Ryan Sorley

Real time competitive insight direct from buyers. Easy way to collect this information is via a win/loss interviews. Simply ask questions regarding who else they considered and why. Dig into areas such as brand, product, sales experience, pricing, culture. Sales teams always perk up when the data has been collected from the very buyers they are selling to. It gives them a strong frame of reference for how the market views their solution versus the competitition. It also may help to shed light on why a deal was won or lost. Good luck!

Full disclosure, I work for DoubleCheck Research http://www.doublecheckresearch.com a full service win/loss firm in Boston just focused on B2B tech. When looking for a win/loss firm, you may want to take into consideration a few things: * Focus—Is the firm truly focused and specialized in win/loss analysis or is win/loss analysis just one of many things they do. * Track record of success—Who does the win/loss firm have as referenceable clients. * Analysts—Who is conducting the interviews, what is their background and comfort-level with technology. * Methodology—From start to finish, what is the process that they follow to build a program that aligns with your needs and vision. How do they come-up to speed on you and your market. What is the process they follow to conduct their research. * Conversion rates—What are their conversion rates (lead to interview). * Technology to support the program—What tools do they use to support your program. Best in class survey and reporting tools? Home grown analytics platforms? * Deliverables—What does the win/loss report deliverable look like? How easy is it to understand? How easy would it be for others to understand? * Analysis—What type of executive summary deliverable do they offer? * Other services—What other services do they provide? I hope that this is helpful!

Creating an ongoing w/l analysis program can be exciting. There are many things to consider when building a program. I have outlined three below to get you started. 1. Gain stakeholder buy-in (leaders in marketing, sales, product, competitive)—Reach out to each leader to ask them what they would like to learn through the program. By doing this, you're gaining their buy-in and they become that much more interested in the outcome. 2. Craft an interview guide and online survey—Using the stakeholder input, you can build a few data collection tools that align to their needs. It's important to have a guide for the interviews. With that said, don't be worried about going off script to probe into areas of interest. After all, we're looking for the buyer to tell their story. 3. Build you target list—Set some general criteria for your target list so that you can zero in on those companies that are most qualified to participate. At a minimum, we recommend interviewing people within 90 days of the decision, those that went through each of your sales stages, and competitive scenarios. 4. Leverage tools—Consider using tools such as SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics to collect data via an online survey, Fuze or GoToMeeting for your conference call bridge and call recorder, and find a transcription service that works well for you such a Chorus.ai. Best of luck! Happy to chat if you have more questions.

Consider creating a pre-interview online survey and sharing with the interviewee prior to the interview. Done well, this will help you collect a ton of structured data over time so that you can conduct trends analysis. Their response to the survey will help you quickly identify where to probe during the interview. As an example, they may have selected you but scored the salesperson very low in a number of areas. Build an interview guide so that you're consistenly asking the same general questions interview to interview. This will help you identify trends over time. It's just a guide so be prepared to go off script to probe into areas of interest. The interview guide should include key sections such as business drivers, selection criteria, influencers, product, price, competition, sales. Each question within the sections should be clear and concise (to avoid confusion and wasted time) as well as open-ended. Ask for permission to record the interviews and have them transcribed (we us Rev.com). This will allow you to go back and listen to verify what you heard. Combine the transcript with your interview guide to generate the Q& section of your report. From there, write a short summary for each section to create your key findings/executive summary. Favorite question, "If tomorrow, you were the sales reps boss, what advice would you provide to them regarding improvement opportunities?"