Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence

[Ellen Naylor]

Hello Everyone,

I just received my copy of "Win/Loss Reviews: A New Knowledge Model for Competitive Intelligence" by Rick Marcet. Looks good Rick! I'll be reading it again (last time it had a "different look"). I plan to get a review out to this group and to Amazon.

Let's help Rick market his book. I know it's a good read and like that he uses Sales to feed the win/loss process of sales intelligence. This works well in a large company like Microsoft where there are lots of sales people and lots of opportunities, so the database of intelligence grows quickly!

As I recall, a couple of other folks bought the book too. Let's put our heads together.

Good job, Rick! You even got a decent book jacket. As my sister in law is a graphics art designer, I look for these things! Hope you sell bunches! Order your copy on Amazon: http://amzn.to/mkMJaP

Best,

Ellen

[Rich Naszcyniec]

I will be interested in hearing the book review.  Assuming it will be good... any chance Rick can get the publisher to make the book available on Kindle?  So much easier to work through reading material on a Kindle/iPad.

[Ellen Naylor]

I am sure it's just a matter of time. Are you connected to Rick Marcet on CI Ning? This would be a good time to become "friends."

[Ellen Naylor]

Hi Rich,

 

I just notice that Rick Marcet's book is available on the Kindle here.

[Rich Naszcyniec]

I just ordered the book through our corporate supplier.  I will be glad to also post my impressions after reading it over and reflecting for a while.

[Ellen Naylor]

Great!

[Trip Krant]

Started the book, but I am only a few chapters in.   His advocacy of seller-derived W/L is interesting, and may stir some debate. 

[Ellen Naylor]

I'm sure it does stir up debate since Sales is biased. Usually when they win it's because the sales person is great and has established an excellent, professional relationship with the customer, and when they lose somehow price often comes up as the leading reason. Rick accounts for this bias in his model. 

 

However, this model isn't for every company for a few basic reasons:

1. You need a goodly number of win/loss cases to build the valuable database of thousands that Microsoft has. Many companies aren't that big, and don't have enough cases to build this database.

2. You need a sales force that is willing to conduct win/loss, even as easy as Rick has made it. It only takes about 15 minutes and hangs right off their CRM. Microsoft has this culture since they are a technology company and tend to be more self-critical.

3. You need a company that's willing to invest in the technology to support win/loss, and give access to various functional areas that can benefit from this data. If Microsoft doesn't fit the bill there....

4. Sales needs to be sold that conducting win/loss is worth their time and effort; that there is something in it for them! Rick gets excellent scores here. He designed the system using input from Sales so its primary customer is Microsoft's huge sales force, and other beneficiaries includes sales support, marketing, product development, etc.