Research Services

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We'll recruit and interview your buyers and customers, and then provide you with an analysis of why you are winning and losing deals. Typically a win/loss program takes place on an ongoing basis, so that you can benefit from continual feedback into product gaps, sales experience, market trends and more, all from an unbiased third-party perspective. Our goal is to uncover all of the decision factors that led to the outcome. 

Is your company focused on customer success? We help you achieve higher customer retention, expansion, and adoption rates. Our research helps you understand your  customers' actual journeys and the factors for their decisions ... including the ones they would likely never tell you.

If you have been unable to progress a deal cycle with certain prospects, we can interview them to get to the heart of what is holding them back.

The short answer is that your team will get the truth from the buyer or customer's perspective. Most companies have their own understanding of wins, losses, and churns, but that may be quite different from how the buyer or customer sees it. Buyer insights will help: 

• CEOs and senior executives identify what needs to be improved.
• Sales leaders discover competitive weaknesses and identify buyer needs.
• Marketing leaders sharpen value proposition messaging to resonate with customers.
• Product leaders prioritize feature development on product roadmaps.
• Customer Success leaders understand and improve the customer experience.

While it may seem surprising, up to 40-60% of contacts agree to talk with us. We ask for 30 minutes of their time. Several factors account for our high participation rate:

• Our solid recruitment technique has been refined over 13 years of experience.
• Interviewees know their feedback will help shape improved products and services that will benefit them in the future. 
• Interviewees appreciate the opportunity to provide candid feedback to a neutral third party.
• In exchange for their participation, interviewees can select a gift card or choose to donate the funds to a charity of their choice. 

After speaking with us, some people say they are surprised by how much they enjoyed the conversation, and that they understand their own decision-making better after reviewing it with a neutral third party. Note: the calls are recorded and the research is shared only with our clients and no one else. 

We tell interviewees that we’re helping a client do a strategic review of their product and performance. We explain that our client wants to hear from their buyers or customers, and has asked us to reach out. 

We use a unique dialog approach called Buyer as Hero. It views the interviewee as an agent of change – someone trying to create a positive impact within their organization. That is the starting point for every conversation.

By framing the conversation along these lines, we invite interviewees to explore their decision with us. Buyer as Hero opens the door to a candid conversation.

Win/Loss Analysis is the process of understanding why a sales opportunity was realized or not. It involves speaking directly to your buyers to elicit candid insights about your business and the factors influencing the buying decision.

Churn/Renewal Analysis is the process of understanding why a customer has canceled a subscription or service. We navigate a churn conversation in a different way than a win/loss interview, because the vendor-customer relationship is different from the vendor-buyer relationship. Understanding that difference is critical to effectively analyzing a churn decision.

Listening well is a vital business skill. By using certain techniques, you can encourage your customers to share more candidly, which in turn helps you better understand their needs and goals. Download our "quick tips" guide to becoming a better listener, then print out the page, fold as instructed, and keep it on your desk as a simple, handy reminder for skillful listening.