Harvest > Win-lose Analysis
Why
Regardless of how your sales process is, it is inevitable that you may lose some prospects. In such situations, it is useful to understand what made the prospect choose a competitive product over yours. This informs what’s missing from your offering. In addition to the assessment of the product itself, doing a win-loss analysis also determines the strength of your sales process. The following are some of the things that you can learn from a win-loss analysis:
- What features are significant to the customers that they are willing to pay for it?
- Has your marketing reached the correct customer demographics?
- In which areas are your product and company good in?
- What missing features were deal-breakers to prospects?
- Is your pricing proper?
The outcome of this analysis is a valuable input to your feature prioritization process. Focus on what’s missing and focus on getting it developed and released to the market.
How
A quick and easy approach is to outsource to a specialized 3rd party vendor. If this is financially an option, then it’s recommended that you use that time to focus on the improvements that matter. Prospects are known to give more accurate information about your product to a 3rd party rather than to your face in certain cultures.
There could be several reasons why this might not be a possibility in your organization. It could be financial; it could be the sensitivity of the data, etc. Pay attention to the following guidelines if you want to carry out the win-loss analysis yourself:
- Do it fast: Finish it off before prospects forget why they took the decision.
- Don’t try to sell: Don’t try to sell a product that has already been rejected. Just learn what was in the prospect’s mind when the decision was made.
- Try to be honest and include them in your learning: Think win-win. Share your knowledge so that the prospect also takes something from the meeting.
- Keep it short: You should be glad that the prospect agreed to spend some time on this in the first place. Just keep it very short, stick to the basics, and utilize the time as much as possible. Try online meetings or a phone call on the go for customers’ convenience.
- Give them a benefit: Return the favor, offer them an incentive. It could be a coupon or a discount for a future product or a financial reward.