Get to Know Northern Insights

Northern Insights was founded to provide a personal approach to Win/Loss analysis. Priority is placed on understanding your business needs and listening carefully to your buyers in Win/Loss interviews. Using a combination of standard and open-ended questions we will uncover the reasons why you win and lose business, and when there is more to say, we can go off-script and dig deeper.

Practice areas

Win /Loss Analysis

Customer Experience / Churn

Service

Professional, unbiased interview research conducted over the telephone. This is where we focus, and where Northern Insights excels.

Deliverables

Interview Report: Each interview is delivered with an executive summary, analysis and tags of findings, and key responses. Recordings of interviews are provided with respondent permission. A research snapshot of each buyer is included to give context to the opportunity.

Database Portal: Northern Insights developed a simple Airtable database with real-time access to all your Win/Loss program data. You won’t be overwhelmed with extraneous visuals and you won’t be charged extra fees to look at your own information. You will see Win/Loss reasons, at-risk accounts, competitors, strengths and weakness of your engagement, and other valuable data points that clients have asked for over time. You can easily spots trends and identify areas for action.

Summary Report: After a set of interviews is completed each project is analyzed with key learnings and trends. A follow-up presentation is scheduled to discuss highlights, answer questions, and share buyer insights.

Practical considerations

Northern Insights starts every project with template discussion guides, but customization is important to achieve your outcomes. We'll work together to design an interview guide to uncover specifics of what you need to learn.

How large of a sample do we need? Conventional wisdom from primary research tells us that 15 - 20 interviews is the point where saturation will occur, meaning that talking to more people will not yield more themes. Data crunchers tell us that 8 interviews will yield an 80% confidence interval, and go up incrementally from there. A good target is 10 wins and 10 losses on a quarterly basis.

How many prospect names do we need? It depends… good data hygiene with your CRM is key: recent deals, current contact info for key decision-makers. Northern Insights has an effective and proven email template for recruiting that you send out to your customers and prospects as a first touch, and we’ll take it from there. Incentives are a suggested option we can discuss.

Want to start small? That’s ok too. A recent client provided 15 target names and we secured 5 interviews (its a squishy science!)

Your project will be most successful with executive sponsorship and involvement from your sales team or other internal stakeholders. Most Win/Loss initiatives start with product marketing or competitive intelligence business units, but everyone benefits!

"You can't manage what you don't measure."  - Peter Drucker