Recording why you won, which is rarer and more useful

4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Introduction

Businesses that examine losses at all are already unusual. Businesses that examine wins are almost nonexistent, because a win feels self-explanatory: the customer chose us, presumably because we were good. That assumption discards the most directly useful information a business can hold, which is what actually made the difference in the cases that went well.

Wins also have a practical advantage over losses as a source of evidence. The person who can explain them is willing to talk to you, they are pleased with the outcome, and they will answer honestly because there is no awkwardness in the conversation. The response rate is far higher and the answers are more detailed.

1. Recording why you won is easier evidence to collect than losses

The practical advantage.

Customers are happy to explain their reasoning and are already in conversation with you. A question asked in the first week produces a considered answer almost every time. Lost buyers reply to perhaps one message in five; winning customers reply to nearly all of them.

2. Ask what nearly stopped them

The most valuable single question.

Every win has a moment where it might not have happened. That moment is where your process is weakest, and the customer remembers it clearly while a lost buyer will never tell you. Twenty answers to this question will list your process faults in order of severity.

3. Ask who else they considered and why not

The competitive information.

This identifies your actual competitors, which are frequently not the ones you assumed, and what distinguished you. It is the cleanest competitive research available and it costs one question. It also tells you what those competitors are saying, secondhand but accurately.

4. Ask what the deciding factor was

The direct question.

The answer is regularly something you did not consider important: a photograph, a response time, one sentence in the quote, a person's manner on the phone. These are cheap to replicate once identified.

5. Record it in the same place as the losses

The comparison that produces insight.

Wins and losses side by side, with the same fields, is what reveals the difference. Two separate records answer two separate questions and never the one that matters.

6. Look for what the wins have in common

The pattern.

Source, job type, size, how quickly you responded, who handled it. The common factors across twenty wins are a description of the work you should be pursuing.

7. Note which material was actually used

The content evidence.

What they read, what they mentioned, what they forwarded internally. This tells you which of your material is working and which exists only for your own reassurance.

8. Feed it into what you quote for

The commercial output.

If a segment wins consistently and another does not, that is a decision about where to spend effort. Win analysis produces this more clearly than loss analysis, because the sample is more willing to talk.

9. Do it in the first fortnight

The timing requirement.

Memory of the decision fades quickly and is rewritten by the experience of the work itself. Asked six months later, the answers describe the delivery rather than the decision.

Be careful about generalising from wins alone. A factor common to your wins may also be common to your losses, and only the comparison distinguishes a real cause from something that simply happens in every deal.

Conclusion

Collect win reasons as deliberately as loss reasons, because the sample is more willing to talk.

Ask what nearly stopped them, who else they considered and why those were ruled out, and what the deciding factor actually was, record it alongside your losses using the same fields so the two are comparable, look for the factors common to your wins, note which of your material was actually used, feed the findings into what you choose to quote for, and ask within the first fortnight before the memory is overwritten.