When you begin doing win/loss research, it’s important to have the long-term in mind. The following questions are important to consider when developing your long-term plan:
- Are our clients’ needs constant year to year or are there other factors that they need to react to (the economy, regulations, job market, global conditions, etc.))? Is there any cycle to those factors?
- Are our competitors constantly shifting their approach to pricing, adding new features/functionality, positioning?
- How often do we like to provide new information about our market to our sales team?
- How likely are lost customers to respond to you more than a few months after they have made a ‘no go’ decision?
Answering these questions will help you understand whether it is important to have ongoing insights about won and lost deals/opportunities (‘drip’ method) vs. take more of batching approach to gathering this information (cyclical approach).
See future blogs for more details about each approach.