Win-loss review
A regular study of recently won and lost deals to find what repeats, then change how the team sells.
In plain words
A win-loss review looks back at decided deals and asks one question: why did this one end the way it did? Won deals show what to repeat. Lost deals show where you lose and to what. Patterns only appear when you look at several deals together.
The material is in the CRM: deals won or lost in the period and the lost reason on each. Add the stages they passed and the time spent on each. Add notes from the seller and, when possible, a short talk with the customer. A lost reason picked from a list is a start, not the answer.
Worked example
For example, the review finds a pattern in deals lost at the proposal stage. The decision maker never joined a call before the price went out.
How to use it
Hold it once a month, on deals closed since the last review. Pick a handful of wins and losses, not all of them. The seller who ran each deal tells the story in a few minutes. The head of sales asks where the deal turned and records the pattern.
It changes how the team sells, not how one deal ends. A repeated loss pattern becomes a rule in the playbook or a new qualification question. A repeated win pattern becomes a step everyone follows. Check the effect on win rate over the next months, not the next week.
It draws on lost reasons and feeds the playbook. Call review works on one moment in one conversation. The win-loss review works on the whole deal and many deals at once. Use both: one finds the pattern, the other fixes the skill.
Common mistakes
- Studying only losses. You learn what to avoid but not what to repeat. Put wins and losses side by side in every review.
- Accepting "price" as the reason every time. Price is often the last thing said, not the cause. Ask what happened at the stage before the price came up.
- Blaming the seller in front of the team. People stop telling the real story. Discuss the deal and the pattern, and keep personal feedback for the 1:1.
- Ending with insights and no change. The same losses come back next month. End each review with one change to the playbook, an owner and a date.
NEXT STEP · TOOL
By Friday, the head of sales filters the CRM for deals closed in the last month. Pick three won and three lost deals of a similar size. Ask each seller to write five lines per deal: how it started, where it turned, what decided it. Put the six notes side by side and write down one pattern that repeats.
A weekly meeting on stuck deals that ends with a decision and an owner for each.