After doing several rounds of win/loss research, I realized that there is an amazing side benefit that happens almost every time I take on one of these projects.
I have found that not all lost customers are REALLY lost. They may be tagged that way in your CRM by your sales team, but sometimes they just weren’t ready to buy yet and someone got impatient and closed the opportunity before the prospect was really done.
There have been several situations where I have started an interview and heard “We still haven’t selected a vendor, yet”. This can be for several reasons:
- Budget issues
- Organizational changes that stalled the search (merger, new management, etc.)
- Hotter issues took priority
- Etc.
So, that’s GREAT news for my clients…here I am re-engaging that contact in a conversation about their criteria, where they are in the process, who else they looked at, etc. And more IMPORTANTLY, putting my client back on their mind for when they are ready to re-engage.
And the positive vibe they get from this non-sales focused conversation is a very positive one. I have heard very positive comments about the face that my client is interested in learning from the experience and several times, the interview has ended with the contact asking me to have the client get back in contact with them!
That’s a HUGE side benefit to the original research objective…and now my client has some new information about the prospect’s evaluation process which could be just the information they need to have to target their next conversation and close that sale!
I can never PROMISE that I’ll get my clients a sale through our win/loss interviews, but in almost every case, one closed sale with a lost customer that wasn’t really lost will pay for the whole research project!