How to Become World Class with Win/Loss Analysis and Assessment

How to Become World Class with Win/Loss Analysis and Assessment: from Sales Force Effectiveness Blog by John Koehler
This is the third article in a series on the importance of the Win/Loss Assessment, and how it can provide major improvements to your overall sales strategy. We have already covered the Basic Structure of a Win/Loss Assessment, as well as How to Identify Gaps in your Sales Strategy (Phase 1). Now, we will explore Phase 2 of the process – Thorough Analysis and Assessment.
A large hurdle that many sales leaders face when charged with revamping their sales strategy is that of indecision. Where do you turn first to improve your Sales Team’s Win Rate? There are so many avenues and options that it can become overwhelming.
This stage of the Win/Loss Assessment can help with that, as it allows you to determine with data where your improvements must be made. So without further ado...


Assess Sales Process
“Why am I losing so many opportunities? There must be something wrong with my Sales Process!”
The Sales Process is probably the most concrete and relatable area where you can pinpoint issues that are harming your number of won opportunities. All the more reason that you need to take this step of the Win/Loss Assessment very seriously.
By performing a thorough analysis of your Sales Process findings, it will allow you to better understand and locate the opportunities that you can expect to turn into wins. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll be able to pick out the opportunities that you are most likely going to lose.
While no one likes losing opportunities, or admitting defeat, this process can be a huge positive for your organization. By determining (early in the sales process) those opportunities that you will not win, you are able to reduce additional effort that sales reps would expend over a lengthy, arduous sales journey (sometimes as much as 6-12 months or more). Instead of chasing a lost opportunity, sales reps will be able to prospect new clients, and generate new business for your organization. This can pay huge dividends at the end of the year.
Aggregate Customer Comments
Customer surveys: Often overlooked, but never under-appreciated after they are completed. Did you do them like you said you would?
What were the positive responses from past opportunities (won or lost)? Or more importantly, what are the negative responses? Where can you improve?
By collecting all of your customer responses, categorizing, and scoring them, you can quickly obtain a clear picture of what your customers think of your sales strategy. Clear trends should appear as to which strategies are working and which are not. Obviously the strategies that are resulting in the most wins should be utilized whenever possible, and those resulting in losses eliminated.
Identify Your Win Rate Influencers
Okay – so you’ve gathered all the information and analyzed it. Great job, but you aren’t done. What good is that data going to do for you if it’s just sitting in a word document collecting cyber-dust?
Next step: Prioritize the data, locate the trends, and pinpoint the main influencers that are affecting your Win Rate.
A few examples of the influencers that may be dragging down your Win Rate are:

1. Responsiveness – Are you responding to prospects, leads, and opportunities in a timely fashion? Don’t let the lead get cold.
2. Ease of Use – Can your Sales Reps understand your sales strategy and effectively put it into operation?
3. Understanding Customer Needs – What’s the status of your ideal customer profile? Is your selling process aligning with the customer’s buying process?

It has been determined that some organizations can achieve up to a 15-20% increase in win rate by just improving performance in a few of these categories by a total of 10%. A little bit goes a long way.
Conduct Industry Benchmark
Benchmarking is a proven technique that can be utilized towards the advancement and improvement of essentially any organization. This is the last stage of Phase 2 in the Win/Loss Assessment, and it should by no means be forgotten or cast aside. What many organizations are realizing nowadays is that in order to truly gauge your organization, the progress you are making, and the status of your won and lost opportunities, you must know the level at which other players in your industry are operating.
This is what you must do in order to fully understand how you are doing in terms of your number of opportunities converted as wins. Without any type of comparison, how will you know how close you are to becoming world class? How will you know what targets to shoot for? You won’t.
Need help getting started with Win/Loss surveys’?  Download the Win Analysis Question set here and get going...


Find out if you’re ready to be world class by demoing the Sales Productivity Benchmark. See where you stack up, where you need to improve, and how to take that next step!
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