Change Is The KPI For Win/Loss Analysis
Charts or change? Our clients promised answers and action from Win/Loss Analysis. Not just insights.
And for this purpose they found software-led services fell short.
These PMMs saw the hurdles ahead. Change would be hard for opinionated, smart stakeholders with years of industry experience.
They knew they’d need a focused shareout. Conclusions supported data from buyer interviews and surveys. Actionable recommendations. And discussion.
They explored their options, and chose Growth Velocity. Because ours is a Win/Loss Analysis their team could actually act on.
I see the Growth Velocity team as part of our GTM organization as they bring great insights for us to act on
Willem is skilled at helping teams not only gather critical customer feedback, but also ingest and act on it
The reports and quarterly reviews ... ensure alignment across the organization and drive improved effectiveness
Got up to speed on our product and even our competitive landscape
Willem's consultative manner helped transform the questions or issues we're asking about
Trusted by Go-To-Market Teams at Growth and Scale Stage SaaS:
THE PROBLEM
Over-relying on automation will take longer and require more work to get the actionable takeaways your team needs
Other win/loss vendors pass off your program to junior, less experienced managers, and staff turnover causes gaps in interview quality.
Other vendors have low participation rates on interview requests, especially for losses.
Other vendors give you the data and an automated analysis. But you'll have to spend hours sorting through this data to make corrections and develop actionable recommendations.
OUR SOLUTION
Work one-on-one with a senior Win/Loss Analysis consultant to extract maximum learning from your deals and take action
Work with a senior consultant
You will work directly with the founder, Willem Maas, and a team of senior consultants. Willem has 2+ decades of experience in B2B product marketing and product management. We’ve developed a proven process for extracting the maximum learning from your deals.
Get more buyer interviews— especially on lost deals
We give your sales team a quick way to approve and personalize the buyer outreach before sending. And we always follow up on interview requests with a phone call.
With a 63% participation rate, you get more data from a smaller deal volume. Higher participation rates are essential to achieve a significant sample size for insights and recommendations.
We make it actionable, so you don’t have to
A dashboard’s quick, automated charts and tables look nice, but fall short. What’s most important and why? Your stakeholders can’t fix or exploit gaps they don’t understand. We personally summarize key findings and recommend specific actions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our fastest growing clients have doubled ARR to >$100M and up to 200 qualified opportunities per quarter. We’ve adapted our methodology for them because an interview only program is cost prohibitive at these volumes. We use a mixed methods qual-quant design. This yields a large sample while optimizing the tradeoff between in-depth interview feedback and resource use. We also automate buyer outreach for these clients, and distribution of interview summaries and transcripts.
Our clients wanted the same thing. So we’ve integrated our summary reports, buyer quotes, and full transcripts with Crayon. We’ve integrated our summary reports and win/loss repository with Slack. And we can automatically post each new transcript to the respective Salesforce opportunity.
We automate interview requests with the sales engagement software (Outreach, Salesloft, Groove) that you already have. We can trigger an email or account-level task in real-time when each deal is closed in Salesforce. Or we can schedule the outreach so a group of deals can be reviewed before the emails are sequenced.
Yes, we’ve published (here) a transparent account of how one enterprise software client (confidential) used the win/loss findings and recommendations delivered by Growth Velocity to increase its win rate more than 50%.
You can also read about our win/loss programs for Lightbend here and Tictail here.
We define Win/Loss Analysis as a bottom-up, inductive methodology for identifying and understanding the issues that cause deals to be won or lost. Data about individual sales opportunities is sourced either from sellers or directly from buyers. An analyst then uses purpose-built software to form theories about the key causes of win/loss outcomes.
Todd Berkowitz at Gartner found “those that take a more comprehensive approach [to Win/Loss Analysis] have seen a 15% to 30% increase in revenue and up to 50% improvement in win rates.”
Check our post “Win/Loss Analysis: What Is It? How Do Programs Start? How Do They Level Up?” for more.
In our Win/Loss Analysis service, we begin with a baseline of at least 20 buyer interviews.
We want to have an 85% chance of finding problems and perceptions that affect 20% of buyers in lost deals, as well as the more common issues. The binomial probability formula shows our target should be 9 lost deal interviews.
And we want to have the same level of sensitivity on the won deals, so 9 won deal interviews are required.
Check our post “Interview Sample Size For Win/Loss Analysis” for more.
We bring in domain experts for highly specialized or highly technical domains. Interviews are done by the domain expert, and we partner on analysis and reporting.
Here are three best practices we use.
- The AE relationship is an asset in most cases. So the initial request should come from the AE, especially for late stage losses. But be sure to mention that this is not sales related.
- Offer an incentive. We offer champions in lost deals a gift card or donation to the charity of their choice. (Wins should participate without an incentive.) A rule of thumb for lost deal incentives is 2-3x the champion’s annual salary, on an hourly basis.
- Keep the initial email communication concise and compelling. Tell them how this feedback is used and why it’s valuable to you. Iterate your subject line and body text. Make scheduling easy. And if they don’t respond, follow up on an email with a phone call.
Check “Set Up Your Interview Pipeline” for more tips.
You can continue using our automated process if you decide to bring the program in-house or switch vendors. Unlike software-led win/loss services, you don’t need a subscription to our service to continue automating your program.
We automate with the built-in capabilities and integrations of software you already have.
Check our post “Win/loss Analysis Software Can Make You More Efficient And Effective” for more.
Willem is a master at remaining neutral, which I believe sets the customer at ease to give honest feedback, even if it’s painful for us to hear. He was..able to get up to speed on our product and even our competitive landscape to have an in-depth conversation..about our industry.Lisa Balvanz, Director of Product Marketing, Flurry Analytics
I was impressed by the quality and depth of the buyer interviews. Willem is politely persistent and gets real nuggets from people that it'd be hard for us to get on our own.Dave Martin, VP, Worldwide Sales & Alliances, Lightbend
I advise those of you who are thinking about embarking on a win/loss project to think about widening the exposure of the outcomes to the whole company. We..brought Willem and the Growth Velocity team into our All Hands..so everyone could see where we were winning deals, where we were losing deals, and why. And that helps..build a lot of excitement, momentum, that everyone in the company plays a role in improving that buying experience.Jakki Geiger, Chief Marketing Officer, Reltio