When you think about the value of a Win/Loss program, almost everyone tends to think about the same value drivers. "We'll get key insights into why we're losing", "we'll increase our win-rate which will increase revenue", "we'll get great product information and feedback about our sales team" and all of those are true. But one highly overlooked value driver of a Win/Loss program is that the person who builds and runs the program tends to start shining within the company, and often times ends up literally getting promoted. We've seen it happen again and again. So if you're thinking about buildig a Win/Loss program at your company, yes, you'll capture tons of great insights that will help your company. But it's also great for your career.

1. Visibility to the executive team. As Win/Loss insights start coming into your company, the executive team tends to be highly interested in the feedback. You are, after all, providing answers to the most important revenue questions (like "why we're losing deals"). We've noticed that the person who's running the Win/Loss program typically gets pulled in to present the findings to the executive team either quarterly or even sometimes monthly. And additionally, as the executive team starts to associate you with these insights, they tend to start leaning on you more and more for your opinion. Increased interactions with the executives naturally raises your profile, and levels up your role within the company.
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2. Visibility to leadership on other teams. Win/Loss insights are relevant to a lot of teams. In addition to executives, the insights directly impact product, sales, support, customer success and marketing. As the person who runs the Win/Loss program, you become the go-to person for the leaders of all of these teams. The Head of Product wants to know what people are saying about product. The Head of Sales wants to know what people are saying about the sales experience. And the Head of Marketing wants to know what people are saying about the campaigns they're running.
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3. You become an expert on a lot of important questions. By being the person whose most in touch with the data, and especially if you're the person doing the interviews, you truly become an expert on some of the most important questions at your company. When the product team is thinking about building a new feature, and debating whether or not it's the right move, if you've done enough customer interviews you'll have a real opinion to share and it'll be the most informed and data-driven opinion at the table. Running a Win/Loss program starts baking the data into your bones, and you'll just have things to say about almost everything that matters at your company. Should we increase pricing? Should we sunset a certain feature? Should we change the length of our free trial? Over time it will become evident that most teams should probably consult you before making key decisions.
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4. You're the gatekeeper of a new data-source. As the person running the program, if people want to watch the interviews, see the insights, or just check out the data they need to go through you to get to the data. When done right, Win/Loss feedback within a company tends to get a lot of attention, and as people start hearing more and more about the data, they become more curious and interested in checking it out. As the gatekeeper of the dataset, it means you're in a uniquely valuable position within the company. Another important aspect to remember about Win/Loss data is that it's usually a brand new data-set that the company hasn't really had before, so that makes it interesting. And additionally, it's real qualitative feedback. These are real customers or lost customers, real human beings, saying really important things in a recorded video that anyone on the team can watch. The data is alive, full of human emotion and energy. Teammates tend to be attracted to the feedback, and the video clips punch above their weight class in terms of how they affect viewers. I.e. if you see a couple people talking negatively about a product feature, you tend to remember it.

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As a final thought, if you're thinking about building a Win/Loss program at your company remember that it's a lot of work. There are incredible rewards for building a successful program, but be prepared for a lot of recruiting, a lot of scheduling, a lot of interviews and lot of hard analysis on the interviews. If you've got the time and bandwidth to take it on, it'll be great for your career. If you don't, consider hiring a 3rd party Win/Loss service. If you can get the budget for the program, you'll reap all of the rewards above for much less time and energy invested.