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Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research
The benefits that Win Loss Research routinely delivers include:
* Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales
situations * Enhancing your product management and development
initiatives * Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in
sales forecasting * Strengthening top and bottom line results
for your business * Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle
process * Setting the stage for future business growth
Win Loss Research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision
makers and influencers who have been involved in your recent win
and loss sales decisions. The goal is to learn what key
distinctions they saw between you and your competitors, the
importance of those distinctions and the value they assigned to
each competitor. While the focus of this research is on gaining
insight into how your competitors operate and how you fare in
comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain valuable
customer information in the process.
Win Loss Research drills down beyond standard pricing issues and
gets into territories such as: decision process, sales team
approach and professionalism, company reputation, product
attributes, service issues, and handling of proposals. Although
pricing information is involved, it should not be the
centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it
really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of
Win Loss Research is to provide you with competitive insight you
can act upon - actionable competitive intelligence - for sales
process improvement and better results.
Typically this research is conducted either over the telephone
or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common in
places and cultures where that is the preferred communication
modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss
Research is a combination of art and science; art being the
skill of the researcher in eliciting the intelligence that you
need; science being the development of a research guide that
facilitates the discovery of actionable competitive intelligence.
As with almost anything worth doing, focusing on Critical
Success Factors (CSFs) increases the likelihood that you will
get what you need. For Win Loss Research, focusing on the
following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of
obtaining productive competitor intelligence:
1) Use professional competitive researchers who are skilled in
drawing out actionable competitive intelligence. They will also
be perceived as unbiased, thereby ensuring candor.
2) Selecting the optimal mix of win and loss opportunities to
research is a reasonably complex task which must be done
correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the target
markets that matter most.
3) Development of a stimulating research survey that operates as
a guide rather than a questionnaire is the backbone to
outstanding results.
Surprisingly, the tone and quality of the initial research
request can make or break your ability to get robust
participation.
A common pitfall among companies that report doing Win Loss
Research is that they have their employees, typically the sales
representatives, perform the research. You do need to have your
sales people find out what happened. This should precede Win
Loss Research which goes beyond the limited conversation from
your sales reps' debriefing. Also, it defies human behavior to
think that the customer will feel comfortable being candid with
a sales rep who has not met their expectations or that the sales
rep will be candid in passing along information that may be
construed as unfavorable to them.
An extraordinary thing about Win Loss Research is that any size
or category of company should be able to implement this as an
ongoing business practice and see steady gains in their customer
acquisition and sales. This form of research is not particularly
costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain
willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you
uncomfortable at times.
One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear is a
compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and
improve from their experience. Once you establish a practice of
doing Win Loss Research routinely and take action on the
results, your company will realize the benefits of implementing
this business competition best practice.
(c) 2005. Bishop Market Resources. All rights reserved.
Permission to reprint granted provided the article and byline
are printed intact with all links made live.
About the author:
Celeste Bishop is President of Bishop Market
Resources a Competitive Services Agency that provides a
breadth of traditional and online competitive intelligence
services, including business research and sales process
improvement research. For more learning resources check Brain
Food at:
http://www.bishopmarketresources.com/competitive-intelligence-bra
in.html