5 common questions sales leaders ask when rolling out a win-loss analysis program

Win-loss analysis is an invaluable function for any B2B organization—though for many companies it’s often a new initiative. This post will help you answer key questions that many sales teams may have as they establish their win-loss programs.

What is win-loss analysis … and why are we implementing it? 

In simple terms, win-loss analysis is the process of capturing and analyzing feedback directly from your buyers to uncover the real reasons you win and lose sales opportunities.

Win-loss analysis is most effective when based on direct feedback from actual prospects and customers.

Organizations that practice win-loss analysis are able to increase their sales win rates by addressing critical product gaps, capturing valuable competitive intelligence, improving their sales training and execution, refining their messaging and content, optimizing pricing and packaging, and more.

‍“We’ve made packaging changes, pricing changes, GTM messaging changes, positioning changes, and churn-reduction changes. Anecdotally, we’re sporting a 50+% win rate, up from the 30% range in the pre-Clozd era.”

—Craig Clark, CMO at Nitrogen

How will win-loss analysis impact me? 

Your leadership team believes that win-loss analysis—when done right and acted upon—will help salespeople win more deals.

Over time, win-loss data helps leaders across your company make better decisions about product, sales, pricing, and marketing strategies. The program will help identify critical product gaps, capture valuable competitive intelligence, improve your sales training programs, refine marketing messaging and content, and optimize your pricing and packaging. 

Please note that the focus of the program is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the company as a whole, not specific individuals or salespeople. There may be occasional feedback on individual performance, but the leadership team will be focusing on the holistic trends and themes that the company needs to address in order to be more competitive and win more. 

Consider how AuditBoard (the leading cloud-based risk, audit, and compliance platform—which was recently acquired for $3 billion) uses win-loss insights to train their sales team.

“It’s becoming part of our DNA, and it’s helping us become more customer-centric. One of our company values is being customer obsessed. If you think about it, win-loss data is the ultimate customer-obsession metric.

—Matt Nelson, Vice President of Product Marketing at AuditBoard

AuditBoard’s team has been able to do this because they have a culture of trust and accountability. They trusted that their sales reps wanted to use honest feedback to get better, to really find out what they needed to work on so they can close more deals and make more money. This focus on improvement helps their company—and it helps their reps personally.

How will win-loss analysis impact our clients and prospects? 

Clozd is a third party that helps schedule and conduct in-depth, objective interviews with your buyers—so your prospects and clients will definitely be involved.

The good thing? We make it super easy for them (and for you) because the Clozd Platform streamlines the entire outreach process—so you’ll be able to spend less time worrying about win-loss logistics and more time acting on the win-loss insights our team delivers. 

Our platform automatically …

• Builds a list of contacts based on your preset criteria

• Creates and sends email sequences, including options to involve you or your sales team

• Schedules interviews

• Offers and sends incentives

Clozd sets the industry standards for effective outreach—and also for conducting the most in-depth interviews.

The interviews range from 15–30 minutes and include adaptive questions that your leadership team determines regarding the evaluation process, evaluation criteria, competitive landscape, pricing, and more. Clozd will often provide an incentive ($25–100 gift card) to encourage your clients and prospects to participate in the interviews.

Will I see the feedback? 

In short: Yes, you will!

Each interview is recorded and transcribed in real time, and we also tag and track positive and negative factors that led to the final decision for each deal. We use generative AI to help identify Decision Drivers, highlight themes and quotes, tag keywords, create a summary, and more.

Clozd also makes it easy for you to share impactful win-loss insights with cross-functional stakeholders and drive revenue-lifting strategies.

Once your reports and dashboards are ready, our system automates the process of sharing those insights throughout your organization—through Slack, Teams, your CRM, or email. Another key feature is your ability to export your data via API to tools like Tableau or Domo.

Each company can determine who has access to the Clozd Platform and to the individual summaries and reports—though the insights are far more valuable when they’re shared broadly.  

What should I do if my client or prospect contacts me about this? 

If a client or prospect contacts you indicating that they’ve been invited to an interview with Clozd, you should encourage them to participate. Confirm that Clozd has been hired by your leadership team and that you value their feedback.

If you have additional questions about win-loss analysis with Clozd, click here. If you already have Clozd and have any questions, please contact your program manager.