and feel of the application that caused the loss despite the product being functionally richer. It is also true that more is to be learned usually from loss reports than win reports.
If you as a vendor are spending significant money on lead generation and brand marketing then more money on selling to an opportunity then why would you not spend a small amount on win/loss reporting? If you are winning 1 in 4 but by getting some feedback, can improve that to 1 in 3.5 – that as to be worth a lot of revenue to you?
At TransEnergy, I ensured that we did win/loss reporting on every sales opportunity. Each resulted in a comprehensive report with a set of action items addressed to each areas of the business from product development to marketing. Working in combination with the sales department, I think we were able to make a big impact on our win rates using the approach. It is this aproach modified accordingly over time, that ComTech uses to perform a win/loss reporting service today. Ask us about it?
Keep in touch and sign up to our Newsletter
