Sales & CRM

How to run a win/loss analysis as Event Agency Founders

Sales & CRMFor Event Agency Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You track won and lost events in a spreadsheet — maybe HoneyBook or Dubsado if you're disciplined — but 'win/loss analysis' means opening three tabs, filtering by date, and trying to remember why the Hendersons booked someone else. Was it price? Venue availability? You followed up too slowly? You genuinely don't know, and without knowing, you keep pricing the same way, chasing the same lead types, and losing to the same competitors. Most event agency CRMs don't even have a loss-reason field. You're leaving real pattern data on the table every quarter.

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Sales & CRMFor Event Agency Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live CRM that tracks every inquiry through proposal, contract, and close — with loss reason, budget range, event type, and lead source captured per deal

A win/loss dashboard that shows your close rate by event type, average deal size for won vs. lost, and which lead sources convert best — updated automatically from your Gmail threads

A weekly digest that surfaces which proposals are stalling, which lead sources are producing booked revenue, and where your pipeline is leaking

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

CRM Growth Analyst

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule so incoming prospect threads are matched to open deals automatically. The CRM and win/loss dashboard pull from that same synced data. If you use HoneyBook, Dubsado, or Airtable today, connect them from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries them live during the import to pull your existing lead history into the new schema.

Prompts to copy

Build me a CRM for a corporate event planning agency. Pipeline stages are: New Inquiry, Proposal Sent, Contract Out, Booked, Lost. For each deal, I need to track: event type (conference, gala, team offsite, wedding), estimated headcount, event date, venue status (client-sourced vs. we're sourcing), lead source (referral, inquiry form, Instagram, Google), budget range, loss reason (price, availability, went with competitor, ghosted, no budget), and whether a site visit happened. I want to be able to ask 'show me all lost deals from Q1 where the loss reason was price' and get a real answer.

Connect my Gmail so email threads with prospects attach to the right deal automatically. When I mark a deal Lost, prompt me to fill in the loss reason before saving.

Build me a win/loss dashboard that shows: close rate by event type, average deal size for won deals vs. lost deals, close rate by lead source, and a list of all proposals open more than 14 days. Refresh it from my CRM data weekly.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Start with the CRM app from the Starch App Store and describe your actual pipeline: tell Starch your five stages, the fields you care about (event type, headcount, venue status, loss reason), and the questions you want to ask later — the schema gets built around your agency, not a generic B2B sales flow.

2 Connect Gmail through Starch's scheduled sync so every email thread with a prospect or venue is visible inside the CRM — no manual logging, no BCC tricks.

3 Import your existing leads from HoneyBook, Dubsado, or a spreadsheet by connecting them from Starch's integration catalog; the agent maps fields and flags duplicates before anything gets written to your new CRM.

4 Set a required loss-reason prompt so that whenever you move a deal to Lost, Starch asks you to choose from your list (price, availability, competitor, ghosted, no budget) — this is the data that makes the analysis real.

5 Ask Starch to build a win/loss summary view: 'Show me close rate by event type for the last 12 months, broken down by lead source, with average deal size for won vs. lost.'

6 Add a stale-proposal alert: 'Flag any deal in Proposal Sent or Contract Out stage that hasn't had an email thread activity in 10 days and Slack me the list every Monday morning.'

7 Set up the Growth Analyst app and point it at your CRM data: tell it to send you a weekly email covering which lead sources produced booked revenue this month, which event types have the highest close rate, and which open proposals are at risk.

8 Build a competitor loss tracker: for every deal lost to a named competitor, Starch logs the competitor name, the event type, and your quoted price — after 10 entries you can ask 'what's the average price gap when we lose to [competitor]?'

9 Create a referral-source report: 'Show me all booked events from the last 6 months grouped by lead source, with total revenue per source' — this tells you where to put your marketing time.

10 Once a quarter, ask Starch: 'Compare my close rate and average deal size this quarter to last quarter by event type. What changed?' — the answer comes from your own data, not a template.

11 Share the win/loss dashboard link with a business partner or advisor directly from Starch — no export, no formatting, no rebuild for every meeting.

12 Revisit your pricing tiers after 90 days of clean loss-reason data: if 60% of your price-related losses cluster in the 100-150 headcount corporate offsite category, you now have a concrete number to test against.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Q1 2026 Win/Loss Review — 22 Inquiries

Sample numbers from a real run

Total inquiries received (Jan–Mar)	22
Proposals sent	15
Booked (won)	7
Lost — price objection	4
Lost — availability (your dates full)	2
Lost — ghosted after proposal	2
Average won deal size	18,500
Average lost deal size (price losses)	14,200
Close rate, referral leads	71
Close rate, Instagram leads	22

After wiring up the CRM with Gmail sync and running Q1 data through the win/loss dashboard, you see a pattern that wasn't visible in your spreadsheet: 4 of your 8 lost deals were price objections, and all 4 were corporate team offsites in the 80-120 headcount range where you quoted between $12,000 and $16,500. Your won deals in the same event type averaged $18,500 — meaning the gap wasn't catastrophic, but clients were finding someone $2,000–$3,000 cheaper. Meanwhile, your referral-sourced leads closed at 71% (5 of 7) versus Instagram-sourced leads at 22% (2 of 9). The Growth Analyst weekly digest flagged two open proposals — both from Instagram leads — that had gone 16 days without a reply thread, and both eventually marked Lost/Ghosted. The actionable output from 90 days of clean data: stop discounting to chase Instagram leads, put referral cultivation front and center, and test a revised offsite pricing package in the $15,500–$17,000 range before Q2 proposals go out.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Close rate by event type (conference vs. gala vs. team offsite vs. social)

Loss reason distribution — % lost to price vs. availability vs. competitor vs. ghosted

Average booked deal size vs. average lost deal size

Close rate by lead source (referral, inquiry form, Instagram, Google)

Proposal-to-contract cycle time in days (how long from sent to signed)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

HoneyBook or Dubsado

Both are built for client workflow and contract management, not pipeline analytics — there's no native win/loss reporting and no way to ask 'why am I losing corporate offsites' without exporting to a spreadsheet.

Airtable with a manual pipeline base

Flexible schema but zero AI — you build and maintain every formula and view yourself, and there's no email thread sync or automated stale-deal alerts.

HubSpot free CRM

Better reporting than HoneyBook, but the schema is rigid, loss-reason tracking requires custom properties you have to configure manually, and the free tier locks key analytics behind a paid plan.

Spreadsheet (Google Sheets)

You own the schema but you're the analyst — no automation, no email sync, and every insight requires a manual update before you can see it.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, growth analyst all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

I track leads in HoneyBook already. Do I have to start from scratch?

No. Connect HoneyBook from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live to pull your existing contacts and project history into the new CRM. You'll map fields during import — Starch handles the translation and flags anything that doesn't fit cleanly.

Will Starch automatically log every Gmail thread to the right deal?

Yes — Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule and matches threads to open deals by contact email address. You review matches and correct the rare misfire; it's not fully autonomous on the first run, but after a week it's accurate enough that manual logging mostly disappears.

What if I don't fill in loss reasons consistently? Will the analysis still work?

Partially. The close rate and deal-size numbers will be accurate regardless, but the loss-reason breakdown is only as good as your data hygiene. That's why the required loss-reason prompt on stage change matters — it catches it at the moment you'd know the answer, not three weeks later.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My corporate clients ask about data security.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If a corporate client requires a certified vendor, that's the honest answer. Starch does not store data on-prem or offer a self-hosted version.

Can I track competitor names in the CRM and report on them?

Yes. Add a 'lost to competitor' field to your deal schema when you describe it to Starch, then ask: 'Show me all deals lost to a named competitor in the last 6 months grouped by competitor name and event type.' You get a real answer from your own data.

What if I use Dubsado instead of HoneyBook?

Dubsado is web-based, so Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed. You can also export your Dubsado data as a CSV and import it directly. Either way, your existing lead history comes across.