Knowing why you won and why you lost is one thing but understanding how to apply this knowledge is what will ultimately allow you to make decisions that will enable positive change.
The ultimate question we need to answer is how will the learnings from a win/loss analysis help you adapt, sell and engage more effectively so you can win more and lose less.
Once you’ve completed your analysis as discussed in this previous blog post it’s time to get tactical and put a plan in place on how you can adjust your execution to help you sell differently and win more deals and more renewals.
Here are 7 steps you and your leadership team can take to ensure the organization adapts going into your next quarter or fiscal year:
Determine if your analysis reveals changes in your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and key Personas. Some industries and personas that may have been ideal at one point in time could now lead to higher loss rates while on the other hand, your analysis may reveal an entirely new ICP that could lead to higher win rates. It is absolutely critical that your entire GTM team is aligned on this. It helps to ensure that marketing is targeting the right top-of-funnel leads, that sales reps are prioritizing the right deals, and customer success teams are applying adoption and renewal resources accordingly.
Also, identify whether your ACV has changed with any of your ICPs, and if so, what it currently is. For example, have certain ICPs become more price-sensitive? Determine if you need to prime yourselves for negotiation, closing certain deal sizes, or adjusting price lifts at renewal time. Adjust your process and forecast accordingly.
Identify what messaging and positioning is resonating with specific personas and stakeholders and replicate that across deals in your pipeline. When you identify what messaging and steps are working well on a repeated basis with closed deals, you can then share these tactics with the rest of the sales team to help them close active deals in the pipeline. Conversely, look at your losses and what messaging is falling flat and remove that from your sales engagement, customer engagement, and processes.
Don’t forget to share this information with marketing as well so they can adjust their messaging too.
Determine if there are changes to your deal duration because it has likely changed this past year. Identify if you need to prepare yourself for longer sales cycles and if you need to reallocate resources to help close deals more quickly. For example, consider prioritizing Sales Engineer and Executive Sponsor resources to deals and renewals that include your newly identified ICP and deals most likely to close. Remove them from the type of deals that have little to no chance of closing.
Additionally, it’s important to coach management & front-line teams on recalibrating opportunity close dates so there is a realistic forecast of the pipeline.
Update your persona profiles and train sales and customer success reps on how to engage and create effective messaging for any new personas or changes in persona priorities. For example, If you are now selling to the CFO, you need to ensure your team is equipped with the skill and knowledge to engage this persona. You also need to train your team to conduct further discovery with this persona and build strong business cases. Gone are the days when business decision makers who were allocated budget were the ultimate approvers of a contract. In are the days of the economic buyer (often the CFO) ultimately making the call as to whether the budget allocation stays as is or is reallocated to another area of the business.
With this in mind, we need to consider who we are engaging with. What deals did we lose because we couldn’t effectively articulate the appropriate message and value? What deals did we win because we did effectively engage? This will help you determine where you need to improve and reinforce where your entire team should focus and how.
Have front-line managers of sales and customer success teams prioritize conducting call reviews and coaching reps on their engagement and approach based on the new reality. Support the front line through coaching and training to ensure the required changes are being carried out from the senior leader level all the way through to the front-line teams. Use tools like Gong to identify exactly where reps need coaching the most, whether it’s discovery, demos, objection handling, churn risk diagnosis, or running EBRs. Get faster results by tailoring coaching to the specific needs of individual reps.
Identify the top reasons why you lost and group the losses into those outside of your ICP and those within your ICP. Then look closer at the losses with your ICP and further categorize why those deals were lost. What deals did you lose that were entirely in your control? For example, did you lose to no decision because the AE failed to demonstrate the cost of inaction, how your solution was better than the status quo, and prove the ROI? Did your CSM lose a renewal because they failed to demonstrate how the value realized resulted in a Return on Investment (ROI) that outweighs the cost of the contract? Were they not engaging effectively and/or with the right stakeholders?
Another key data point to look for is to look for deals that you lost but should never have been in your pipeline in the first place. What deals were not qualified properly and were always destined to be lost? These can be a win rate killer, not just because of the losses that are racked up but because it means reps are spending less time on deals that could be won (and potentially won more quickly). This goes for renewals as well. Look at what renewals are coming up with bad-fit customers and identify which ones are destined to fail.
Incorporate these learnings into coaching that Front Line Managers and Enablement teams provide their reps. These incremental improvements can have an outsized impact on sales and renewal results.
Identify the top reasons why you won and what trends you can take advantage of. For example, is there positioning and messaging that resonates with certain personas? Are there competitors you routinely win against? This data can help you prioritize the deals you can win and win more quickly.
Another benefit is you can identify which reps are excelling and why they are excelling. For example, is an AE great at creating business cases and demonstrating ROI? If so, this is a great opportunity to share tactics that are working with the entire team and replicate it across all reps and all deals.
Or, as another example where renewals are concerned, you may identify CSMs and AMs who are great at engaging executives and key stakeholders for EBRs and demonstrating value realization and ROI which is helping to secure renewals.
This represents another opportunity to replicate what successful reps are doing across the entire team and their Book of Business.
While there is no denying that this requires a bit of work, as a leader, it is time to start conducting this analysis now so that you will have the ability to make decisions quickly. Start pulling the data and doing the research. If you are a senior leader, work with functional leaders to adjust execution efforts. This is all hands on deck. Have leaders in their respective departments start analyzing the data. If you do this, you will have the ability to make decisions quickly.
If you are a Front Line Manager or a rep, you can do this analysis on your own as well and set the tone and a good example for the rest of the organization. Remember, you don’t have to be a senior leader or a manager to lead.
If you are racking up losses, you can demonstrate that at least you know why and that you have a specific plan on how you will start to improve results.
If you are winning, you can demonstrate why and how you will continue your growth trajectory. Prove your results are no accident, and you can keep delivering in a predictable manner. Executives, investors, and the board love predictability.
When you are ready to execute, identify where you can have some quick wins so you can start gaining momentum and put the wind in your sails. Simultaneously, allocate additional resources to areas where you need to adapt but will require a bit more time.
At the risk of being an alarmist, having a successful 2024 will depend on adaptation for most companies. We aren’t out of the storm yet. If you don’t adapt, the question won’t be whether you will stay afloat or whether you will sink. The real question will be how fast or slow you will sink, and given the current economic situation that continues to create headwinds for a lot of companies, odds are it will take a faster time to get to the bottom than most would like to admit.
On the other hand, if you use data and research to your advantage and act quickly to make the changes needed in order to adapt, you could not only salvage 2024 but come out as a leader in the market.
