Win or lose, ask:
1. What did we do well? If you won this will tell you why; either way, it will tell you what to use again in the future.

2. What could we have done better? If you lost this will tell you why; either way, it will tell you what NOT to use again in the future.

I find this approach is non-confrontational, and therefore customers are happier to talk to you on this basis.

Seriously though, you’re right of course. Binary forecasting (or more accurately – using binary forecasting as part of pro-active pipeline management) is a great way of really focusing on the winnable deals. In this case you’d be using the criteria you develop from your win (and loss) reviews to identify what really was winnable – then your binary forecast and pipeline management would ensure that was where you put your effort.

Ian

Great insight… focus on how to win, rather on how not to lose.

Loss review = learning how not to lose.

Win review = learning how to win.

Learning how not to lose is very different from learning how to win. First of all the emotion evoked with losing is negative, whereas with winning it is positive. To win you must be in a positive frame of mind… success breeds success as they say.

Look at sport… you will often see a team deploy a ‘we must avoid losing strategy’ against a team who deploy a ‘we can win strategy’… guess who wins?… it’s the same in business.

Final thought… you mention about a previous customer realising they should not run after every deal, but focus on those that they believe they can win… sounds awfully close to binary forecasting!

Great Post!

This a remarkable insight. Recently we lost a major bid. And immediately following the bad news was a review call. I personally call this a witch hunt. During the course of the call it became apparent that the reason we lost the bid was due to the appearance of our corporate facility. Can you beleive this? We lost a bid on account of how our buildings appear. I realised this was an experience in futility.

From now on I will institutionalise the win analysis, it definitely is better than indulging in the witch hunts!

I redid your analysis. On my google search we have about 796,000 sites exactly matching “sales analysis”; 913 matching “lost sales analysis” (.11%) and 22 matching “won sales analysis” (.0027%) – so pretty much still the same results. And as far as I can see, all the “won sales analysis” hits are something to do with you and your blog – so without you, pretty much no one would be looking at this!

I’m off over to your site now to download the template..

Ian

PS Seriously though, I really like you idea of identifying the trigger events common to won sales. Historically I’ve done a lot of analyses where we tried to identify common customer needs we had served – but the problem is that these are often not visible from outside the client and so really difficult to use as a means of generating new business. But by focusing on trigger events – which usually are visible outside – you get something practical you can work with

Here is something I find very interesting, when you search Google for the term sales analysis – by using quotes around the words “sales analysis” – you’ll find somewhere around one million web sites that talk about “sales analysis”.

When you want to understand how you lost a sale and you search Google for the term “lost sales analysis”, you will find around 1,000 web sites that talk about how to analyze the business that you lose.

When you want to understand how you won a sale, so you can replicated your biggest wins, and you search Google for the term “won sales analysis” you will find, on my last check, less than 25 pages.

Of all the web sites on the Internet that talk about sales analysis, less than 0.1% talk about how to analyze the sales you lose and less than .0025% talk about how to win more business by analyzing the sales that you have already won.

To help people conduct a ‘Won Sales Analysis’ that also identifies how to identify the ‘Trigger Events’ that lead up to winning a piece of business I have placed a won sales analysis template at http://www.WonSalesAnalysis.com.