Win-loss analysis. The most uncomfortable, useful research you will commission this year.
You think you know why deals close and why they do not. You are mostly wrong, and so is your sales team. Independent interviews with closed-won and closed-lost buyers consistently surface things internal post-mortems miss. We do those interviews and turn the patterns into specific fixes.
Why most internal win-loss is broken
Three predictable failure modes.
The first is sample bias. Sales reps record win-loss reasons after a deal closes, and they record what they want to be true. Won deals are skill, lost deals are pricing or timing. The data says one thing, the buyer would say another.
The second is shallow inputs. Most win-loss happens in the CRM as a dropdown ("price", "timing", "no-decision"). The actual reason is usually narrower than that. The dropdown does not capture it.
The third is internal-only research. Buyers are politer to the rep who lost a deal than to a third-party researcher. They will tell us things they would not tell you. We get the real reason 70% of the time, sales gets it 20% of the time.
How we run win-loss
Five steps, 14 days.
Identify and recruit
You give us a list of recent closed-won and closed-lost deals. We reach out cold, schedule 30-45 minute interviews. We aim for 15-25 conversations across the sprint.
Structured interviews
Same interview guide across all conversations. Why they considered you, what they actually compared, what tipped the decision, what almost killed the deal, what would have changed their mind.
Pattern analysis
We code every interview against the framework. Themes that appear in 30%+ of conversations are signal, the rest are noise.
Strategic synthesis
Senior researcher writes the report. What is consistently winning you deals. What is consistently losing them. What patterns surprise even the founder.
Working session
Final 90-min call where we walk you and your sales leaders through the findings, debate the fixes, agree what changes this quarter.
What you get
A specific deliverable you can hand to a board.
A 25-40 page written report with: closed-won pattern analysis, closed-lost pattern analysis, top 5 differentiators that actually closed deals, top 5 objections that killed deals, head-to-head themes against named competitors, recommendations for sales enablement, recommendations for marketing positioning, and verbatim quotes (anonymised).
Plus the 90-minute synthesis session, plus a 1-page exec summary for the board, plus all interview audio (if you want to listen).
When this fits
Two stage gates.
Run win-loss when
- You have closed at least 20-30 deals in the last 12 months (need volume for patterns).
- You sell into deals with 60+ day sales cycles.
- Average deal size is £15k+ (the economics work above this).
- You suspect your win/loss reasons are not what you have been told internally.
- You are about to redo positioning, messaging, or sales enablement.
Hold off when
- You are pre-product-market-fit (sample is not big enough yet).
- Your sales cycle is under 30 days (different research method fits).
- Average deal size is sub-£5k (transactional dynamics need different methods).
- You ran a similar exercise in the last 12 months and acted on it.
FAQ
Yes, more than you expect. About 35-50% of people we cold-outreach to agree to a 30-min interview. We are independent, the conversation is anonymous, and most buyers like being asked. We have a robust outreach process that we have refined across 100+ engagements.
Yes, with consent. Recordings are confidential to you and us, never shared further. Verbatim quotes in the report are anonymised.
A CRM dropdown captures the rep's opinion of why a deal closed. A 30-minute structured interview captures the buyer's actual experience. The two rarely match.
Yes, and some companies do well at it. The two reasons to outsource are: time (your sales leader cannot spare 60 hours of interview time), and bias (buyers tell us things they will not tell you). The deeper the strategic decision riding on the analysis, the more the third-party version is worth.
£4,500 for a standalone sprint, or included as part of an Intelligence retainer at £6,000/month bundled with Lead Gen / Demand Gen / Creative.
Usually within 2 weeks of contract sign. We need 1-2 weeks to schedule interviews, then the interviews + analysis run across 14 days. Total elapsed time from kickoff to final session is typically 4 weeks.
Want to talk through your situation?
Thirty minutes with the team. We will pressure test your numbers, not pitch.
Book a strategy call →