Thursday, September 25, 2025
Importance of Win / Loss, Churn and Voice-of-Customer Analysis in Periods of Uncertainty
This blog was written by Philip Trevisan, Consultant at Anova.
Businesses across the United States and the world are facing unprecedented uncertainty. Tariffs, a shaky labor market, and the ever-shifting potential impacts of AI leave leaders uncertain of how to react and plan their strategies for the next quarter, let alone next year. In periods of intense uncertainty, you need to have an accurate understanding of the sentiment of your potential and current clients to grow and sustain your business. Win/loss and voice-of-the-customer (VoC) analysis helps that happen.
Importance of Win / Loss and Churn Analysis in Periods of Uncertainty
Win/loss analysis is crucial for business and sales leaders to navigate periods of uncertainty like the one we now face. Win/loss analysis is the systematic review of closed sales opportunities – both wins and losses – to uncover the real reasons behind customer decisions. This process goes beyond surface-level feedback, digging into the factors that truly influence buying behavior, such as sales approach, product features, pricing, customer experience, and competitive positioning. Here’s why it matters in times of uncertainty:
Why Win/Loss Research is Critical in Uncertain Times:
- Respond to market shifts: Win/loss analysis helps sales teams identify and respond to rapidly evolving market situations. Without it, your team is flying blind. In normal market conditions, that’s not ideal – but in periods of uncertainty, this presents a serious risk to your pipeline. Regular win/loss interviews help you keep abreast of new customer pain points and shifts in industry expectations. Additionally, in times of uncertainty, competitive intelligence becomes a requirement. Win/loss analysis doesn’t just show you how you win or lose – but also why your competitors are winning. In an uncertain market, learning how your competitors are standing out from the crowd can help you respond and better position yourself to win business.
- Navigate a buyer’s market: Periods of uncertainty often lead buyers to take a step back and adopt a much more selective mindset when buying products and services. Why commit to an expensive and risky contract when the market could look totally different tomorrow? In this tight environment, you need every competitive advantage on your side to win. Armed with actionable win/loss analysis, your team will be better positioned to execute and win in a tough market.
- Focus resources where they matter: Win / loss interviews give you actionable information on where your team can improve. In periods of uncertainty, your team is more likely to have fewer resources – so it’s critical to use them where they matter. Win / loss interviews are a gold mine for delineating between what sales reps think happened during the process vs. what actually happened. Instead of investing your limited resources in hunches or anecdotal data, Win/loss interviews enable you to turn real customer feedback into tailored coaching and improvement for your team.
In addition to loss debriefs, an interview with a departed client (a churned client) puts the spotlight on why customers did not choose to continue a relationship with a company.
These churn interviews provide many of the benefits of loss interviews, with a few additional benefits. If, for example, missing functionality on a platform is a key reason why a company is both losing new business and experiencing churn, that clearly highlights a competitive gap in their solution. If a key feature of the platform is being cited as a strength in win interviews but subsequently shows up as a churn driver, that indicates a lack of consistent experience around that tool, either because of unrealistic expectation setting from the sales team or insufficient follow-through on the CX side.
Importance of Voice-of-the-Customer Analysis in Periods of Uncertainty
Win/loss analysis is critical to winning new business in periods of uncertainty – but how do you retain your existing customers? This is where voice-of-the-customer (VoC) analysis enters the picture. VoC feedback is a way to collect and analyze customer feedback to better understand their needs, expectations, and pain points. By listening to VoC feedback, you can identify addressable areas of your product and service with direct benefits to your customers. Important in normal business environments, VoC analysis becomes essential in periods of high uncertainty.
Why VoC Research is Critical in Uncertain Times:
- Identify at-risk accounts: In periods of uncertainty, your clients may be more likely to end an engagement or not renew over an experience that would not have prompted the same response in a normal environment. VoC research helps you identify at-risk accounts, determine the sources of their dissatisfaction, and make course corrections to retain their business.
- Hone strengths and address weaknesses: VoC analysis helps you identify the areas of your product or service that resonate the most with your customers, and the areas generating the most pain points, especially blind spots that you can’t see internally. You can use the strengths to bolster your sales approach and mitigate your weaknesses to help retain clients. Additionally, VoC analysis future priorities: While it might seem all-encompassing now, economic turmoil will abate in the future. When normalcy returns, the insights gained from VoC analysis can help direct future investment and priorities.
- Identify opportunities for upsell or cross-sell: Client acquisition is difficult in times of uncertainty. In addition to the sales advantages of win / loss analysis described above, VoC analysis gives your sales team key insights into upsell and cross-sell opportunities at your clients. In VoC interviews, clients frequently express pain points outside of the engagement being analyzed, giving you a unique, direct perspective to pitch them on new work.
Interested in learning more?
Anova Consulting Group offers industry-leading Win / Loss and VoC analysis for businesses across a range of industries. Through our myView dashboard, you and your team can unlock real-time insights from our research. Click here to learn how Anova can help your organization navigate this period of turbulence and uncertainty.
