How to Increase the # of Responses for Win/Loss Calls

We often hear from portfolio companies that they have a hard time getting an adequate response when they reach out for win/loss calls, in particular on the loss calls. It’s natural to want to chase those lost deals and the ‘ones that got away’ so companies end up spending a disproportionate amount of energy trying to schedule those calls, when in reality, the win calls are just as valuable, and sometimes even more so.

Remember that the goal of the win/loss calls is to capture rich market intel from your prospects during their buying decision so companies should aim to conduct as many win/loss calls as they can, and worry less about whether it’s a win call or loss call. See below for some tips on how to increase the # of win/loss calls and refer to the full playbook for more details.

Building win calls as part of the customer onboarding process is one of the fastest way to get more win calls in the short term

Inspect your current customer onboarding process and the handoff between sales and customer success or account management. Build win calls into the onboarding process as an automatic first step.

Remember, the win call should be conducted BEFORE the customer implements your solution since it’s meant to capture their feedback on the buying process and not with the actual product itself.

Communicate it to your customers at the time of closing and don’t make it optional. If it’s built in as part of their customer journey, they will just view it as a step in their onboarding process and a way for them to share why they selected your firm and what they hope to get out of your solution - win/win for both the customer and for the company.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Win/Loss program

Why doesn’t sales conduct the win/loss process?

Sales is a critical part of the win/loss process both in terms of passing the accounts that should be called as well as the recipients of the information, but sales should never be the ones conducting the call. The goals of win/loss calls are to gather uncensored feedback about your sales process in a sales-free environment and that’s difficult to do if the person they’re speaking to was involved in the process. You want to position it to your customer/prospect as “this is not a sales call” and truly keep it that way. The customer/prospect is likely to not also provide as honest feedback if they’re worried about offending their sales rep.

Should we use a 3rd party to conduct the calls?

There are 3rd party firms that conduct win/loss calls which some companies may use because the team may have bandwidth issues in reaching your customers/prospects and you are also likely to get even more unbiased responses if your customer is talking to a 3rd party. However, the tradeoff is that it does not allow the portfolio company to fully understand the details of the answers and does not allow for more nuances that only people from the portfolio company can ask and probe on. ParkerGale recommends conducting win/loss calls in-house initially and potentially evolving your program for there. This is also dependent on the number of transactions you close each month.

Can we send out a survey questionnaire instead of doing a call?

For companies with a high volume of transactions, it may not be feasible to conduct a win/loss call for each one so a web survey may be an option. A web survey may also be an option for companies where they have a mix of average selling prices (ASP) - you can send web surveys for lower ASP deals or potentially for renewal deals as well.

What’s the ratio of wins to loss calls?

You are always likely to get more win calls than loss calls because loss calls are hard to get a hold of - and that’s okay. Win calls should be conducted as part of your standard onboarding process and will generally yield nearly just as valuable information as the loss calls because you are capturing the rich intel from a customer while they were in the heat of a buying process.

How do we get more loss calls?

Loss calls are always hard to get but there are a number of ways to increase that yield. 1) Ensure that you are only targeting losses that have made it further down the sales funnel. If a prospect has invested more time with you, the hope is that they would provide the courtesy of giving feedback. If they’ve done one demo and kicked some tires, they’re likely to not and that feedback probably isn’t valuable. 2) Warm handoff from sales to whoever is conducting the loss calls may help bridge that gap more. 3) Offering an incentive such as a $50-100 electronic gift card can help entice loss calls and signals that you realize their time is valuable and that their feedback is important. (However, be wary that certain industries or companies may have rules against accepting incentives).

Do we do these for new accounts or renewals?

Both! New logo win calls should always be conducted as part of the customer onboarding process. New logo losses should also be conducted if a deal makes it to later stages. All of this information helps improve your conversion rates and win ratios. Renewals and churn calls are also just as valuable, especially if your customer tested the market and considered other competitors. Understanding why a customer chooses to stay or leave, will help you improve your retention metrics.

Why not only focus on lost deals?

Everyone always wants to chase “the one that got away” but oftentimes loss calls are higher effort and lower yield. While it’s helpful to understand why you didn’t win a deal, it’s also important to recognize that in some cases you WANT to lose a deal especially if they don’t fall in your ideal customer profile and would be difficult to serve. Doing both win and loss calls help provide both perspectives - with win calls, you can start to gather common themes of why a customer chooses you and therefore give you more insight on how to find other similar customers like that.

How many win / loss calls should we conduct?

At a minimum, ParkerGale recommends conducting at least 5 win/loss calls a month, or around ~15 a quarter. The majority of these are likely to be win calls and in an ideal world, depending on how many new logo deals you’re closing a quarter, you would conduct win calls with all of them assuming you don’t have an incredibly high volume of new deals. But by conducting 1-2 win/loss calls a week on average, valuable themes will start to emerge very quickly and you will be able to identify trends that you can start actioning on quickly whether it’s sales, product or marketing related.