By Simon Knowles

IT and Business Process Outsourcing companies spend a considerable amount of time and money pursuing sales opportunities however many fail to capitalise on capturing and tracking valuable customer perceptions and competitor insights as to why they won or lost an opportunity.

For companies that do carry out internal assessments, these organisations often run the risk of making decisions based on fragmented (and at times incorrect) information from internal employees who are not in an objective position to gather and share unbiased information.

One way to overcome these challenges is to use a third party organisation to help implement an independent, objective and systematic win/loss analysis process that provides actionable intelligence for improving sales performance.

So what are the benefits to this approach?  

  • Gives you greater insights as to why you won or lost as the client often feels more comfortable about telling the “home truths” to an independent person;
  • Provides a truly objective analysis of the bid and provides senior managers with unbiased actionable insights;
  • Gives you a better understanding of your competitor bid activities and sales strategies;
  • Improves sales performance and win rates through the consistent application of lessons learned;
  • Helps benchmark and track the strengths of your company’s sales effectiveness, solutions, products and services against your competition.

Getting Started

Before any client engagement, we always stress the importance of ensuring the win/loss questionnaire and reporting templates are tailored to your (the clients) specific requirements. It is also important to put in place a systematic trend management and reporting process by implementing, for example, a quarterly review of all deals in order to highlight the trends and key issues that need to be addressed.

With now over 180 outsourcing providers competing for opportunities in Europe alone, accurate and timely intelligence is critical to gaining that elusive sales edge. So if you would like to find out more about implementing an effective win/loss analysis programme for enhancing sales performance, please email simon.knowles@essential-edge.com.