When you think about Win/Loss “data”, there are 3 main sources it usually comes from. The CRM, survey data, and customer interviews. Each of these data sources differs significantly from the other two, and one of the best ways to enrich your Win/Loss insights is to combine customer interviews data with survey data. Let me explain. 

CRM Win/Loss Data is incomplete and often wrong altogether

First of all, almost all companies have some form of Win/Loss data in their CRM. The sales person will usually write down a quick note about why the deal was lost, and then mark the deal as officially closed/lost. For companies without a Win/Loss program in place, this data is “the source of truth” for why you’re losing deals. Interestingly, the gap between the sales person’s explanation notes in the CRM and what the person will tell you in a Win/Loss interview is… well, it’s massive. In our experience the sales-person’s explanation of why the deal was lost is incomplete at least 80-90% of the time, and is actually wrong at least 50% of the time. That’s a big gap. We’ll have more to say about that in another article. 

Your existing “why did we lose” automatic survey doesn’t work

Once you embark on building a proper Win/Loss program, you’ll quickly realize that there are two new channels you’ll be thinking about: interviews and surveys. And you may already have a survey going out asking about why they decided to leave you. Nearly every company we’ve worked with has an automated survey that goes out, or, they’ve had one in the past and are trying to bring it back again. What’s also interesting is that feedback from this survey tends to yield data that’s not much different from what the sales person noted in the CRM. It’s not great data. Not to mention that response rates on these types of surveys are very low.

Combine your interviews with a new type of Win/Loss survey

‍Leveling up your Win/Loss insight data requires conducting live interviews with participants, and then evolving your survey data to compliment your live interview data. The way we utilize surveys to enrich Win/Loss data is not by sending an automated survey to every closed lost deal. Rather, we send an “exit survey” to every “closed/lost” participant that we interview, and we structure the survey questions to enrich the questions the participant was just asked in the interview. This approach tends to generate such rich insights that you can do away altogether with your ‘auto-survey’, (which will help your Win/Loss recruiting efforts because people will be receiving fewer but more targeted messages from your company. Less noise = good).

• Distinguish between good survey questions and good interview questions. Asking a survey question in an interview is a lost opportunity because you really can capture that data with a quick survey after the call. Good survey questions are always structured in a way that allows up to 3-4 possible succinct answers. Good interview questions can’t be reduced to 3-4 possible succinct answers because they’re open ended, and usually take paragraphs of explanation to complete. Here’s an example. When we ask participants about pricing during an interview, we keep it pretty open ended. The question usually goes something like “when you first encountered our pricing, what did you think?”. This open-ended structure gives them the freedom to tell you whatever is most important to them about your pricing, instead of doing what a survey question does - which is to ask them about what is most important to you about your pricing. In an open ended question they’re free to talk about the price-point itself and whether they felt it’s too high or too low.  But they might want to talk about issues with pricing clarity, or details about the  pricing model itself. Or perhaps they thought the price point was fine, but their boss thought it was too high, so the company has different opinions internally about your price. In an open ended pricing question, you’ll capture whatever is more important about pricing to your participant. And you can use that data to either win them over again at some point in the future, or if they became a customer, to manage that account on in the future. ‍
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• Enhance your insights by combining survey and interview data.  You’ll get the best insights if you think about the survey as an extension of the interview itself, instead of as two stand-alone feedback channels. Let’s go back to the topic of pricing as an example. If you’re asking about pricing in the interview in an open-ended way, as described above, you’ll receive back whatever is most important to the participant about your pricing. At the same time you still actually want to know a few basic things, like whether they think the price is high or low, and by how much. A great way to combine the survey and the interview is by asking the open ended question in the interview, and then calibrate the details in the survey. Once the interview is complete, then go ahead and enrich their answer with all of the information you can get from survey like questions. Great survey questions about pricing include: “did you think the price was higher than you expected, lower than you expected, or about what you expected”. And once they answer that question, follow it up with a “by how much question”. Are we talking it was off by 10% or off by 60%. When you’re doing your analysis of the interview you’ll now have a nice rich paragraph of text touching on everything that’s important to them. And you can frame that data with robust survey data about the price point, and the scale by which they think the price should be different. The resulting insight is far richer than either channel can deliver on its own.
  
  You can use this same technique on all kinds of questions within the interview. With onboarding you can ask open-ended interview questions about what went well and what didn’t go well, and then you can sharpen it up with survey questions about whether the onboarding experience met their expectations, exceeded their expectations or fell short of their expectations. You can do the same thing with questions about their experience with the support team. It works the same with sales team questions. Find out what their pain points are. And then sharpen up the results by asking a survey question about meeting, exceeding, or falling short of expectations, and use data from both to derive your newly enriched conclusions. 
  
  Almost all interview questions have spin-off survey questions you could ask. So while you’re coming up with your questions, think about separating survey questions from interview questions, and do your best to figure out whether there’s a corresponding survey question that would enrich the results of the interview question.
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• Pro-top: Make completing the survey a requirement in order to receive the gift card. If you see the value in using the exit survey as an extension of the interview, the obvious question is how to make sure you get a survey from each interview participant. The best way to ensure a successful survey after an interview is to withhold the gift card until after they fill out the survey. Ideally you send them the survey link as soon as they get off the call. If you send the survey right after the call most of the time the participant will get the survey filled out within a few minutes.
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Once you start seeing the exit survey as an extension of the interview itself, you’ll start seeing interview data in a whole new light. It’s one thing to have a good interview, but the depth-of-insight you can achieve by combining these two channels makes this approach surprisingly powerful.