Why Win-loss Is Essential For Increasing Sales In Your Growing Business

By Author: Octopus Competitive Intelligence consulting
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Why win-loss is essential for increasing sales in your growing business
This article asks why win-loss is essential for increasing sales in your growing business. It’s also critical for a slowing and stalling business.

But why is it important to know why you lost or won a deal? It is common when companies lose a sale for it to be considered a one-off. You will have heard all the reasons:

Hey, one of those things
It’s who you know
Brown paper bag time
They knew who they wanted just wanted us to compare
IT was a done deal anyway
They were cheaper than us. They will be back when they realise their mistake
They will come back when they see the mistake they have made
The reason why you failed or succeed is rarely a one-off and there will a thread of analysis for you to pull. So to gain a competitive advantage, you should understand the little details. The marginal gains.

What is marginal gains?
Marginal gains is the theory that minor improvements can lead to tremendous results. Also known as the 1% Factor, best seen in the recent British Cycling team’s ...
... successes. A team that values the power of marginal gains are more likely to win – and stay there.

Competitive advantage is all about these marginal gains. So, yes you really need to understand why a customer went elsewhere. And yes, why they came to you.

Marketing and sales
Marketing teams love their data, but sales guys are in the trenches fighting it out knee-deep in mud. But they also need easy to find and use information.

Sales and marketing each come at a competitive advantage from different angle. But they should have the same objective so each needs to work together. There is no point throwing data at the salesperson interested in getting the sales in. Equally, marketing can not expect

What is Competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis determines the attractiveness, customers, competitors and the dynamics of a particular market within a specific industry sector. Develops an understanding of the relationship between supply and demand, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your product or service to enable you to make more informed decisions about potential marketing strategies.
data in return from salespeople. They are getting fired at from every direction so filling in datasheets are not a priority for them. Not to say salespeople can’t be an excellent resource for Competitive Intelligence. Quite the opposite. But you have to approach the collection the right way. Usually discussion and incentive based.

Win-loss analysis
The answer to your needs is win-loss analysis. Win-loss analysis is a systematic, comprehensive and ongoing analysis. It finds out why you won and lost deals. It delivers powerful insight to transform your business into a sales machine.

Now it would be a big mistake to have your sales team do the win-loss interviews. The main reasons include:

They are naturally going to be biased by what they hear. We are all would be
They may have the urge to stick up for a fellow salesperson and, at the very least, spoil the flow of an interview. But jast as likely to prevent the decision-maker from saying anything else.
More information about win-loss can be found here: www.sherlockwinloss.com

Dig into the data
Once you have results, you can dig into the data. See what Competitive analysis has come from the exercise.

So that’s regularly sitting down with your marketing, business development and corporate teams. To try and understand what the data actually means. The beauty of win-loss is that it’s real, and if done independently, it’s even more powerful. It’s insight from your most important source. Your current and potential customer base.

We find a lot of competitive analysis is too targeted around the products or services. There’s more to your business and your competitor than products and services. Very often, there is little targeting and analysis of the rest of the business. That’s until we advise otherwise of course and we tend to deliver more than is expected.

More to it than products or services
Generally, when asked to look at strengths and weaknesses, it’s usually product-related. But it’s also essential to understand what drives their business. And what markets they are going after.

If you are moving into new markets, you will keep hitting a particular competitor. So it’s good practice to understand their products features, benefits and pricing. But it’s also impoerant to look at them using a broader perspective. To enable your senior management team to understand what’s different about their business. What is makes the competitor successful, and what is driving that success. Is their success revealing weaknesses in their armour you can take advantage of? Or are they overspending on advertising? Or is the increase in sales making their supply chain struggle?

Then there are their actual weaknesses you can exploit in a clear and pinpoint focused way.

Why win-loss is essential for increasing sales in your growing business
This article asked why win-loss is essential for increasing sales in your growing business. In conclusion, win-loss analysis is a critical tool for understanding how your business is performing and how you can increase sales. It’s essential for businesses that are growing or stalled, and it can help you understand what you need to do to improve your business. Use win-loss analysis to your advantage and see improved results in your business!