Benefits of Using a 3rd-party Vendor for Sales Intelligence Work

Any sales intelligence program is probably better than none, but eventually, you'll want to find ways to increase your effectiveness, productivity and results. At some point, you'll need to consider whether or not a 3rd-party vendor makes sense.

As with all outsourced work, there is a trade off. Internally resources know the company culture and climate. External service providers bring expertise and methodologies that may increase the value of the intelligence initiative. External providers cost money. They will send a bill. You will have to justify expenditures. Internal efforts may be less expensive, but mostly just appear that way. The expense of the intelligence may be spread out over many paychecks, real estate, hard costs and such, but never actually tallied and compared side-by-side with an invoice from a third-party.

Some other points to consider are included below:

Can’t we do this in-house?
Many companies claim to have performed Win Loss research, but further investigation often reveals they have only captured information from their sales representatives. Although this is a very important aspect of Win Loss, such information usually relates to pricing and products only. True Win Loss Analysis not only captures information from your sales representatives, but also from the evaluators, decision makers, approvers, and users in your competitive wins and losses.

Analyzing lost sales opportunities is never a pleasant task, which is why companies tend to focus most of their attention and effort on gathering information about their competitive wins. However, it is a well-known fact that we tend to learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. For this reason, it is critical that a company expend the necessary resources to analyze and completely understand its competitive losses.

What are the benefits of using an independent third-party to capture Win Loss information?
A Win Loss Analysis conducted by an unbiased third party will give you a complete picture of what is taking place in your company’s marketplace. It will also provide you with the means to track and measure the effectiveness of your current and revised marketing strategies and sales processes.


Capturing what took place during the sales cycle of wins and losses can be a labor- intensive, time-consuming and difficult task, especially if you don’t have the appropriate expertise. Furthermore, it may be impossible for an organization to get unbiased, factual information without the help of an experienced third party. Unlike an outside, objective third-party; your in-house researchers will often find buyers unwilling to reveal their real decision criteria for fear the sales manager may attempt to reengage them in the sales process. When this occurs the data upon which you’re making critical decisions may not be accurate.



If I'm missing any pieces of the decision-making puzzle, drop me a line. Let's chat (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)