What Sales Intuition Can Miss: How this ERP Company Discovered the Real Reasons Behind Their Wins & Losses
This cloud-based ERP and supply chain company was missing some critical buyer insights. Generally, sales reps believed they knew why customers chose their solutions, and reason codes captured this in their CRM. But key details were missing, and they lacked clarity and depth on sales wins and losses.
With a large, diverse product portfolio and large competitors like SAP and Oracle, not having a deep understanding of buyer decision-making put the company at risk for missteps in their GTM strategy.
The company partnered with IcebergIQ to find the answers. They launched an on-going win-loss analysis program to deeply understand their prospects and customers.
Challenge
When the PMM leader started, the company had no win-loss program in place, so he started informal interviews with reps to understand customer sentiment and feedback. Although helpful, he quickly realized these internal perspectives weren’t enough for making strategic business decisions. Sales team input lacked a few important elements:
Feedback across reps was inconsistent
Reasons for wins and losses in CRM often defaulted to standard reasons, such as relationships and price
Competitive intel was limited
Sales intuition just wasn’t providing a complete picture.
Knowing that even a 1% increase in win rates could materially impact the business, the executive team recognized getting an unbiased, deeper understanding of their customers was the path forward.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Sales intuition isn’t enough. You need objective customer feedback for strategic decisions
Qualitative insights from a 3rd party will reveal what quantitative data may miss
Direct customer feedback on wins and losses makes the shift from internal assumptions to external validation
“We needed that 3rd party perspective. Objective insights direct from customers on why we won and lost against our competitors.”
Why IcebergIQ?
After evaluating multiple vendors including analyst firms and competitive intelligence solutions, the
company chose IcebergIQ for one core reason: they didn’t need more data, but wanted analysis and a
deeper understanding of product gaps, price comparisons, sales effectiveness, market perception and
value proposition alignment. IcebergIQ’s approach stood out immediately:
Structured, yet fluid customer-led feedback
Focus on why decisions were made, not just what happened
A highly collaborative, responsive IcebergIQ team with deep expertise in win-loss methodology
“We chose IcebergIQ since their approach perfectly matched our qualitative focus. They centered on in-depth interviews and analysis, prioritizing deeper insights from qualitative conversations vs purely quantitative data.”
Results
As a result of their win-loss and churn analysis programs, the company shifted from relying on internal assumptions to external validation, which had big impact on several teams.
Product Marketing improved sales battlecards with credible feedback and actual customer language, enabling sales with stronger competitive insights. And because customers reported finding the company through Gartner, the PMM team confirmed the investment made for analysts.
Based on IcebergIQ insights, a new reference program was launched for Sales, to better match customers with prospects for reference calls.
Engineering validated solution gaps, creating more targeted product roadmaps and implementing faster needed product updates.
Customer Success uncovered at-risk accounts during interviews, activating internal teams to intervene to prevent churn.
As the company exec says, “The learnings from IcebergIQ have had a big impact on our business. Their team is very knowledgeable about win-loss, and took the time to understand our business. We really appreciated the high level of collaboration.”