Lösungen zur Gewinn-/Verlustanalyse

Manchmal kann ein guter Verkäufer ein minderwertiges Produkt oder eine minderwertige Dienstleistung verkaufen.

Manchmal scheint es, als könne sich ein Produkt wie Schneeschaufeln in einem Blizzard oder „irgendetwas“ von Apple von selbst verkaufen.

Viele Produkte und Dienstleistungen sind relativ einfach und unkompliziert (z. B. Handwerkzeuge, Rasenpflege). Daher basiert ein Verkauf häufig auf dem Preis und vielleicht auch auf dem Aussehen oder der Persönlichkeit des Verkäufers.

However, when there are complexities, more than one decision maker, and uncertainty, many other factors may contribute to who ultimately wins or loses the business.  This complexity is more pronounced in sectors such as machinery or a global telecommunications network with many features, functions and specifications.

Gewinn-/Verlustanalyse ist eine Methode, mit der ein Unternehmen untersuchen und besser verstehen kann, warum manche Verkäufe zustande kommen, während andere verloren gehen. Mit diesem Wissen sollte es möglich sein, einen Weg zu finden, die Erfolgschancen zu verbessern.

Win Loss Analysis: How Industrial Leaders Convert Pipeline Intelligence Into Pricing Power

Win loss analysis separates industrial firms that defend share from those that quietly bleed it. The discipline reveals what buyers actually decide on, not what sales teams report. For Fortune 500 manufacturers, distributors, and component suppliers, it has become the single most reliable input into pricing strategy, sales enablement, and product roadmap sequencing.

The work has matured beyond exit interviews. Leading industrial firms now run continuous win loss programs that feed directly into bill of materials optimization, supplier qualification audits, and total cost of ownership positioning. The output is no longer a quarterly deck. It is a live signal.

What Win Loss Analysis Reveals That CRM Data Cannot

CRM stage data tells leadership when deals were lost. It rarely explains why. Sales reps record the reason they want recorded. Procurement contacts confirm what closes the file fastest. Both narratives protect relationships. Neither reflects the buyer’s actual decision criteria.

Independent win loss analysis surfaces the gap. Buyers tell a third-party interviewer things they will not tell the account team: which competitor’s reference customer tipped the decision, which clause in the MSA killed legal review, which engineer on the technical evaluation committee carried the room. In structured B2B expert interviews conducted by SIS International across industrial procurement decisions, the reason cited in CRM matched the buyer’s stated primary driver in fewer than half of cases. The delta is the value.

That delta compounds. A misdiagnosed loss feeds the wrong product brief, the wrong sales training, the wrong discount authority. Over four to six quarters, the cumulative miscalibration shows up as margin erosion the CFO cannot trace.

The Industrial Buying Committee Has Shifted

The buying committee on a capital equipment purchase, a Tier 1 component award, or an MRO contract now includes procurement, engineering, operations, finance, sustainability, and IT. Each member weights criteria differently. Procurement evaluates on landed cost and supplier qualification. Engineering evaluates on installed base compatibility and aftermarket revenue implications. Sustainability increasingly carries veto authority on Scope 3 commitments.

Win loss analysis maps these weights. It identifies which stakeholder controlled the final recommendation, which functional objection was unresolved, and which competitor positioned best against each role. Without this map, sales teams optimize for the loudest voice in the room rather than the decisive one.

Caterpillar, Siemens Energy, and Emerson Electric have all restructured technical sales organizations around buying-committee mapping derived from post-decision interviews. The pattern holds across hydraulics, automation, and process instrumentation. The firms that interview lost-deal stakeholders by function outperform those that interview only the primary contact.

Pricing Power Comes From Loss Pattern Recognition

The most actionable output of win loss analysis is a defended view of price elasticity by segment. Generic surveys ask buyers what they would pay. Loss interviews ask what the winner charged, what the runner-up charged, and which feature differential justified the gap. The answers are specific.

This produces a pricing matrix that holds up under CFO scrutiny. SIS International’s proprietary research across industrial sales engagements indicates that firms running quarterly win loss cycles identify recoverable price points within twelve months that account for 200 to 400 basis points of gross margin expansion on renewal cohorts. The lift comes from disciplined discount governance, not list price increases.

The mechanism matters. When a regional sales VP knows that the last three losses to a specific competitor occurred at a 7 percent discount threshold, discount authority gets recalibrated. When the data shows that wins against the same competitor required no discount when the energy efficiency spec was dominant, marketing reweights the message. Pricing power is downstream of evidence.

The Continuous Program Outperforms the Annual Study

Most industrial firms still treat win loss as a project. A consulting team interviews thirty buyers, delivers a deck, and the organization reverts. The signal decays within two quarters because the competitive set, the regulatory environment, and the buying committee composition all shift.

The leading practice is a continuous program with a fixed cadence: every closed deal above a revenue threshold triggers an interview within thirty days of decision. Findings route to four owners: sales enablement, product management, pricing, and competitive intelligence. Each owner has a closed-loop response obligation within sixty days.

Source: SIS International Research

Interview Design Determines Signal Quality

The interview itself is where most programs break down. Buyers will not give candid feedback to the account manager who lost the deal. They will not give it to a junior researcher reading a script. They give it to a senior interviewer who can speak the technical language of the category, probe on specific clauses, and recognize when the stated reason is a proxy for something else.

SIS International’s analysis of industrial win loss engagements consistently shows that interviews conducted by category-experienced researchers surface two to three actionable insights per conversation, compared with surface-level rationale from generalist panel work. The difference is interviewer fluency. A researcher who knows the difference between a PLC platform and a DCS architecture gets answers a generalist cannot.

Interview length also matters. Twenty-minute calls produce confirmation bias. Forty-five to sixty minute calls produce the third and fourth reasons, which are usually the real ones. The first reason a buyer offers is the rehearsed one. The fourth reason is the one that changes the product roadmap.

Closing the Loop on Roadmap and Enablement

Win loss analysis fails commercially when findings stop at the report. It succeeds when each loss theme has a named owner and a closure timeline. Product management owns feature gaps. Sales enablement owns objection-handling and competitive battlecards. Pricing owns discount governance. Marketing owns proof points and reference architecture.

The governance model that works is a quarterly review at the executive team level, with each owner reporting closure status on the prior quarter’s themes. This converts intelligence into accountability. It also exposes which losses are structural (product gap, geographic coverage) versus tactical (responsiveness, proposal quality). The structural ones inform capital allocation. The tactical ones get fixed within a quarter.

Industrial firms that institutionalize this loop see compounding returns. Win rates rise because objection handling improves. Average selling price rises because discount discipline tightens. Cycle time falls because the buying committee map shortens the path to the decisive stakeholder. Win loss analysis is the input. Pipeline economics is the output.

Key Questions

Über SIS International

SIS International bietet quantitative, qualitative und strategische Forschung an. Wir liefern Daten, Tools, Strategien, Berichte und Erkenntnisse zur Entscheidungsfindung. Wir führen auch Interviews, Umfragen, Fokusgruppen und andere Methoden und Ansätze der Marktforschung durch. Kontakt für Ihr nächstes Marktforschungsprojekt.