What is the ROI on Win/Loss Analysis?
There’s a lot of opinion out there about what kind of ROI you can expect from a Win/Loss program. That’s because Win/Loss programs vary greatly in terms of how big and robust they are. The most important thing to remember about Win/Loss ROI however, is that something is always better than nothing - and even a small fledgling Win/Loss program will drive some positive ROI for you. And if you’re up for really digging in and setting up a truly comprehensive program (a solid batch of interviews every month, analysis and reports delivered every month, etc), you’ll start seeing some real ROI numbers within the first year.
When you hear people talking about big ROI numbers from Win/Loss, the numbers they cite can often be sourced back to a Win/Loss report that Todd Berkowitz from Gartner put together a few years ago. In that report he said that a good Win/Loss program can improve win rates by up to 50%, and revenue increase 15-30%. Those are pretty awesome numbers, and they’re often used by Win/Loss providers trying to win business. But it’s really important to understand what it takes to hit those kinds of numbers (and that most teams don’t hit those numbers). In order to drive that kind of ROI, you need to build a very robust Win/Loss program, and building a robust program is a big undertaking.
Interestingly, in all of our years doing Win/Loss Analysis and talking to different companies about their Win/Loss programs, we’ve seen very (very) few robust Win/Loss programs out there. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great companies who have built great Win/Loss programs with amazing ROI, but they’re rare. What we’ve observed is that most companies want to build a good Win/Loss program because the ROI is so appealing, but they’re falling short because building a robust program takes a lot more time and effort than they expected. We built this guide to give you a roadmap for how to build a good Win/Loss program, and help you understand what it takes to actually hit those exciting ROI numbers. If you follow most of the guidance here you’ll end up building a great program. But if you only do half of what we suggest here, you’ll still drive at least some ROI for your company, so either way it’s probably worth building something. But if you want to build a great program, the important thing to know is that it’s a major commitment. It’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of energy, there’s a learning curve, and it can almost balloon into a full time job, depending on how many interviews you want to conduct. So set your expectations accordingly. Can you get an extraordinary ROI from Win/Loss? Yes. But it takes extraordinary effort from someone on your team, so be prepared..
If you build a good Win/Loss program, you'll probably get promoted.
We’ve seen this phenomenon happen over and over again with our clients. When we start working with a new client, there’s usually a single individual that is running the program. This person is responsible for absorbing the insights from the Win/Loss interviews and distributing them to different teams across the company. This process tends to create increased visibility and status for the individual within the company to rise. This phenomenon happens for a few different reasons:
- Good Win/Loss data is highly valued. Most teams already have mountains of product analytics data, at least some survey data, and a handful of other rich quantitative data sources. But high quality quantitative data is almost always lacking in most organizations, which means that the insights captured with Win/Loss data are truly rare. And because Win/Loss is tightly focused on revenue, the insights tend to be high-value and sought after by most of the team.
- You gain a unique and highly-valued perspective. By being so close to the Win/Loss data, you start developing opinions and perspectives that are deeply in tune with the experience your customers are having. Most important business decisions rely heavily on unvalidated assumptions about the customer experience, and most people making those decisions are far more removed from the customer experience than they realize. Managing a Win/Loss program gives you a unique and far more accurate understanding of the customer experience. And as you continue engaging with leadership about insights from the Win/Loss interviews it becomes obvious that you have a better understanding of the customer experience than almost anyone else on the team.
- Interactions with leadership increase. These interactions increase because as leadership starts realizing that you have a rich understanding of the customer experience, they start inviting you to meetings and asking your opinion on important business decisions. Win/Loss data generates insights for a lot of different leaders within the company, including the Head of Product, Head of Customer Success, Head of Sales, and most importantly, for the C-Suite including the CEO. As the person who manages and understands the Win/Loss data, you become the messenger of all of this high-value data. Senior people start relying on you for those insights, communication increases, and relationships deepen.
- Video feedback packs a punch. Most quantitative data sources are a bit abstract and don’t feel very human, they feel more like “numbers” (bar charts, pie charts, graphs, statistics, etc). Of course good data is always incredibly valuable, but seeing and hearing real human beings talking about your product is a very different (and far more impactful) experience. It’s one thing to have an abstract idea that customers might not like a certain feature. It’s a very different thing to see and hear your actual customers, on video, expressing their frustration at the feature. Once someone sees a customer’s experience up close, you can’t unsee it. The visuals tend to burrow deep into the mind, and these moments become a powerful source of motivation for leaders to act and make important decisions.
Getting buy-in from your team
We’ve seen this phenomenon happen over and over again with our clients. When we start working with a new client, there’s usually a single individual that is running the program. This person is responsible for absorbing the insights from the Win/Loss interviews and distributing them to different teams across the company. This process tends to create increased visibility and status for the individual within the company to rise. This phenomenon happens for a few different reasons:
- ROI is the biggest argument.
- Interviews vs surveys. Should be used in tandem, interviews should INFORM the surveys.
- New data-set. for almost every team.
- Customer interviews lead to action. One of the most valuable yet overlooked aspects of customer interviews is that they’re powerful tools for motivating decision makers to act. The data is humanized in the voice of an actual customer, and if you put the right video in front of the right person at your company, they’re likely to take action. They feel it in their bones. Seeing an actual customer express their frustrations comes with an emotive force- it packs a punch and once you see it you can’t forget it. It’s like the “map vs the territory”. It’s one thing to look at the territory on a map- it’s a very, very different thing to visit the territory in person.
Tools you'll need for a Win/Loss program
You need to make decisions about what tools you’re going to be using for your program. Here’s a quick list of the tools you’ll need to run a Win/Loss program. We’ll get into each of them in greater detail below:
Recruiting:
- An email platform: You'll need a platform that's built for bulk emailing, so setting up an additional Gmail account won't be enough. You need to build email sequences, see open rates, and have automated unsubscribe features.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A Sales Navigator account is key for doing effective Linkedin outreach, and after email, Linkedin will likely be your most fruitful channel.
- Calendly: Scheduling details will get surprisingly complicated once you start recruiting for Win/Loss interviews. You'll need a tool like Calendly to make the process easier for both you and the participants you're connecting with.
- A Gift Card: Or at least some kind of incentive. We usually offer a $50 or $100 Amazon Gift Card, or a donation to the charity of their choice. The difference between recruiting with an incentive and witout - is big. You'll get a lot more interviews booked if you offer an incentive.
Interviewing:
- Zoom or Google Meet: Or another video platform that's similar. The main things are that you need to record the video, and you need the platform to be universal enough that the participant can log on without too much trouble. Zoom and Google Meet both tend to be good bets.
- A Human Transcriber: You're going to want transcripts for your videos. Can you auto-transcribe them with the AI tools out there on the market? Yes, you definitely can. However when we do interviews we really need 100% accuracy (a word like "can't" can easily show up in the transcript as "can't"). Upwork is a great place to find a human transcriber.
Analysis:
- Google Docs: To review, highlight share with teammates, and take notes in the transcripts.
- Google Drive: For storing all of the video files and transcripts
- ChatGPT: For identifying patterns in your data-sets.
