What is Win-Loss Analysis?

Win-Loss Analysis is a qualitative market feedback practice designed to help you see your business from the outside in. As the name implies, Win-Loss speaks directly to the buying process of your customers.


What is the Win-Loss process?

The Win-Loss process has 3 discrete stages:

  1. Win-Loss Research – Usually phone interviews with buyers using open-ended questions.
  2. Win-Loss Analysis – Parsing of the information pulled from the phone interviews to find themes and patterns.
  3. Win-Loss Reporting and Feedback – The results are presented and used to better know your markets, improve processes or products.


What can you learn with Win-Loss?

Win-Loss is a unique opportunity to hear directly from your buyers. Why do they buy? How are their decisions made? Win-Loss is your chance to get those answers. We recommend asking targeted buying-process questions like these.

  • What business or team problem was your buyer trying to solve when they decided to find a solution?
  • How did your buyer go about selecting a vendor?
  • What media or thought leaders did your buyer consult before they made a decision?
  • Could you have done something differently that would have given you a better chance of winning the business?
  • Does your buyer feel that they got the value they expected from their purchase?
  • How did your marketing efforts impact the decision?
  • Does your team have the right messages and content?

You can see how knowing the answers to questions like these will help inform your product and processes.


What are some of the specific benefits of Win-Loss?

Win-Loss will help you in these areas and more.

  • Enhance your understanding of the buying process for your product or service.
  • Craft messages that better resonate with your market.
  • Expand your understanding of your competitors and your place in the competitive mix.
  • Get an outside-in perspective on your product or service’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • Improve the fidelity of your Buyer personas.

But most importantly, with Win-Loss you are hearing from your market in an open-ended, qualitative way. That context can feed back into your organization to drive continuous improvement.

Are you ready to learn from your buyers?

Win-Loss Analysis

Let’s put the power of Win-Loss to work for you.


“The plug-in nature of working with The Win-Loss Agency was a real win for us. They were up to speed quickly and brought us useful qualitative insights even sooner than expected. It was all very easy.”

— Todd Gould, CEO, Loren Data Corp.