Win-loss is having a moment.

This week alone, we had three back-to-back questions in the PMM Camp community on the topic. Last month at Compete Week, Klue announced a new approach with their 360° Win-Loss solution, and next week at the PMM Summit in London (where I’ll be speaking!), it’s covered in at least two different sessions.

So, for this month’s Camper Q&A, I wanted to explore what exactly product marketers like you hope to achieve with win-loss research.

Does win-loss help you…

→ identify gaps in your go-to-market strategy?

→ build a brand new strategy?

→ something else entirely?

I dropped the question in the community, and got absolute gold back in return. Plus, read to the end for a bonus response on how to actually measure the impact of this work.

Why Win-Loss?

Here’s the question I shared with Campers 👇🏻

What prompted your last win-loss analysis? Are you using win-loss to identify gaps in your go-to-market, build a new strategy, or both?

Talya Heller G

Competitive Positioning Consultant, Founder of Down to a T

I love this question because indeed, win-loss still feels like one of those things that a) not everyone is doing and b) those who do, do it differently.

The first time I ever ran a win-loss was a couple of months after a major launch. The goal was to identify friction points to improve conversion rates. This was for a D2C financial product, so in this context we focused on what happened between the moment someone was convinced to download the app and reaching the ultimate action we identified as the sticky step and that was how we measured success. For those who are curious the funnel was: download app, sign up, verify identity, add funds, perform foreign exchange. We wanted to analyze where we lost people and why we lost them so we could course-correct through product or marketing.

Yes, win-loss is more common in B2B, but this modified process was eye opening, so at my next role at a SaaS B2B company, win-loss was something I did on a quarterly basis. There, that was actually my very first "big" deliverable during my first 30 days, and it was the first ever win-loss at that company too.

That alone is already a great reason to do it, but getting into the habit of doing these regularly was how we stayed on top of larger shifts. We don't always notice market changes in real-time, especially when selling relatively expensive software with a long sales cycle.

The learnings were slightly different every time:

• Better identifying our ICP and tracking how it changes over time

• Identifying the stickiest, least volatile use cases, and prioritizing product roadmap and pipeline generating activities accordingly (from events and content pillars to A/R strategy)

• Honing in on GTM health (tightening targeting, creating expansions motions)

These days whether I work with clients on positioning, messaging, or competitive, I always ask about access to win-loss data, just as I do for sales call recordings or access to customer-facing teams. It's a great tool to have in the PMM toolbox.

👋🏻 Say hello to Talya on LinkedIn

Drew Giovannoli

Founder of Buried Wins

While PMMs see win-loss as a useful tactic, most teams vastly underutilize its potential.

1. Win-loss research should have flexible targets.

Many businesses get stuck drilling only into closed-lost deals. But your business goals should dictate the target. When fixing churn is a key priority, run win-loss on recent renewals. Want to increase win rates and beat a scrappy, annoying competitor? Run win-loss on your recently closed deals. Want to figure out what your best ICP values? Dive deep into the closed-won deals.

2. Win-loss should include stakeholders across sales, marketing, and product.

By interviewing those stakeholders before the research, you can understand their goals, key assumptions, and then cater the interview questions and future report to match.

By including those stakeholders, they become participants and collaborators in learning. As a result, they're not defensive when presenting the details but instead partners in receiving and acting on feedback.

3. Win-loss should have flexible output.

To get execs to buy into anything, we need to be straight to the point, present real customer feedback, and highlight the impact of the change. Traditional win-loss transcripts or dashboards don't get you there. As a PMM, think about win-loss output as a sales pitch for the customer: feature their greatest pains and highlight the $$ at stake for red flags or growth opportunities

👋🏻 Say hello to Drew on LinkedIn

Tamara Grominsky

Creator of PMM Camp

I recently completed a win-loss project for a consulting client of mine. While much of my past win-loss work has stemmed from competitive research (ie. why are we losing deals to X competitor), this time it was prompted by something else.

I was leading a segmentation initiative to better understand and refine their ideal customer profile. Specifically, I wanted to identify the most important value propositions that my client needed to deliver on to convert new customers. To identify these insights, we interviewed recently closed-won deals and a handful of existing customers in that ICP who joined in the past 6 months.

This research was a good reminder that win-loss doesn’t have to only focus on lost deals. It can focus on the winners too!

👋🏻 Say hi to me on LinkedIn

🔥 Bonus Answer

Earlier this week, one community member asked how others are measuring their win-loss efforts beyond tracking impact to win rate. And Drew showed up again with a killer response:

Like all PMM goals, the metrics tie to the performance of other teams as well as your own, but any good contribution to the business starts with understanding the customer.

Goal: Churn/Land & Expand
Target Audience: Recent Renewals (Lost and Won)
Metric: Net Dollar Retention and Log Retention

Goal: Beat a scrappy, annoying competitor?
Target Audience: Deals against competitor + Interviews of former sales reps from Competitor
Metric: Sales confidence (Leading), Win Rates (lagging)

Goal: Deeper ICP understanding
Target Audience: Closed-won deals / Existing Customers
Output: Improved Messaging/Packaging
Metric: Homepage/Landing Page/Email Conversions, Win Rate (Lagging)

CAMPER ESSENTIALS

Working from London this week ahead of the PMM Summit. Here’s some highlights from my trip:

👣 Best Place to Get Lost: Nothing is cuter than wandering the streets of Seven Dials (I always end up at the market and an adorable board game shop)

🎁 Best Place to Buy Gifts: My family’s stockings will be bursting with tea from Fortnum & Mason (if it’s good enough for the queen, it’s good enough for me)

🍕 Best Place for a Meal: I’m instantly transported back to Greece with the ossobuco and orzo pasta giouvetsi from Mazi in Notting Hill

Are you coming to the summit this week? If so, hit reply and let me know so we can make a plan to meet up IRL.