Product camp 2018 final

Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss
Presented to
ProductCamp Boston 2018
12 May 2018
Parmelee Eastman
EastSight Consulting
310 Oakland St., Wellesley, MA 02481
Phone/Fax: 781-416-3686 info@eastsightconsulting.com
www.eastsightconsulting.com
peastman@eastsightconsulting.com

This Presentation is for You
I’ll tailor it to your needs
2
Product
Management? Product Marketing?
Consultant?
What is
Win/Loss?
Been doing it for
years. Looking to
pick up pointers.
Developer?
"Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston 2018

What is Win/Loss?
◼ “An ongoing program of interviewing
buyers who decided for or against your
solution to determine the important
factors in the buyer journey and the
purchase decision.”
◼ Can be B2C via surveys or B2B via surveys or
interviews or mix. This presentation focuses on B2B.
3"Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston 2018

Each Step in Research
Process is Important
4
Step 1
Decisions
Step 2
Information
Step 4
Questions
Step 3
Priorities
Step 5
Interviews
Step 6
Analysis
Step 7
Communicate
Continuous Cycle

◼ The strengths of your
solution vs. weaknesses of
your rivals’ solutions
◼ Customer journey
◼ Buyers’ priorities
– You won despite…..
◼ Acceptable support
◼ Good sales skills
◼ The weaknesses of your
solution vs. strengths of
your rivals’ solutions
◼ Key attribute valued by
your targets missing?
◼ Wrong customer
◼ Pricing
◼ New competitors
5
You can learn just as much from your losses as your wins

Questions Beyond Product
◼ What was the customer journey?
– What other solutions were considered and
how did the customer learn about them?
◼ Who established the decision criteria and
what were they?
◼ Who made the decision?
◼ What were the support requirements?
◼ Unusual purchase requirements

Standard Set of Questions
◼ Reflect the right priorities
◼ Can see a pattern
◼ Can do numerical analyses
◼ Can see trends over time
◼ Can use different interviewers
Questions can be added or deleted
as priorities change

Who Else Can Benefit
◼ Sales – Better targeting, higher and faster
close rate
◼ Marketing – More and possibly new
effective marketing messages and
channels
◼ Finance – Improved cash flow
◼ Operations – Increased predictability
◼ Executive Team – Higher profitability

Typical Win/Loss Process
(Thanks to The Bennion Group for Diagram)
Select wins/losses
to review and why
Report
results
Debrief those
involved with sale
Write up results
of analysis,
report to stake
holders
Determine best approach
(who, when, how)
Interview source(s)
under condition of
anonymity (if needed)
Conduct cross-
functional team
analysis to
identify trends
Yes
No
Considerations may include: Forecasted win or loss, size of
customer, size of opportunity, industry, geography
Create template for internal debriefs:
-Debrief sales team
- Debrief others in contact with
customer including technical, project,
contract and executive personnel
Analyze and
compare with
assumptions
At each process
step, coordinate to
ensure that –
-Customer is not
impacted
-All stakeholders
(including sales)
directly benefit from
insights
Completed reports
reside in a database
accessible to all
participants in the
process
Select for
interview
Determine priority
decisions and craft
question set to match
"Four Ways to Win with
Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston
2018 EastSight Consulting
9

Example 1: Actual
Questions about a Consultant
1. Why did you decide to hire a consultant?
2. What were you looking for in a consultant?
3. Who else did you consider for this project?
4. Why did you pick the winner?
5. What was the process of working together?
6. How often/what method was used to communicate with their team?
7. What types of people were on the team?
8. What were the benefits you expected from the project?
9. Did you receive those benefits?
10. Was the value of the project worth the cost?
11. By the way, what was the cost?
12. Would you work with this company again?

Example 2: Actual
Questions about A/P Rival P 1
◼ Please describe the factors that led to the decision to automate A/P
◼ How many invoices do you process annually?
◼ What is the average number of pages/invoice?
◼ What is the mix of P.O. based invoices versus non-P.O. based invoices? (%)
◼ Do you use a supplier portal or supplier network?
◼ What were you looking for (AP only or areas other than AP)? If so, how important
were the other areas – expense reports, general ledger, fixed assets?
◼ What were your top-level criteria? Functional, technical
◼ What solutions did you consider? Initial list, finalists
◼ Who participated in the decision? Who made it/exercised the most influence?
◼ What was the determining factor(s)? Functional v. technical? Most influential voices?
◼ Why did you select the winning solution?
◼ What was included in the solution: software, service, maintenance, bundled, us v.
them, number of people licensed in AP, in enterprise? What was the price?
◼ How was that price broken down between software licenses and services?
◼ Was the implementation services price a fixed cost or was it a certain price per day?
11"Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston 2018 EastSight Consulting

Example 2 Continued
Questions about A/P Rival
◼ How did (or is) the deployment going?
◼ Implementation plan (number of team members, skill sets, timeframes, milestones).
◼ Is the solution performing as promised? If not, please compare promise v. deliveries
in cost, timeframe.
◼ Have you achieved your objectives from this process?
◼ Is it as maintenance-free if you expected?
◼ Describe differences in price/cost between CLIENT and winning competitor.
◼ How did CLIENT compare to winning competitor in:
◼ Value for the user (AP, AP manager, Business user)?
◼ Completeness of solution (AP, other finance areas)?
◼ Experience in AP automation? In workflow?
◼ Integration with SAP (Oracle or others)?
◼ Analytics (dashboard, reports, etc.)
◼ If you selected RS Inc., did you buy “RS Analyzer?” Mentioned in the sales process?
◼ Purchased? What price? Deployed? How well does it satisfy your needs?
◼ Did you buy “RS Web Board”? Why? Costs?
12"Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston 2018 EastSight Consulting

A/P Rival RS Inc Summary Example
Tailor Your Analyses & Reports to Your Organization
13
Perceived Value RS Inc. works very well for its target user community: SMB US
Organizations:
• Alerts internal people when invoices sent
• Integrates “seamlessly” with Oracle and SAP
• Easy-to-use
• Data quality perceived to be higher than competitive products
RS may be good enough for many organizations
Perceived
Weaknesses
• Less useful for international organizations as language support is
limited to English, French, German, and Spanish
• Only one source used RS Analyzer and felt it was reasonable
functionality
• Firm has little integration experience and recommends third parties
• Coordination between RS and third parties inconsistent
Packaging • No add-on or extras such as expense reports, general ledger, fixed
assets
Pricing • Pro version is $149/month with 100K invoices/month
• Team version is $8,000 for five users and unlimited invoices
• Usually less expensive than competitive products
• 10-15% maximum discounting
"Four Ways to Win with Win/Loss" ProductCamp Boston 2018 EastSight Consulting

Only 20% of US Firms Do Win/Loss
◼ “We’re fine the way we are”
◼ “We’re too busy to do this”
◼ “We already know our customers”
◼ “We don’t really talk with them”
◼ “That’s my account”
◼ “We don’t have the people or the money”
It is true that win/loss costs, but the more resources
devoted to win/loss, the better the result

Starting a Win/Loss Program
Sell the Benefits
Intangible
◼ Alignment between
sales, marketing, and
product management
◼ Better segmentation
◼ Find new markets
◼ Improve sales skills
◼ Knowledge about
competitors
◼ Pick up on trends
quickly
Tangible
◼ Up to 50%
improvement in win
rates (Gartner, 2014)
◼ Other research found
15-30% rise in win
rates (Ellen Naylor)
◼ Depends on the rigor
of the program

Starting a Win/Loss Program
Suggest a Pilot
◼ Start small – with a pilot program
– Minimum of 10 wins and 10 losses
◼ Check on contact info
– Name/position/email/phone
◼ Sales are not the best interviewers
– Salespeople who lost rarely know why
– Salespeople who won may not know why
– Up to 60%, according to consultant Anova, don’t know
– Sales/customer relationship may distort results

Corporate Staff for Interviews
Identify Yourself Honestly
◼ Customers used to receiving post-decision calls
◼ Contact message for losses (re-word to be
comfortable): “We want to work with companies like
yours and we would love to speak with you to better
understand how you made your decision. This is not
to change your mind, but to help us respond more
effectively to your marketplace.”
◼ Caller needs to be persistent, but not a pest
– Call, email, call in any order
◼ My top response rate with good info from client: 50%
◼ Treat “not in the running” losses like any other loss

Summary
◼ Win/Loss is a great approach to
learning valuable customer and
competitor information in a single
project
◼ Start small and expand as organization
recognizes the value
Just do it:
Customers love being listened to

Product camp 2018 final

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