Blog | How to Perform a Win Loss Analysis

Winning feels good, right?

To develop a top-notch sales team, it’s important to keep track of what you’re winning, not just how often you do it.

Wins can be divided up in many different ways – by solution, by vertical, and much more. Each view of your win rate gives you valuable insight.

In truth, there’s not just one win rate, but many smaller ones that all add up.

A win loss analysis is your key to going deeper and understanding your wins. This type of report helps you get at the actionable lessons hidden in the pattern of your wins and losses. That way, you can drill down to the fastest and most powerful ways to improve your sales process.

Today, we’ll learn how to perform this analysis and what to do with your findings.

How to Perform a Win Loss Analysis

It’s easy to get the two most basic kind of win loss figures:

• Win Loss Ratio: Divide number of won opportunities by number of lost opportunities.
• Win Rate: Divide number of won opportunities by number of total opportunities.

Both of these are essential sales statistics, but neither one is a true win loss analysis. To delve deeper into the numbers and see how they impact your business, you need to gather information from a wide range of other sources.

Some data points you can gather as part of your win loss analysis:

Sales Data

• History of sales touches including calls, emails, and meetings with the lead.
• Opportunity status – whether won, lost, or somewhere on the buyer journey.
• Sales assessment of completed deals, whether won or lost, and reasons why.

Prospect Feedback

• Description of the buying process followed by the prospect.
• Prospect’s impressions of your solution and your company.

Demographic Data

• Firmographic facts collected by sales team, like company size and industry.
• Details about the lead as an individual, including job title, tenure, and so on.

Marketing Data

• History of marketing engagement, like site visits, emails clicked, content requested.

A good CRM will help ensure you have all this data at your fingertips from the outset. Without this added convenience, inertia can lead to leaving a true win loss analysis on the back burner.

If you don’t have a CRM yet, we suggest checking out the awesome free CRM from HubSpot.

Eight Types of Win Loss Analysis You Can Get From Your Data

Once you’ve got your data, there are tons of things you can do with it.

Here are the eight most common types of win loss analysis you can run:

1. Overall Win Rate

This gives you the total number of sales opportunities created versus those won.

2. Overall Win Loss Ratio

This focuses on closed deals so you can visualize changes in win ratios over time.

3. Win Rate by Segment

This provides win rates by business unit or vertical, great for tracking expansion.

4. Win Loss Ratio by Representative

Highlight rep credentials like team, tenure, or training that correlate to won deals.

5. Loss Reasons

Look for patterns in leads’ self-reported reasons why a deal ultimately fails to close.

6. Loss Reasons by Representative or Segment

A close read of loss reasons lets you pinpoint rep training needs or uncover objections.

7. Win Loss Rate Against Competitor

Loss rates by rival brand or by market segment may highlight areas for improvement.

8. Win Rate by Marketing Activity

This approach correlates marketing signals like number of website visits to deal wins.

Note that if you want concrete information on loss reasons, it’s vital to know how to conduct a win loss interview. This can be a tricky endeavor. Even leads who are satisfied they made the right decision could soften their reasoning to be polite or avoid disclosing their process.

Share Your Win Loss Analysis Findings With Your Team

Once you have your analysis, putting it into practice is key. The fun thing about a win loss analysis is that it’ll tell you things you can almost always act on right away.

Teams across the enterprise can benefit from a win loss analysis:

• Sales: Look at what’s going right in sales to improve rep or team-level training.
• Marketing: Address customer objections and other loss reasons with new content.
• Product: Emphasize product functionality that improves deal odds versus rivals.
• Services: Adjust interactions to focus on unmet customer needs and concerns.

Because it’s so versatile – and the numbers don’t lie – win loss analysis can be one of the core drivers of improvement in your organization. Performing them quarterly turns them into a competitive advantage that makes a real difference.

And knowing better results are always just around the corner can motivate every member of your sales team.