I was revisiting a PricingBrew Journal interview with André Weber from Simon-Kutcher, Finding Your Path Toward Pricing Improvement. One of the many things that André covered was win-loss data and why companies just need to get over their excuses for not collecting it.
At PricingBrew, we haven’t yet done a study to see how many companies actively track win-loss data in detail. But anecdotaly, it’s certainly not that many. And for those that do, it tends to be ad hoc. Maybe some quick conversations after a deal was lost or a study that was run over a quarter or two to get some hard data.
As André points out, the big hurdle in tracking win-loss data is getting the sales team to participate. The reality is that sales people often want to forget about the last deal they lost. It’s just their nature. After all, a salesperson needs to be confident and confidence comes from remembering successes…not lingering on losses.
But, in the face of that hurdle, André highlighted how he’s been able to get salespeople to think differently about keeping track of loss data.
His trick? Procurement.
He often exposes salespeople to their own procurement team so they can see how a good purchasing department is systematic with the data they keep so they can better maintain the upper hand when negotiating deals:
That actually gets them to think. If the people in my own company do this on the procurement front, shouldn’t I be investing more of my time on the sales front?
Pretty good advice. Sales people might not be wired to dwell on their losses, but they’re definitely wired to maintain the upper hand.
