Strengths and Advantages

WLA is a systematic analysis of nominated sales resultsboth wins and losses. It encompasses
feedback from strategically important existing clients, former clients, and potential clients.
Conducting win/loss interviews is a direct demonstration to your clients and potential clients
that your firm values its relationship with them.
Interviews are conducted as close as possible to the actual sale or non-sale being investigated to
ensure accurate recall of the circumstances. Because interviews are conducted by an
independent third-party interviewer, information bias is limited, and particular issues relevant
to its business are covered in a more transparent way. Obtaining information that addresses
specific issues ensures meaningful comparison can be made when analyzing the responses
obtained at individual interviews.
Regular and systematic WLA processes provides not only immediate feedback, but can also be
used to compare and uncover trends over time.
The WLA process allows for direct feedback on what the decision-making criteria employed by
your clients, in awarding your firm their business or taking it to a competitor, are. An expert
interviewer can go beyond the standard questionnaire to probe a client and give him or her a
chance to directly express their needs and preferences. This in turn gives your firm the
opportunity to make meaningful changes acting on customer advice to improve practices and
win new sales.
The benefits of conducting WLA extend beyond providing tactics to improve sales. WLA also has
an impact on marketing, product improvement, and research and development. Information
coming out of WLA can be distributed throughout the firm to aid in overall performance
improvements. The results obtained from WLA may be used to inform other strategic programs
within a firm. For example, it may assist in the development of training programs for sales staff
or assist in product improvement projects.
The WLA process will give an indication in real time of the market's response to new
business strategies and products. It will enable the firm to identify and respond to trends over
time in the market and assist in sales forecasting. If undertaken in a systematic way, it will assist
in growing revenues both in the short and long term.
In summary, WLA establishes a market listening and positioning tool with consistent
analysis allowing for improved and informed decision making in an organization by
Helping decision makers understand the customer's perspective.
Providing objective input into sales and marketing strategies.
Identifying opportunities, including target markets, key sales propositions, and winning
attitudes.
Improving business performance at the expense of competitors.
Weaknesses and Limitations
WLA is based on data obtained from interviews arising out of sales results. It is to that extent
reactive and event-driven. Care must be taken to ensure that a good mix of sales results is
followed up. Results will be skewed, for example, if in one round of WLA, only successful sales to
existing clients are analyzed.
A key weakness of this process is that interviews are only as good as the interviewer conducting
them. When an interviewer is inexperienced or has not been thoroughly briefed on the
sensitivities of the market in question, the quality of the data obtained will be compromised. An
inexperienced interviewer may lack the confidence to ask questions beyond those contained in
the standard questionnaire developed for the WLA process. Even the most experienced
interviewer will be unable to gain all the useful information potentially available if they are not
sufficiently aware of the issues in the market to know when to probe for further detail in an
interview and when it is not relevant.
There is no value in information gathered if it is not systematically disseminated to those who
can act on it. As is a danger with any information-gathering process in a firm, it is possible for
the results of WLA to end up being fiercely guarded rather than distributed. On the other hand,
it is possible to undermine the process by giving all of the results to everyone and no one having
time to read them, let alone act on them.
The value of WLA will only be as good as the system set up to inform interested parties of the
results. Information taken out of contextfor example, in an attempt to extrapolate widely from
one individual analysiswill not be reliable. The true value of WLA is in the ongoing process.
WLA must be conducted systematically and in a timely fashion. Interviews must be organized
and followed up as soon as possible after the sale is won or lost. Delay in interviewing may
result in inaccurate recall, so the analysis performed does not reflect the real reasons behind the
decision to do business with your firm or with your competition.
WLA itself should be conducted regularly to give truly comparable results. The analysis must
not, for example, be shelved while more important issues are dealt with, as sporadic WLA will
not give reliable information.
The fact that WLA focuses on sales results may lead to a politicizing of the process within a firm.
The sales team may be reluctant to cooperate fully with the process if they feel they are being
singled out unfairly. Other parts of the firm may try to ambush the process to push their own
agendas. The team responsible for running WLA must be very carefully chosen and trained to
ensure the members fully understand the WLA process and are prepared to implement it
properly.
Process for Applying the Technique
Numerous writers in the field suggest that there are up to seven steps to consider in creating
and implementing a WLA process. These steps are shown in Figure 15.1. Each of the steps in the
WLA process are described next.
Figure 15.1 The win/loss process

Step 1: Determine the Target Segments and Identify Prospects
Target the right accounts to analyze and the right interval to conduct analysis. A good
starting point is to look at the accounts that generate most of your firm's revenue (the 80/20
rule80% of a firm's revenue comes from 20% of its customers). However, other
considerations in choosing whom to interview may include whether your firm wishes to pick up
business from particular potential clients or ex-clients or whether there are plans to introduce
new products to the market. Specific companies that meet the firm's chosen criteria need to be
identified and singled out and reviewed to ensure that the targets are worth the investment.
Powell and Allgaier suggest that one needs to start by segmenting the specific market
group or target, particularly if the purpose of WLA is to identify sales sources. Once target
segments and their criteria are identified, key information needs to be collected to qualify
potential prospects.
The interval over which you run your WLA will depend on your firm's requirements. Monthly
analysis requires a greater commitment of time and money but will provide very quick market
feedback. Some firms prefer to run a large win/loss study annually.
The interval chosen will also be affected by how quickly you wish to be able to act on the
information you obtain as well as the frequency of sales opportunities experienced.
Step 2: Understand Internal Cultural Issues
Understanding your firm's culture will provide a guide as to how information will be used. For
example, in a learning and consultative culture, sales representatives and their managers might
become highly involved in both the collection and evaluation of information.
It is also important to ensure that involvement in the process extends beyond the sales team.
Other key stakeholders need to be clearly identified, and creating cross-functional teams may be
a way of addressing the differing needs of critical groups.
The results of WLA have implications that go beyond increasing sales. To get the most out of the
process, the team running the program should include members from other departments and
have the support of senior management. Schulz points out the wisdom of involving senior
management (even up to the CEO) to help to keep internal politics out of WLA. The objectives of
the program must also be well defined. The roles of designing and implementing the program
should be clearly understood, as these may be assigned to different people.
Those who are likely to be affected by the information obtained from the WLA program should
be educated about the process to ensure they support it. This should reduce internal resistance
to WLA. Some staff, particularly in sales, may feel that their performance is being unfairly
singled out for attention by the program. Staff should be reassured that the WLA program has
wider implications for the firm than simply monitoring the performance of individuals in the
sales team.
The decision must be made whether to use an independent third party to conduct the
interviews or whether to use your sales team.
Use of a third-party interviewer has cost implications. It will also require a commitment of time
from internal staff to brief the interviewer. The use the firm intends to make of the information
will also direct the decision of who conducts interviews. When the results of the interviews will
be used in part to evaluate the performance of members of the sales team, Schulz suggests
keeping sales staff involvement in the interview process to a minimum. However, parallel
interviews of client and sales representative can reveal valuable information about the different
perceptions they have of the same sales negotiations.
Step 3: Develop the Questionnaire
A WLA questionnaire needs to cover a number of broad areas. Naylor suggests four, as
follows:
Sales attributesThis will cover the professionalism of your sales team, the quality of
the relationship your firm has with the client, and the esteem in which the client holds
your firm compared to your competitors.
Company reputationThis includes questions about the perception of your firm's and
your competitors' image in the marketplace, the stability of your firm, and its reliability
as a supplier and the quality and performance of your products.
Product attributesThis is a wide area basically covering whether your products
actually perform as promoted and covers issues of price and technology.
Service issuesThese questions will cover the delivery and implementation,
maintenance/after sales service, and training provided to clients.
Depending on the purpose of the WLA, other areas that might be included in the questionnaire
could address matters relating to how the purchase decision will be made. Will it be made by a
group or individual? What are the decision criteria? When will the decision be made? Are there
other stakeholders involved?
Another consideration will be the sophistication of the analysis you plan to carry out on the
results. When analysis will stop at the quick identification of market trends, numerous detailed
questions may not be necessary. When statistical analysis is the aim, the information must be
sufficiently detailed to address the required level of analysis and still be of practical value.
Standard issues need to be identified in the questionnaire to ensure that the data from multiple
interviews can be effectively analyzed together. At the same time, some flexibility in the
interview process will enable valuable exploration of individual situations.