There are a number of tools you’ll need to utilize when running your Win/Loss program. Win/Loss programs tend to have a lot of moving parts, so we’ve tried to break down this list into various categories. We’ve also tried to make this list as simple and generic as possible by making recommendations of universally known tools like Google Docs and Zoom. There are plenty of tools out there to choose from, so feel free to swap in different tools as you see fit. Here’s a quick overview of the types of tools you’ll need to run a Win/Loss program:

Recruiting

• An Email platform (don’t use your own email account). Email is usually the main channel for recruiting participants into interviews. You’ll want to find an email provider and use them just for this purpose because if you use your own email account, people may flag your email as spam, and you want to keep your company email and domain as clean as possible for spam filters. We use a platform called Lemlist, but there are a number of options out there to choose from. some text.
  ‍
  • Burner domain: If possible, don’t use your company domain. Buy a burner like “www.YourCompany.io” or “www.YourCompany.co”. 
    ‍
  • Burner email address: Now that you’ve got a burner domain, setup an email address that is similar to your company email address: joe@yourcompany.io.
  • 
    Burner warm up service: Companies like Lemlist over an “email warming” service, where you can start sending and receiving emails from real email addresses, so that the email account doesn’t look suspicious to spam filters. It usually takes about 30 days or so, but you can usually start emailing form it within a couple of days.
    
    You might be asking yourself, do I have to use a burner? No, you don’t have to. It all depends on how much email you’re going to be sending out. If your outreach is going to be pretty small, and you feel like most of the people you’ll be emailing already know you or the company pretty well, then you probably don’t need to go through the trouble of setting up a burner. But if you’re going to be sending out a more than 60-70 emails a month, then you should probably consider investing in a burner to keep things clean for your company domain and email address.
    ‍

• Calendly: Get a Calendly link setup that you can send participants. Getting interviews scheduled and keeping all the details straight can be surprisingly hectic (and confusing). If you don’t have a Calendly link (or something similar) you’re going to miss opportunities to get interviews scheduled. You’re going to spend ample time going back and forth with people about which time works for you vs which time works for them, and you’re going to be doing math across time-zones… hint: no one ever assumes you’re in a different time zone when they say “I could do a call tomorrow at 3pm”. Without a tool like Calendly this happens all. the. time. And when it does, you have to Zip out to LinkedIn, search for them, find them amongst all the other people with the same name, see what city they’ve listed, figure out what time zone they’re in, keep that math in your head as you respond back via email with a new time. The process is error prone, and it’s a time suck. Just zip them a Calendly link and ask them to find a time that works for them.
  

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account: LinkedIn is a great secondary channel for recruiting participants into interviews. And a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account allows you to send around 150 messages per month to people you’re not connected to (depending on your membership level). We’ll get into this more in the recruiting section, but once your email efforts have run dry, LinkedIn will usually increase your overall conversion rate by an additional 10% or so.
  
  
• Amazon Gift Card (or similar incentive): A $50 or $100 Amazon gift card is definitely the easiest. Though a good best practice also offer an option for a donation to be made to the “charity of their choice”. We’ll talk more about this in the recruiting section, but for setting things up you’ll need to figure out how big of an incentive you plan to offer, as well as how to get that incentive distributed after the interview is completed.
  ‍
• Google Sheets: A spreadsheet will help you keep your contact list organized. As you start reaching out to people you''ll want to track the status of each outreach - i.e. if you've built a sequence of 3 emails, you'll want to track which of the 3 emails they've received. And if you're using additional channels like LinkedIn and phone calls to do your recruiting, things get complicated quick. You'll future self will be very appreciative of any steps you take to stay organized early on.
  
  Additionally, after the interview you probably will need to send the incentive (Amazon Gift Card et al) to the participant. The spreadsheet is where you track who's received their incentive and who hasn't. ‍

‍

Interviewing

• Zoom or Google Meet (Video Calling): Interviews work best when it’s a face to face conversation. Doing interviews in person isn’t usually possible in today’s world, but doing them via video call definitely is. Since Covid, most people are very comfortable talking on a video calling platform. Choose whatever platform you think is best. We use Zoom for 2 reasons: a) most people are familiar and comfortable with the platform, and b) they make recording calls very simple. If you don’t want to use Zoom, Google Meet is also a great option.
  ‍
  • Record the call: In addition to people being very comfortable these days speaking on video platforms, we’ve also noticed that since Covid most people are very comfortable being recorded. We’ve conducted thousands and thousands of interviews at this point, and it’s extremely rare that someone will take issue with the call being recorded. It does happen, but not often enough to consider not recording the calls. 
    ‍
  • Have recording turned on when the call starts: If you ask permission to record the call, instead of having it automatically running, it turns into an awkward moment. It opens up the conversation to questions that put you on the defensive like “why do you need to record this?” and “whose going to see this?”. Remember this is someone you’ve never met, and a big part of a successful interview is making the participant comfortable. Instead of asking permission up front, have recording already running and provide an opportunity for them to object if they want. It’s a subtle difference, but it makes all the difference in the world for getting the call recorded without any friction or awkwardness.
    ‍
  • Acknowledge the call is being recorded: The very beginning of the call should be used for greetings, saying hello, thanking them for joining you, explaining who you are and why you’re gathering feedback, etc. All of those things can be comfortably talked about while recording is turned on. Once the greetings are out of the way, we read a quick confidentiality statement that acknowledges this is being recorded, and gives them the option to request to turn it off. It goes something like this: 
    
    My name is ___________ and I’m the [your role at your company]  Today you will be participating in a video conference interview, which should take approximately 20-35 minutes. Your participation is voluntary. If you do not wish to participate, you may stop at any time. The recorded secure database, and taking part in this interview is your agreement to participate.

‍

• Upwork (Human Transcription): With all of the transcription tools out there this one will sound surprising, but the thing about Win/Loss interviews is you need an exact transcript if possible. The reason is because participants will often say something valuable where the entire meaning of the sentence hinges on a word like “can” when what they actually said is “can’t”. So it’s not that they “can” access a key feature, it’s that they “can’t” access it. Kind of a big deal for understanding what they’re saying. All of the AI tools we’ve tested make errors like this regularly enough (especially when you start including foreign accents) that all of our transcription is done by a human. These tools will eventually deliver the accuracy we need for a Win/Loss interview, but today it seems like they’re not there yet.
  
  There are a ton of great human transcribers on platforms like Upwork who can transcribe your interviews for cheap. You’ll need to test them to make sure they’re up to the job, but once you find a good one you can fit them into your workflow in a very cost efficient manner.
  
  If you don’t want to pay for human transcription, you can feed the video into an AI transcriber (there’s a million of them out there), you can drop the copy into a Google Doc and simply fix any errors you come across as you find them.
  

‍

Analysis

• Google Docs: Once you have your transcription, you’ll want to put it into a tool where you can do three key things:some text
  • Read and edit the transcript with ease.
  • Make highlights in different colors (for example, you might want to highlight pricing feedback in one color and sales team feedback in another) .
  • Take notes with ease. You’ll have a lot of different thoughts and ideas when you’re reviewing Win/Loss interviews. Making sure that you can easily jot down notes wherever you need to is important 
  • Google Docs is great for that.
    ‍
• Google Drive: (or whatever cloud storage platform you prefer). This one is simple. Your video files will be big, and you need somewhere to store them. If you’re already using Google Docs, might as well make it easy and stay in Google. The big idea here is that you need to keep the project organized because you’ll soon be flooded with lots of transcripts, lots of videos, and lots of notes. The better your organization, the better your insights will be.
  ‍
• Keynote, PowerPoint, etc. Eventually you'll want to present your findings to your team. Whatever your platform of choice, plan on dropping your findings into that platform so your audience can have a clear understanding of the key takeaways. Win/Loss datasets can be big rolling cumbersome giants. Clean up that giant and give your audience what thye're looking for in a simple format: the insights and action items.