How do you gather learnings from closed pursuits from your customers in an B2B environment (post mortem analysis)? We used selective interviews in the past for key gains and losses. Now the discussion whether to use online survey as method had come up and would like to collect a broader perspective.
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Founder in IT Services22 days ago
At my last company, we actually did pre-mortems, which was an interesting approach for large customers. The idea was to imagine a year from now, or whenever the contract ends, and consider the reasons why the customer might not renew. After identifying potential issues, we would take steps to prevent them. This was a great way to kick off a client relationship.We didn't do it for every client, but we did it for big ones where we were worried about the risk. It might seem like a glass-half-empty approach, but sometimes in customer success, you have to be paranoid.
We also conducted postmortems after attrition occurred. It's essential to have a structured approach and involve all parties from sales to customer success. Everyone who has touched the customer should be part of the conversation. You need to have a set of questions to guide the discussion and ensure everyone brings their perspective. The key is to extrapolate patterns from these discussions. Sometimes you can have a great conversation about what went wrong and what to do differently next time, but it's crucial to look at all the attrition over the last year or two and identify the top issues. This might indicate a need for a more significant change rather than just minor adjustments.
1. Look back on deal to determine what we could/should have done differently. Disco, qualification, multi-thread, etc.
2. Post sales expansion losses definitely get an interview. Why? We have a strong relationship already and we've typically earned the right to more time.
3. New logo sales losses. We look to our champion who was helping us for feedback.
4. Anyone who doesn't interview with us, we have a very brief survey.
We ensure that this is captured in our CRM. Why? Data hygiene and looking at patterns.
Quarterly we do a Loss Analysis and look at what we need to improve and iterate on.
Hope this helps.