Do You Know Why You Win Sales Opportunities?

It is very common that companies approach us at Primary Intelligence requesting the answer to “why do we lose?”

At Primary Intelligence, we strongly recommend analyzing won sales opportunities with the same diligence as your losses. The benefits are too strong to ignore:

• Without win information , it is difficult to understand what you are doing right. How can you replicate your best practices if you don’t really know what they are?



• Good information on your wins will provide a story you can tell to other prospects in similar situations.



• You can increase your library of reference information with some detailed win information.



• Using the same interview guide, you can measure performance gaps between the wins and losses. Eventually, you will identify consistent weaknesses that can be addressed.



• With wins and losses, you can populate predictive analytics to create strategic plans.

In one of our recent wins, we were pleased to find that part of our selling cycle differentiated us from our competitor:

QAD recently chose to contract with Primary Intelligence for win loss and competitive intelligence service because of its familiarity and positive prior experience with the vendor. The Company also considered [a competitor], but Rod Sidrow, competitive strategy manager, said that there was not much of a sales cycle involved and that selecting Primary Intelligence was a straightforward choice. He recognized the strength of PI’s product, asserting that once he had seen what it had to offer, “[He] didn’t need to look any further.”

Part of what made Primary Intelligence’s offering so appealing was that Sidrow got to experience what the actual product would look like before making the purchase. Primary Intelligence offered him two free sample opportunities written specifically for his business to review, but Sidrow had trouble even obtaining a sample of [the competitor’s] past work.

Sales and Marketing were both pleased to find that the sales tools and messages worked even better than anticipated. This type of feedback (along with hundreds of other data points) have helped move Primary Intelligence into a leadership position in Win Loss, Account Retention, Target Profiling and Customer Loyalty. With information from our wins, we understand what our clients value and how we can leverage our strengths to make the strongest sales case possible.

I recommend that losses be studied, lessons learned and corrective action taken. But, don’t ignore the wins. They can teach you just as much.

Let’s chat about this sometime. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)