Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research

Frequently I am asked "how do you get information about the competition?" Most people are surprised when I tell them that getting useful competitive intelligence is actually the easiest part of managing successful business competition. One of the best methods to gain valuable competitive intelligence is so simple, straightforward, and productive that I have put it on my list of Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research.

The benefits that Win Loss Research routinely delivers include:

* Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales situations
* Enhancing your product management and development initiatives
* Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in sales forecasting
* Strengthening top and bottom line results for your business
* Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle process
* Setting the stage for future business growth

Win Loss Research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision makers and influencers who have been involved in your recent win and loss sales decisions. The goal is to learn what key distinctions they saw between you and your competitors, the importance of those distinctions and the value they assigned to each competitor. While the focus of this research is on gaining insight into how your competitors operate and how you fare in comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain valuable customer information in the process.

Win Loss Research drills down beyond standard pricing issues and gets into territories such as: decision process, sales team approach and professionalism, company reputation, product attributes, service issues, and handling of proposals. Although pricing information is involved, it should not be the centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of Win Loss Research is to provide you with competitive insight you can act upon - actionable competitive intelligence - for sales process improvement and better results.

Typically this research is conducted either over the telephone or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common in places and cultures where that is the preferred communication modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss Research is a combination of art and science; art being the skill of the researcher in eliciting the intelligence that you need; science being the development of a research guide that facilitates the discovery of actionable competitive intelligence.

As with almost anything worth doing, focusing on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) increases the likelihood that you will get what you need. For Win Loss Research, focusing on the following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of obtaining productive competitor intelligence:

1) Use professional competitive researchers who are skilled in drawing out actionable competitive intelligence. They will also be perceived as unbiased, thereby ensuring candor.

2) Selecting the optimal mix of win and loss opportunities to research is a reasonably complex task which must be done correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the target markets that matter most.

3) Development of a stimulating research survey that operates as a guide rather than a questionnaire is the backbone to outstanding results.

Surprisingly, the tone and quality of the initial research request can make or break your ability to get robust participation.

A common pitfall among companies that report doing Win Loss Research is that they have their employees, typically the sales representatives, perform the research. You do need to have your sales people find out what happened. This should precede Win Loss Research which goes beyond the limited conversation from your sales reps' debriefing. Also, it defies human behavior to think that the customer will feel comfortable being candid with a sales rep who has not met their expectations or that the sales rep will be candid in passing along information that may be construed as unfavorable to them.

An extraordinary thing about Win Loss Research is that any size or category of company should be able to implement this as an ongoing business practice and see steady gains in their customer acquisition and sales. This form of research is not particularly costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you uncomfortable at times.

One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear is a compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and improve from their experience. Once you establish a practice of doing Win Loss Research routinely and take action on the results, your company will realize the benefits of implementing this business competition best practice.

(c) 2005. Bishop Market Resources. All rights reserved.

Celeste Bishop is President of Bishop Market Resources a Competitive Services Agency that provides a breadth of traditional and online competitive intelligence services, including business research and sales process improvement research. For more learning resources check Brain Food at: www.bishopmarketresources.com/competitive-intelligence-brain.html

Related Information of Interest:

7 Winning Tips For Article Marketers
1. Follow up with your readers.

For example, you could offer a subscription to your ezine or
you could offer a free email course in your resource box.

2. Use lots of white space.

Increase your article's white space by going over it for
sentences you can shorten and also paragraphs you could
break up into two or three shorter paragraphs.

3. Use numbered lists.

Use your numbered lists to convey points in your articles or
your steps in your "how to" article.

Numbered lists can also be used to create the content of
your article, like I did with this simple list article.

4. Use the word "you" a lot in your articles.

Make your writing feel more personal by using the word you a
lot within your article.

That way your readers will feel like you are talking
directly to them and you'll be able to better draw them into
your article's content.

5. Write to one person.

Choose a person such as a friend or spouse to write your
article to.

By doing this, you will naturally use the word you a lot
within your article, and your readers will feel like you are
talking to them one to one.

6. Offer an article announcement list.

Keep people up to date on your latest articles by publishing
an email list that announces your new articles.

You could also announce your new articles by RSS to
publishers and webmasters that like your writing.

7. Let your affiliates use your articles to earn
commissions.

Make your articles available to your affiliates to publish
on their sites or in their ezines with their affiliate links
in your resource box.

You'll be able to successfully raise your profits by turning
your articles into an effective promotional tool for your
affiliates.

Ken runs the Net Pro Marketer where you'll find informative articles on business, marketing, and ezine publishing. Browse through the articles or submit your own at: www.netpromarketer.com

Article Marketing for Search Engine Traffic
There are sites on the net that serve tons of traffic everyday. Traffic you wish you had, right?
The web is made up of billions of links, much like a spider�s web but on a larger scale. Search engines spider the web looking for new content to add to their massive databases so they can rank how relevant it is to particular search phrases.
What are the search engines looking for?
New content! In order for any search engine to provide relevant results to their visitors (so their visitors will repeatedly use them) they must provide the best results possible for every search performed on their site.
The best search engine gets more traffic and more traffic means more advertising money for them - so search engines have to be up to date to stay competitive in their market.
The big sites on the net, people, who have page rankings of 5 upwards, obviously serve a ton of visitors per day, provide search engines with a mass of links to follow and index. That�s why they go back to the big sites more often than the little ones.
High traffic, very popular sites are visited by the search engine robots more often than sites with little traffic. Some large sites are visited by search engines as much as 2-4 times per month.
How can article marketing increase your search engine traffic?
By submitting articles you can get links from these high traffic sites. Furthermore you can optimize your articles with your search terms to get high rankings for that particular page. This would otherwise take weeks on a new site as oppose to a well established one such as this.
Each of these sites will have its own resource area, at the end of the article, writers include a bit of Author information on where to find out more about them. Place your website link in here and bob�s your uncle the search engines will find your site through that link.
The more articles you submit with your website link in them, the more pages on the net you have pointing to you from high traffic sites and the better your ranking and link popularity.
Many good article sites these days create RSS feeds for each category. This provides an additional opportunity to market your site and article to people who subscribe to the feeds.
Start submitting your articles today. You will be amazed at the results they yield.

Richard is the Publisher of Articleprobe a Free Article Distribution and Submisssion Service. Set up your account today and start submitting your articles to Articleprobe

The Benefits of Submitting Articles for SEO
There are millions of businesses in the world. Similarly, there are millions of web sites being used to promote each and every one of them. Some get lucky enough and always appear number one in search engines. However, most get archived in the last places customers will ever look for in a search engine. Clearly, luck can not be everything when it comes to giving your business the attention it needs. It�s a good thing there�s always SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the only way to go if you want your ads and web sites to stand out in the internet. SEO compliant articles will inevitably hit the right keywords at all times. This procedure comes from the meticulous task of picking out most probable keywords people from all over the world use in search of corresponding services. Through hitting as many keywords as possible, a certain website raises its ranking in various search engines such as Yahoo and Google. With this higher ranking, customers gain more accessibility to the site. As we all know, it is indeed very rare for people to check out web sites in the latter pages of search results. That is why articles need to be optimized by inserting the words with most hits in terms of customers� random typing preference probabilities. Through search engine optimization, a web site will earn higher in the engines and remains there as long as it is kept properly maintained. SEO companies also see to it that their clients are always on top of the results page. As such, you are guaranteed continuing surveillance of your site�s ranking day in or day out. They also have keyword generators which can spare you from the laborious task of assessing which key words need to be hit and which ones are futile to include in the article. It also allows writers to hit the taste of the masses which access the internet. Companies can now focus writing attractively for the keywords which sell the best. Other services rendered by sites can now be dissolved if the web isn�t showing an interest for it, therefore eliminating deadwood in the business. With this wonderful innovation in web writing, each article will surely be given ample attention in terms of engine optimization and accessibility. The purpose of advertising and syndication will be fulfilled, instead of stagnating in a dark and shady area with abysmally low ranking positions.

Sandra Adams writes search engine related articles.To get free articles to display on your own site, please visit www.articletrader.com

The Best Way To Save Money On Advertising - Target Locally
Over the years I have discovered exactly what derails an ad. More often than not, when an ad fails to produce results, the problem isn't with the ad. The problem is with WHO the ad reaches.

Before you start blaming lack of response on your ad, stop a moment to consider who it is TARGETED to.

Let's take a moment to look at Internet advertising. First off, let me say I dearly love advertising on the Net. The advertising rates for search engines and ezines are far, far lower than advertising your business on traditional media like TV or newspapers. For what one TV commercial would cost, I can advertise a business extensively for weeks, even months.

But, as I'm sure you've realized by now, the Internet is no magic advertising medium. Just as often as with anywhere else, your ad can pull less than expected response. The problem is with lack of targeting.

If most or all of your customers live in the geographical area of your store, using a search engine to reach people all over the world doesn't make much sense. You can consider your money wasted when somebody who will NEVER walk into your store reads your ad.

The solution is to advertise on sites or ezines that reach YOUR customers at a very high rate. This could be a local site that provides sports scores for dozens of local sports teams. Or a site that lists a great many local building contractors. Very specific information needed by people in YOUR area will draw just the kind of local crowd you can capitalize on.

We're seeing a sudden rise of local pay-per-click search engines. These use the same popular technology as Google and Overture, but limit their reach to businesses in a particular city, state, or region.

Often these local pay-per-click sites have very low rates, a little as one cent per click. Many offer as many as 1,000 free clicks to any business that signs up.

Be sure to check if the pay-per-click site has plenty of businesses listed in their database. An empty site won't attract many visitors and you may not reach enough audience to have any effect on your sales. Also watch for a pay-per-click that is promoting in your area. If they are visible to you, they are probably getting the attention of lots of your customers.

Linda Stevens is CEO of MyCalgaryClicks.com, the local Pay-Per-Click city search directory for Calgary, AB Canada. Linda believes in following her own advice and is offering $10 in free bidding cash to any site that signs up to advertise. Reach Linda at support@mycalgaryclicks.com