Getting Action from Win/Loss

[Ellen Naylor]

This is just a short post, but it is something that frustrates me as a doer of win/loss analysis. I feel like customers and non-customers give us great intelligence and ideas on things we can fix and improve within our existing products and services. They also give us ideas on new product development, perhaps not disruptive technology, but ideas that might help companies develop disruptive technology.

How do you get companies to implement these changes, many of which are pretty easy fixes? Who have you found is best to make accountable to make these changes? I suppose that varies on what the change is, but you get the gist of what I am asking. I feel like I deliver a good product in win/loss analysis, which is actionable intelligence since customers/non-customers are quite forthcoming. However, if the company "nice to knows it," but takes no action, it's not satisfying.

What are your thoughts? What has been your experience? I recall from a SCIP webinar that some companies put the actions on a dashboard with time frames to complete the tasks. That seems formal and big company like. I wonder if there is a less formal way that you have found to make people accountable? Thanks!

[Marcel Brussee]

Dear Ellen,

I understand your frustration, and many times I have wished to be able to implement the changes or suggestions I came up with in my market research and intelligence reports. The fact, however, is that your job is finished once you delivered your findings and recommendations. Whatever your client does with it, is none of your business anymore. Whether they stack the report in their drawers, decide to completely ignore your recommendations, or present your results as their own findings, is a matter of your client(s). That is not satisfying, but obviously inherent to the trade.

Any comparison may be as easy as a doctor's advice to his patient to alter life style or diet. Frustrating as it is for the doctor, it is the patients who choose to follow up or ignore "doctor's orders", or whether or not to fill their prescriptions and actually comply. Not very satisfying for the physician as well, but I guess the rewards are in the demonstrable follow-ups that do lead to symptoms relief or even a cure of the ailment. Thankfully, payments do not depend on curing the disease, but on providing the prescriptions or the life style advice...