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:

Advertising Divas and Consumer Queens
In the past, the saying has always been “don’t underestimate the power of branding” but now the best advice seems to be “don’t underestimate the power of women!” Ignore it at your peril.

If statistics out of the US are any guide for the rest of the world to follow, and in the past this has been the case, then everyone in the advertising industry should give their serious attention to this fact. Jupiter Research has concluded that women influence 83 percent of all purchase decisions. There are more women online today than men.

And looking forward, 70 percent of all US women will be online in 2006, and looking even further ahead, 85 million women will purchase products and services online by 2010.

These statistics are huge by anyone’s measurements. Does anyone out there still have doubts as to the potential of ecommerce? Or more importantly, guys, how do your doubts hold up as to the influence of women on the internet?

US women over 40 are devoting more time online per week than running errands, eating or preparing meals, relaxing, or spending time with friends. Their internet time outweighs watching TV, listening to the radio and other media activities.

So what does this really tell us?

Fact #1 Advertisers in both traditional and new media, have up until now, been seriously underestimating women power
Fact #2 Women are the dominant gender when it comes to online spending
Fact #3 Women know women better than men know women (I’m sure most husbands would agree.)

Who better to understand the consumer behavior of women than women themselves? This last fact should lend itself to a rush to employ or promote females into the positions of advertising executives and creative directors. Now guys, don’t get us gals wrong, sensitive men can still create great ads for women and vice versa, but if the above statistics can be believed, then surely you should be eagerly encouraging the women in your industry to play a greater role in both decision making and creativity.

This makes such common sense to me, nothing biased about it.

Penny Archer, herself a “Consumer Queen”, is a Director of SmartDames FZ LLC, an international email List Broker based in Dubai Media City, Dubai. Other articles that she has written can be found at http://www.smartdames.com or http://www.listownerlimbo.com

Drive traffic to your website by posting free articles

With well over a billion web pages worldwide, there is only one sure way to get a web surfer's attention. It's not banner ads, popup windows or any number of gee-whiz marketing gizmos. It's content--pure, solid, usable information that will make visitors come to you again and again. The Internet is driven by information, and the fact is, people are more concerned with information than they are with how fancy your site is. That's what makes article submission the number 1 way to drive targeted traffic your site.

There are hundreds of "free article submission" sites that will gladly accept your articles written to provide readers with useful information (Here is a list of hundreds of article sites and mail lists: Article Post Robot, Post Your Articles Automatically! ). As long as these articles are not thinly disguised sales letters, but provide solid content, these sites will accept them for publication, copyright free. In turn, they will then make those articles available for reading--and for publication--for anyone else browsing their article archives. Ezine publishers hungering for good, quality information to provide to their subscribers will include some of these articles in their own publications. Soon, your articles are making their way across the Internet. And at the end of each article (and as a stipulation for free publication), is your resource box, a brief description of you--and a link back to your web site! Soon, you are getting targeted traffic from visitors who have read your article, found information about you in the resource box, and clicked on your web site link provided there. It doesn't take long for the famed "viral effect" of marketing to take place, and you've got traffic coming from all over!

David is the leader of a software development team, whose developed www.ArticlePostRobot.com, the software which can post articles to hundreds of article sites and mail lists automatically.

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

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