Win/Loss
In the downturn of 2008–2009 a client once said: It’s critical to be market leader 1, 2 or 3. It’s a killer to be number 4.
No one wants to fight for market share in a downturn because it’s often a race to the bottom. Buyers want to play it safe, make de-risk decisions, not upset the applecart, and not make big moves between vendors unless the savings for value are so compelling. It’s why start-ups fail during that time, too. They can’t get traction, new budgets are hard to find, and investors are demanding profitability. In comes win/loss and its importance.
While every client is different, the most common thread to the win/loss analysis we do, focuses on two to three key vendors and why they are winning and losing at a specific product category level.
In doing win/loss, it’s essential to first understand the business case for the work; is it product enhancements? Better GTM positioning? To stem a tide of non-renewals? Is it more strategic — to prioritize a list of M&A targets? Some of these topics are intertwined but first and foremost clarity about why win/loss is essential.
Our approach then focuses on the product category, its use case, along with target buyers and users. What is the offering designed to do for whom? The competitors for review are finalized — usually it’s no more than 2–5. The company sponsoring the work is always compared alongside.
We complete robust secondary research and business briefings with these vendors, complete interviews with customers (won and lost) to understand needs, product and business attribute importance, vendor perception on these dimensions and to discuss and understand win/loss rationale.
Attributes include things like product/feature functionality, messaging, service and support or after-market requirements, price perception as well as things like ease of doing business/brand/sales professionalism and other soft areas that factor into decisions, especially if products are commoditized and easily displaced or replaced.
At Outsell our win/loss deliverables always include:
- An executive summary of findings including SWOT, client opportunities, and Outsell recommendations
- Insights from interviews and market analysis — what did we uncover from interviews and business briefings? What are their implications?
- Vendor comparison’s side-by-side along the dimensions studied and along the most important attributes that matter. Here we also look at collateral/messaging/marketing to see how the vendors compare vis a vis what the market says matters most.
- Finally — What is the rationale for win/loss? What steps must the client take to improve/protect win/loss. We always deliver recommendations and next steps to ensure what we advise is concrete and actionable.
One study we did showed our client had market dominance largely on product/technical features but was losing on ease of doing business and approachable marketing. It was an engineering-led company, and the market couldn’t hear/see/understand some of the great business benefits of working with them because their number two competitor did a better job of ‘keeping it real’ and making the business rationale easier to understand.
They were losing customers and risked losing share as they got absorbed by a strategic and the number two was operating with more autonomy and faster/nimbler under a PE-backed owner. It all came into play. We shared a prioritized list of tangible fixes and left them with a roadmap on what next.
Sometimes it’s as simple as different messaging for sales. Sometimes the product needs real fixes. Most of the time it’s somewhere in between but knowing what to fix that moves the needle vs. what customers complain about that doesn’t is important too.
Once again we’re in a tumultuous marketplace — thanks to stock-market performance, concerns about a possible recession, inflation persisting and existential threats coming from and going on within the US government. If you are Politico right now selling to the government the risk to revenue is existential. If you are selling ‘seats’ to the Department of Education and it’s halved by 50% — it is existential. One needs to be finding new markets and protect what can be protected. Win/loss is a key part of the puzzle.
Find the white space and protect your flank. Enable your sales team. Improve product-market fit and messaging.