We decided to implement win-loss interviews after someone on our team came across a Product Marketing Alliance article about them. We thought it was a great idea to try and do them because at the time we were working on better understanding the core value of the product for different segments of customers and prospects.

H&S stands for health & safety, it’s an industry-specific term. In our case, it’s a subject matter expert in the industry we create products for.

While we initially started out by doing a batch of win-loss interviews each quarter, we eventually began constantly asking people for interviews. I’d definitely recommend starting with a batch first to get used to the process, iterate on the questions you are using, messaging, etc.

Our process for sharing findings with stakeholders varies. We either: 

Share a high-level summary in Slack right after the interview. 

Summarize all insights/learnings in a presentation once a month/quarter. 

In hindsight, I think they work really well together. The first one allows to address any immediate and more granular feedback or action items, while the second one gives an opportunity to highlight any trends (good or bad).

Instituting win-loss interviews has led us to findings that have reshaped the way we handle certain aspects of marketing and sales. 

We now have a better understanding of our competition, which has led us to double down our work on sales battlecards. 

We have discovered new pain points to leverage in our marketing and sales processes. 

Finally, we’ve identified significant product gaps and factored them into our strategy and roadmap.

Iryna Struk

Consistently conducting win-loss interviews has helped us uncover meaningful opportunities to improve our sales and marketing processes.

An interview that helps understand why a sales opportunity was won or lost. It is not a last-minute sales pitch. 

To be truly effective, win-loss research needs to be unbiased.

 Therefore people who conduct them should not be from your sales team. In our case, we had two people, the 

 manager and the Product manager, conducting these interviews.

Win-loss research helps uncover the factors that influence people's decision-making processes, providing insights into:

How your company is perceived in the market,

Understanding the key aspects of your product that people value the most.

Our step-by-step approach to win-loss interviews

 the target audience by selecting specific criteria for both won and lost deals. For example, focus on deals lost within the last 30 days or won in the previous quarter. Make sure you reach out to decision-makers. 

2) Prepare two sets of guiding questions for each type of interview. Here is an example of a few questions used for our closed lost interviews:

3) Send out emails. Be ready to not hear back from a lot of people, make sure to follow up. Consider offering vouchers as incentives, they proved to work quite well for these types of interviews.

4) During the meeting, make sure to put interviewees at ease and explain that you are not trying to win them over again. Reiterate the goal of this research.

5) Ask open-ended questions and avoid becoming defensive. Show empathy and let them talk.

6) Ideally, record the meetings. If that’s not possible, take a lot of notes. 

Analyse and share findings with relevant stakeholders. Highlight any recurring trends and lessons learned from the process.

8) Agree on further actions - what needs to be changed? If the problem is with the sales team, consider organising a training session. On the other hand, if you uncovered that your product saves users more time than other products, highlight this in marketing materials and inform the sales team to emphasise it during their conversations with 

Win-Loss Interview Call Guide from HandsHQ

What are win-loss Interviews?

Our step-by-step approach to win-loss interviews

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