Unlocking Sales Success: The Power of Win-Loss Analysis in CRM

Companies rely on their sales reps to track win-loss reasons in the CRM. There’s just one problem, your CRM’s closed-lost reason might be wrong 85% of the time. After conducting 1,000s of win-loss interviews and surveys for their customers, Clozd determined the best way to get the truth is through a win-loss analysis.

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Join Brandon Bussey, Founding Partner at Unicorn Revenue Operations, Spencer Dent, CEO and Co-Founder at Clozd, and Camela Thompson, Founder at Camela Thompson Creative, as they share win-loss analysis best practices that will help you understand your customers better while also increasing your win rates.

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“Win-loss analysis allows you to give the voice of the buyer to the rest of the org. You don’t have to play a game of telephone.” - Spencer Dent

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Are you struggling to improve your win rates? Most of us search for a solution by trawling through CRM data, which can be tedious and rife with inaccuracies. A win-loss analysis, the practice of systematically capturing and analyzing the reasons you won or lost sales opportunities, can give you the confidence to make strategic GTM changes. 

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Spencer Dent, CEO at Clozd, a SaaS platform that plugs customer interviews and survey responses directly into your CRM, believes that a win-loss analysis is the best way to provide you with sales insights that can help you win more deals, faster.

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Securing buy-in to conduct a win-loss analysis

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“A lot of times, data doesn’t change minds, but stories do. If you can get the story from the customer, record it, and show people, it is so much more impactful.” - Camela Thompson

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To convince your executive team to spend money on a new vendor, like Clozd, bring their attention to the results companies see after conducting a win-loss analysis: reduced churn, improved customer retention, newly identified fertile pockets of business, and, especially, honing your product market fit and ICP.  

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You’ll also need buy-in from across the organization. Start with your sales reps and make sure that they understand that the analysis is intended to help them sell more and make more money, not just add more work to their plates. 

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Don’t forget to talk to your product managers to secure their buy-in. Ask them what they would like to find out from this analysis. New insights can help them prove theories they have about customer needs or plan out their feature roadmap.

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Best practices for a successful win-loss program

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• Secure executive sponsorship - the best programs are top down initiatives where the C-suite is committed to understanding and adopting feedback
• Integrate your analytics with your CRM - Ensure that your win-loss analytics are accessible to all GTM teams 
• Automate feedback collection - create a continuous stream of insights flowing back to all stakeholders for their review
• Communicate across departments - drive widespread adoption and share insights in real time 
• Make it easy for reps - connect all customer feedback to the opportunity so reps can learn about their own deals and follow any strategic recommendations 
• Mix it up - use a combination of surveys for transactional deals and interviews for strategic, larger deals 

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Driving change with your results

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“You might know that your UI is a problem, but knowing that 80% of lost deals mention your UI as a factor will help you target your biggest problem first.” - Spencer Dent

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Many companies feel that they already understand why they’re winning and losing deals, yet still struggle to improve win rates. Unless you’ve been flying blind, a win-loss analysis shouldn’t bring any crazy surprises. Instead, the intent of a win-loss analysis is to confirm your hunches and give you the data you need to tackle whichever problems are holding you back from an improved win rate. 

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