Most sales teams guess why they win and lose. Win loss analysis replaces the guess with what buyers actually say, counted across many deals. Done well, it tells you which companies to target, when they are ready, and how to beat the alternatives. This guide covers who to interview, a question guide you can copy, how to analyse the answers, and how to use them.
01
What win loss analysis is for in sales
It is often run for the product team. For sales, it answers three questions. To learn from all your customers rather than single deals, use these customer research questions instead.
Targeting
Who buys
Which kinds of company you win, and which you keep losing. That sharpens your ideal customer profile.
Timing
When they buy
What happened at the company before it started looking. That is where your buying signals come from.
Positioning
Why they choose
What tipped the decision, for you or for an alternative. That shapes how you sell against each one.
02
Who to interview, and when
- Wins and losses, both. Interviewing only wins tells you what you already believe.
- "No decision" deals too. Many lost deals were lost to doing nothing, not to a competitor.
- The person who decided. Plus, where you can, someone who would have used it day to day.
- While it is fresh. Within a few weeks of the decision, before the details fade.
- Someone other than the salesperson. Buyers are more candid with a neutral interviewer than with the person who sold to them.
03
The win loss interview guide
Keep the interview to about 30 minutes. Ask open questions, and spend most of the time on the trigger and the decision. Copy the guide below and adapt it to your market.
Interview guide
WIN LOSS INTERVIEW GUIDE Deal: [company] Outcome: [won / lost / no decision] Date decided: [date] BACKGROUND [ ] What does your role cover, and how were you involved in this decision? [ ] What was going on in the business when you started looking? THE TRIGGER [ ] What made this a priority at that moment, rather than six months earlier? [ ] Was there a specific event, deadline or change that started it? THE PROCESS [ ] Who else was involved, and who had the final say? [ ] How did you build the shortlist? [ ] What did you need to see or prove before deciding? THE ALTERNATIVES [ ] Which other options did you look at, including doing nothing? [ ] What did each do well, and where did each fall short for you? THE DECISION [ ] What was the main reason for the final choice? [ ] What nearly changed your mind? [ ] How did price compare with the other factors? AFTER [ ] Looking back, what should we have done differently? [ ] Is there anything you expected to be asked that we did not ask?
04
How to analyse wins and losses
One vivid story can drown out twenty quiet ones. Treat every interview the same way, then count.
- Tag every interview with the same list. Trigger, decision maker, alternatives considered, main reason, price sensitivity.
- Count, with the denominator. Write "7 of 20 wins", never "many wins". The base matters as much as the count.
- Compare wins with losses. A reason that shows up equally in both is not why you win.
- Check what happened the year before. To find a real trigger, compare the year before the purchase with the year before that, as described in buying signals.
- Check what was actually bought. Make sure each deal is really in your category before you count it.
For a worked example of counting events before real purchases, see our report on what comes before a B2B purchase.
05
How to use what you find
Win loss analysis is most useful when it changes something you do next quarter.
- Update your ideal customer profile. Add the traits your wins share and the disqualifiers your losses share, using the ideal customer profile template.
- Turn real triggers into signals. The events that kept coming up before wins are the ones to watch for in new accounts.
- Sharpen your competitor notes. Feed what buyers said about each alternative into a competitor analysis.
- Fix the process. If deals stall at the same step, that step needs work. Often it is the first call, which better discovery call questions can fix.
06
Common win loss analysis mistakes
Asking only the salesperson. Their view matters, but it is not the buyer's.
Interviewing only wins. You learn most from the deals you lost.
Trusting price as the reason. "Too expensive" is often the polite answer. Ask what it was compared with.
Acting on one story. Wait until a pattern shows across several deals.
Not feeding it back into qualification. Reasons you lose should become questions you ask when you qualify leads.
Doing it once. Run it every quarter, so changes in the market show up early.
07
The win loss analysis checklist
Before you share the findings
- You interviewed wins, losses and no decision deals.
- You spoke to the person who decided, soon after the decision.
- Every interview was tagged with the same list.
- Every finding is written as a count with its denominator.
- Each reason was compared across wins and losses.
- Each deal was checked as really being in your category.
- Each finding has an owner and a change attached to it.
What we have seenIn one study of a market's deals, 7 of the 14 deals credited to competing agencies turned out to be website builds, not the service being compared. Counting them as competitor wins would have described the wrong market.
08
Where to go next
Win loss analysis is one input to targeting. For the whole system it feeds, read outbound lead generation, explained.