Thanks Bob, indeed, as Bob is suggesting, asking about the first steps in the client's buying cycle is an interesting exercise, providing great insights into your firm's position, why these clients buy and so on. Very useful for example for both lead generation efforts and in fact helping to inspire your future deal strategies.

A good way to have the client speak about this is to simply ask them to recount the 'story of the procurement' starting from the point in time when it was not even an official procurement project yet.

Another point that would help with what Bob is suggesting is to make sure you speak with a variety of levels at the client. Typically, you may find that the view of the procurement department for example is more detailed and more focused on the later phases of the procurement, even though one now starts to see procurement departments that very actively set a true procurement strategy. Conversely, the view of the business sponsor of the project may be more about the why the client is procuring the project, why they decided to go outside for this kind of service and so on.

Geert

Geert's recognition that one of the primary roles of win-loss analyses are to help improve future win rates is spot on. I'd suggest that the win-loss interview for contested deals should cover the start - as well as the end - of the prospect buying process.

For example, what caused the prospect to recognise that the status quo had changed and they had an issue that needed to be investigated? Who did they turn to for advice? How did they decide which suppliers to consider?

When we've conducted win-loss analyses on behalf of clients (and we must have completed hundreds of them by now), these "what caused them to look" issues are often every bit as illuminating as the "what caused them to buy" ones.

Bob Apollo
Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners
www.inflexion-point.com/solutions/win-loss-analysis/