Your win rate is (still) wrong. We鈥檝e written about this before. Here and here. It bears revisiting, though, because we鈥檙e still finding clients who have not connected their smart competitive intelligence and win-loss intel to their CRM in a measurable, actionable way.

What are you doing with your win-loss analysis? How do you use your win rate and other win-loss intel?

Get the basics into Salesforce. Immediately.聽Reps will never remember details as clearly as they do now. And they will not be eager to rehash a loss down the line. War stories are only fun to tell if you were on the winning side.

Getting this debrief intel down as actual data is invaluable. But it won鈥檛 be easy. It鈥檒l involve some carrots and some sticks. It will force new behavior and build new habits. Here are some quick tips and best practices for catching all the post-close intel you can use in聽sales enablement, smart competitive intelligence analysis and tactical decision-making:

Competitor Object.

There may an out-of-the-box options that work聽or you may have to build a custom object.
Either way, you鈥檒l need to connect it to your Opportunity object to capture competitors on deals.

Deal Flow.

Every time an Opportunity moves to a new Stage, make it mandatory for known competitors to be selected from a drop-down field.

Provide an 鈥淥ther鈥� option to catch new threats and feed them to your CI Hub (like 暗黑网.) Start collecting intel immediately鈥攖hey won one deal, they鈥檒l win more. Add them to the Competitor field drop down.

Provide an 鈥淯nknown鈥� option to catch reps who aren鈥檛 asking the right questions. These stats represent a good sales training opportunity. By the time you reach the Needs Analysis stage in a deal, you should know who you鈥檙e selling against. Carry on through the sales cycle, all the way to Closed-Lost or-Won

Closed Opps.

Add 鈥淐losed-No Decision鈥� as an option, in addition to 鈥淐losed-Won鈥� and 鈥淐losed-Lost鈥�. Do not include them in your win-rate calculation.

Setting an Opportunity to 鈥淐losed-Lost鈥� should trigger a new set of forced inputs. Add to the generic options with options like 鈥淟oss of Champion鈥�, 鈥淔eature Set鈥�, 鈥淭echnical Incompatibility鈥� and 鈥淭ime to Implement鈥�. They will always want to blame it on 鈥淧rice鈥濃�攄rop that to the bottom, just before 鈥淯nknown鈥�. (And, seriously, if someone actually selects 鈥淯nknown鈥�, they might benefit from our Win-loss Interview Checklist. Just saying.)

Keep Going.

The process is working. Your win rate is accurate and you鈥檝e got all these new聽insights into performance and positioning. Now what? How can you use it?

First, set up some simple reports to motivate the team. What鈥檚 better than tangible proof?

Second, integrate it into sales assets, like battlecards.