Spencer Dent :                                         All right. Hi everyone. This is Spencer Dent. I'm one of the co-founders here at Clozd, and today I'm super excited as part of win-loss week to welcome Talya Heller. She is the owner and leader of a company called Down to a Tee. And what they do is they provide product marketing managers and competitive intelligence professionals consulting and services and guidance on how they can excel at their jobs. Super excited to have her here today, and we're going to talk a little bit about how product marketing folks and competitive intel folks can be successful in running a win-loss program and maybe some of the bear traps to avoid when they go out to do this.

Talya Heller:                                          Thanks for having me, Spencer.

Spencer Dent :                                         Thanks for being here. Thanks for being here. This is going to be fun. Okay. Before we get into it, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, the company that you're running.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. I've been in product marketing for the last seven or eight-ish years, both at established pre-IPO companies and at smaller startup companies. Before then, I was in product and before then, even as a PMO in quite the opposite of smaller companies at a very large company. I think all these roles have in common that they're very cross-functional.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          That's been really helpful along the years. And about a year ago, I started my own consultancy working with other SaaS B2B companies mainly, helping them with competitive positioning and go-to-market strategy.

Spencer Dent :                                         Awesome, awesome. Before we jump into this, I got a question for you because product marketing is one of those roles that if I ask one person what they do and they say, "I'm a product marketer," and I ask another person what they do and they say, "I'm a product marketer," it could mean totally different things. In all these different companies that you've consulted and in your own experience working with bigger companies and smaller companies, tell me a little bit about the range of how you define the role and what sits in the role and what makes somebody a great product marketer.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah, that's a loaded question.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Funny enough, I think a lot of the people that you ask will describe a similar thing, right? When we think product marketing, we think about the circles, the event igram, we think product marketing, sales, and that intersect. Maybe some people will add the customer success too, but I think in reality you are absolutely right. It does look entirely different. The larger the company, usually the more specialized the product marketer is.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yes.

Talya Heller:                                          For example, some of them are only going to work on launches and even that can really vary, right?

Spencer Dent :                                         Right?

Talya Heller:                                          Some of them own the process, some of them get Slack every once in a while and being told, "Hey, we're launching something next week." Some of them lead the entire process in the entire organization. Looks totally different with the companies. I think that another thing that is not spoken about enough in that definition of product marketing is the fact that you have to be very close to the market. It's not just being at the intersect of between all these teams internally, it's also having your ears and eyes on the market and bringing the feedback back to the market as well as make sure that, again, all these internal teams communicate the value that you bring to the market.

Spencer Dent :                                         Love it, love it. That's why I think it's hard to define it because we've seen it. In all the time we've worked here, we work with folks from all sorts of different disciplines of a lot of product marketers, and it's interesting to see what sits within the role. One of those things that often sits within this role that obviously you're very familiar with from your background is win-loss. How did you get started using win-loss in these various roles? When is the first time, if you think back that you were like, oh, we should go figure out why we're winning and losing these deals, and how did you attack it?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah, my win-loss origin story. This is a funny one. I heard about win-loss for the first time when I really, I just got started in product marketing. I used to be a part of this local Austin product marketing meetup group. It was pre-pandemic. We actually meeting person once a month and every time someone else would host it and we will have different sessions. And one of the sessions was about win-loss. And I really remember that because I remember the guy started the session by asking, "Which one of you is actually doing win-loss on a regular basis?" And literally no one raised their hands. I was new to product marketing, so I didn't really know what that was. And while they were giving out their process and how they're doing it and what insights and feedback they've been able to get, I just thought it was like, this is great, this is wonderful. This is a fascinating thing. At the time I wasn't even working at a B2B company, I was working at a direct to consumer company. And I know win-loss is typically more of a B2B thing.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And I was determined-

Spencer Dent :                                         To try it.

Talya Heller:                                          To make it happen, yes.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. Love it.

Talya Heller:                                          I changed the process and of headed into what we needed at the time. Even years later, it was like one of the projects that I ran at that company that I was the most proud of.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          I'm pretty sure just me talking about this project also helped me to get the next job that I had.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          I'm pretty sure it had some role in that. And again, with no coincidence, that was literally the first thing that I had to do at that new company, which was a SaaS B2B company. In my first 30 days at the company, I was supposed to somehow whip up a win-loss, and we just kept doing it on a regular basis.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. That's awesome.

Talya Heller:                                          I'm a huge fan of the program.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. What's so interesting about it is a few years ago, when we first started Clozd back in 2017, when you go talk to product marketing managers, you would find most of them weren't doing anything, but when you'd talk about it, they'd be like, this is pretty obvious. And the first thing they would do is do what you did. Okay, I'll just go figure out how to do this. They do it in-house. Doing it in-house, what were the hardest parts about running this process in these companies?

Talya Heller:                                          A few things. I think first of all, there aren't that many win-loss frameworks or templates or anything like that.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          It's kind of like...

Spencer Dent :                                         Totally, totally. What should I even ask these people? Oftentimes when people come to us, they're like, what should I even ask?

Talya Heller:                                          And that's even a question, right? How many people should I talk to? Should I even talk to anyone? Do I look at win rates? How do you calculate win rates? All these things. I do find it's unlike other, there's a million launch frameworks and processes and how do you cluster features by tiers and all of that. And for positioning and messaging, there's so many best practices for so many other things, not for that.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And I think the second challenge is even once you figure out what you want to do, again, if actually talking to customers is a part of that, that can be super challenging.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And then the last thing I would say there, even when you talk internally with teams or if you are overly reliant on CRM data, what your sales team is putting in there. Again, I think there's so many blind spots-

Spencer Dent :                                         Yes, totally.

Talya Heller:                                          That we're trying to, well, the CRM says so, so that must be the reason. And when you actually talk to them, I think sometimes you get the sense that I don't know if that's what really happened.

Spencer Dent :                                         Totally. It's so interesting. I think we've seen this over and over at Clozd where someone's coming in and they want to do this, and in some cases folks have run pretty effective teams internally that run win-loss, but it is a pretty big resource investment because as they start the process, they realize that there's so much that happens before and after you actually collect the feedback. Whether you collect the feedback through an interview or some type of video-based interview or a survey, there's so much that has to happen on the front end of I got to get a list of names and I got to figure out which people to reach out to, and I got to figure out what questions to ask them, and I got to get permission from the sales rep maybe. And then I got to actually reach out to them and get them to schedule.

                                                      And then I need to have a mechanism for collecting the feedback. And now I've got the feedback, how do I turn that into a summary or some type of deliverable and how do I aggregate it and then how do I share it out? And it's almost like the stuff on both ends of the data collection itself chokes a product marketing manager and eats up so much of their time. I can't tell you the number of times we saw somebody say, I'm going to go do this and I'm going to do it myself, and I want to do 40 interviews a quarter or 20 interviews a quarter, and then six months later when we follow up with them, they've done five. I guess the advice I would give to somebody doing this is don't underestimate the amount of effort it's going to take because there's a lot that goes into this.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah, I agree. And I think for sure in that process, just having experience in product before and running beta programs and things like that, which is also very project management heavy type of assignment. I think for, again, specifically for me with my experience, that was helpful.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah, I mean I can imagine that folks that don't have that experience are probably really overwhelmed.

Spencer Dent :                                         Totally.

Talya Heller:                                          And you touched on that at the end, but I think we can probably spend 15 minutes alone just talking about that topic with what do you do with the insights that you gather because that's the art part of win-loss.

Spencer Dent :                                         Totally, totally. And the challenge that I think companies run into is they spend, and this is where product marketers get discouraged. They spend so much time trying to get to the insights that they short themselves on the amount of time they need to take doing something about it.

Talya Heller:                                          Mm-hmm.

Spencer Dent :                                         Here's a good example. One of the things that we talked about in prepping for this is you start to go to collect the feedback and going back to that, can I get people to even talk to me on the phone? Well, if you aren't using the best methods for driving participation and leveraging technology, a plot like Clozd, for example, within Clozd, we have all the functionality for you to go out and engage buyers and get them to schedule and participate in a win-loss interview. If you're doing this on your own, you might have to use some type of email server or whatever or call people or whatever, some win win-loss vendors in this space, they can do the interviews, but they actually require you to schedule them for them.

                                                      There's a lot that goes on there. But one of the things we talked about is it's always easier to get wins to talk, right? Obviously, they're more likely to talk. Also, if you ask your sales reps for who you can talk to, guess who they're going to refer to you? Wins. Wins, sometimes people are like, well, I got so many wins. You want to get a good balance. But a funny thing is people tend to be a little more interested in the losses and they're just a little more visceral and a little more like, oh man, what really happened there?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah.

Spencer Dent :                                         But let's talk about wins, right? What is the benefit that you saw, 'cause when you did this before you noticed you could get a lot more feedback from wins. What did you like about the wins? What kinds of data points were you able to get from win interviews? What were the biggest benefits of doing win interviews?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. First of all, as you said, they're much easier to get.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          They're usually, especially if it's from a super engaged customer, it's like they want to talk to you, they will spend the time, they won't give you 20 minutes or 15 minutes. They will give you even more. And there's that relationship element. And I agree with you. I think that talking to the wins is a huge missed opportunity. In prep for this conversation, I thought back to some of the win interviews that I've had, and I actually listed the type of things that we actually learned. And I came up with a 13 item list.

Spencer Dent :                                         Awesome.

Talya Heller:                                          I'm happy to run them through you.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah, tell me. I love it.

Talya Heller:                                          Okay. Number one, what really motivated them and got them the budget to make the change to begin with? Why did they even... Number two, how did our company end up on their short list?

Spencer Dent :                                         Yep.

Talya Heller:                                          Number three, what was the most important thing to them going into the buying process?

Spencer Dent :                                         Yep.

Talya Heller:                                          Number four, who else they were considering. Of course that's something that we always want to know. What was the most compelling selling point? What was off-putting in the other alternatives?

Spencer Dent :                                         Interesting.

Talya Heller:                                          Also, it's a great opportunity to get a sneak peek into the decision-making process. Who was really involved? What was really important? How they're actually using the software today after they bought it.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Is it what they thought it would be? Is it different? Some of the best practices that they've used for pull sales and the implementation and the adoption with users. What challenges they face with users internally right now, if there are any.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          What would make them churn?

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          How visible is the value internally? Really important for expansions, which is something that I think, again, product marketers probably don't think about enough, but they absolutely should.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And what sorts of limitations bug them and how they work around them.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. Yeah, what are the things? I love it. I love it.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah.

Spencer Dent :                                         As you're asking those questions, I'm like, a lot of those questions you could flip and ask on loss interviews too, but maybe not as the same. It's such an interesting dynamic. Going there, okay, you go collect all this feedback and I want to jump into this. I've learned these things about wins or I've learned these things about losses. You got to go drive insight and drive action off it. What are some of the most powerful use cases or ways, insights you've gotten from win-loss that you've gone and driven changes around elements of your business?

Talya Heller:                                          Oh yeah, that's a great question. I think a lot of them were around product specifically.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And these I think tend to be taken more seriously when they actually come from wins, not from the losses.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And especially things around how can you show the value internally, how can you overcome things that are possible reasons for churn and things like that.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Some other things that came up were the types of content that drives someone to actually come inbound and get a demo.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yes. Yes.

Talya Heller:                                          We've had some really interesting insights over the years with how we ended up on the short list is a great question because it's pretty open-ended, but it's really telling and it tells you a lot about the channels, the types of content, the formats, things like that, things that work beyond what you will see in dashboards.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Any attribution models that we're not even going to talk about them, but are imperfect.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. Your attribution model might drive something. One of my favorite questions that I would ask to one of the first clients we ever had at Clozd to their buyers was this, take me back to the day when you decided to go out to market to look for a solution like this. What happened? What were the things that proceeded that I need something to solve this problem? And it was always so interesting to hear, well, this thing happened and this thing happened and it triggered this so then I went here. And you're like, none of that's going to be captured in any type of attribution model anywhere. And it's all about who did they talk to, what problem were they running into and what did they call the problem?

Talya Heller:                                          Mm-hmm. Yeah, the words are-

Spencer Dent :                                         And who at the organization identified it too. That what was always funny too.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. The words, I think probably one of the most valuable things that you can get from win-loss interviews is that you can literally hear the words that they're using to describe whether it's the pain or the value or the selling points. That can be a great feedback loop for the messaging and for value drivers. When you hear their thought process around competitors and things like that, you can get that insight to differentiators, is it what you think? Is it what you have on your positioning document or is it something else?

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. And like we've had, I remember interviewing customers and getting so specific responses from them with not necessarily how you heard about us, but what made you decide to ask for a demo.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          And they often point you to a super specific document or blog or something or an event that they saw that triggered something.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yes.

Talya Heller:                                          And it's such a big valuable feedback to you and your company, right? It's not just about the competitive stuff, it's about messaging, it's about the market.

Spencer Dent :                                         How are people hearing about you? All that kind of stuff.

Talya Heller:                                          Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it can be telling also if you compare that to CRM and you see how people came and use cases and compared to different segments, you can see if there's any differences in how it resonates. But you can be in a position where you ask way more intelligent questions, I think, internally even.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. And the funny thing is the CRM data might capture the path that they came accurately if it's following them through lead journey or whatever. But one of the dangers is if you're asking open-ended questions that are entered by the sales team, you're getting guesses often. I outbounded this, right? I cold called them. It's like, well, you did cold call them. And they also just got a brand new key decision maker that came into the org and said you needed this solution. It also could be that you cold called them at the perfect time too. Having the win-loss interview can really help you understand or win-loss feedback can really help you understand some of these things. Okay. I've got a question for you and this is how you and I actually met was through a little conversation on LinkedIn, right? Why should a win-loss program live within product marketing in your opinion?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. First of all, I'll just say that after that LinkedIn discussion, after the survey, I'm not sure anymore, but I'll give you my go-to. This is how I usually think about this.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Some folks or some companies have win-loss really loop in under competitive intel, which I get, but I disagree with because of what we just talked about, right? There's so much more that can come from win-loss than just competitive data that I think that if we only look at it with that lens, we're doing a huge disservice to that. And now it begs the question, should it be owned by product marketing or no? And I used to think without a doubt the answer is yes because I want product marketers. I think they should be in the wings. I think they should get their hands dirty. I think they should look at CRM data on a regular basis. I think they should talk to customers.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yep.

Talya Heller:                                          I think that they should be doing all these things and thinking-

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. They need to know the customer better than anybody else if they're actually doing great at their job.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, they should be talking to sales. They should be talking to customer success. They should be doing all these things. I almost don't want them to outsource that to someone else.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          There's this thing, are they going to lose touch or are they going to be too disconnected sitting there in their ivory tower just getting everything? But one of the really interesting insights that came up from that survey on LinkedIn where you and I met was that I noticed, and I can't ignore that, but a lot of the people who are doing win-loss or competitive on a regular basis, so not that they may be working in companies that do that as a service or that work with other companies with massive PMM teams and CI teams and all of that. A lot of them said that it may not necessarily be under product marketing, but really either as a function of its own or maybe depends on the personalities, right?

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Whoever has the most... at the company, which is a really interesting point. I think we can ignore that. Again, I still tend to believe that product marketing is the most natural place for that, but that does assume that product marketing is having those relationships and those connection to other people in the organization that they do take the win-loss insights and they do communicate them effectively and not just keep all the good stuff to themselves.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. Totally love it. I agree. What were you going to say?

Talya Heller:                                          No, and I think that's also something that a lot of people struggle with though.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. Yeah. This was my response to the survey. My response was it should sit with whoever is best equipped to run a very collaborative cross-functional program. And oftentimes that is product marketing. Oftentimes you have a competitive intelligence person on your team that can do that. Oftentimes we see a rev ops person who's really good at this. We've seen, especially if they're focused on existing customers and expansion and downgrades and churns and renewals, a customer success person or even product people. That's been one of the most interesting things to us at Clozd is the different personas that come to us, especially when you get outside of tech that need help with win-loss, oftentimes revenue leaders, CROs are looking for this.

                                                      But your point I think is spot on. I have seen time and time again where if the person, regardless of their function, they could be a competitive intelligence person, they could be a product marketing person, they could be a product person, whatever it happens to be, regardless of that, if they are too focused on their own role and discipline and have too much of a lens that they view the win-loss and conduct the program through, they will limit the value that the rest of the company gets. And I can't tell you the number of times, here's a perfect example, Talya that I've seen. It's being run by the competitive intelligence team and it's only being used to fill in information on battle cards. Meanwhile, the product team could use all of this feedback to drive their roadmap and they have no idea that it's even happening.

                                                      And vice versa, the rev ops team is running it and they're getting all this feedback and they're using it to drive sales enablement and things like that, but they're not taking it and giving it to the competitive intelligence team to help make battle cards more robust. They're not giving it to the product marketing team to help refine messaging. They're not giving it to the product team. The biggest thing I would, and we have data on this, the companies that receive the biggest increase in their win rate are actually the ones that have the most access, when they give the most access to the insights broadly and liberally across the org. The more people that have access to it, the more they can go act on it and drive it. Some product marketers are so good at that because of the nature of what they do, they have to understand the product, they have to understand the market, they have to understand sales, and they're really good.

                                                      That's why oftentimes if they're a great person to own this in an org, but if they're too siloed in their vision. Yeah, to me it has everything to do with less about boxes and an org chart and more about the trust within the org and the capability. And frankly, how serious do people take you in the org? And this is a great opportunity for product marketing folks. We've had tons of customers come to us and say, "Owning win-loss has been one of the most important ways that I've elevated myself in my career and at my company because I am the strategic voice."

Talya Heller:                                          I agree.

Spencer Dent :                                         And it's awesome.

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. I would agree for that even from my own experience. That company that I had to do win-loss at in my first 30 days, first of all, that was such a great opportunity. There is nothing that will teach you about the business, about your customers and about your sales team faster than doing win-loss.

Spencer Dent :                                         Doing win-loss.

Talya Heller:                                          And also that part about communicating it. And we can talk about some tips maybe to do that. I think one of them is for sure, make sure that you have a takeaway, at least one takeaway for each different function so there's something for everyone. But I can tell you, and of course share different things with different audiences like adjust, but whatever are going to share with the entire organization, it's amazing to see how people that you wouldn't think would care about these things, how much they actually care what happen.

Spencer Dent :                                         Care about it a lot. Okay, this has been great. We've been talking for a while now and we could keep going forever, which is one of the reasons why this is such a fun topic. Let's pretend that I am a brand new product marketer, or I just started a new company and the first thing I was told to do, because you've done this, the first thing I was told to do is you need to stand up a win-loss program. What advice would you give me based off of your experience?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. First of all, congrats. But I think for win-loss specifically, more than anything else, aim for good and done not for perfect.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Even if you can send out surveys or get 10 customers to talk to you or lost opportunities or whatever number you have in your mind, do it anyway. Do it anyway with whatever information that you have. I would even say especially if you're just beginning, start with CRM data. Take everything there, of course with a grain of salt. But start with that. Start to see if you can identify some patterns. If you can form some hypothesis, then bring those maybe to your team's internally even. Even if you can't get any customer to talk to you, bring those to your team. Try to get a better feel of what actually happened. Try to confirm or not those hypothesis. If you do get a chance to talk to customers, don't think or don't assume you can ask them 12 questions because it's not going to happen.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Maybe prioritize your top three questions, the most urgent things that you want to know, and let the conversation flow. If they said something interesting, don't just move on to the next question because that's what you have on your page. If you think it's worth it, go deeper. Go off script a little bit, it's fine. Really go for the insight rather than the checklist.

Spencer Dent :                                         Love it.

Talya Heller:                                          And then when it's time to present that, again, we talked about this a second ago. It's time to present it, make sure that you have something for everyone that's sitting in the room with you. You have something for marketing, you have something for sales, something for product, something for success, something for the C-suite as well. And please share what you find, share what you learn, what you think are the underlying issues, some next steps that you are offering. And again, take the time to adjust whatever it is that you're presenting to the audience because the discussion that you're going to have with the C-suite is going to be different maybe than what you're going to present to sales and marketing.

Spencer Dent :                                         100%.

Talya Heller:                                          ... be very different than what you're going to show or share to your entire company.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          Don't just use the same format, the same type of analysis.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah. It's not the same deck.

Talya Heller:                                          It's not the same deck.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeah.

Talya Heller:                                          It is not the same deck, for sure.

Spencer Dent :                                         I love it. I love it. It's super interesting and this is such a good reminder for everybody, right? There is absolutely, and we have seen this over and over, a maturity curve that companies go through as they implement the practice of win-loss. And this is such good advice for, we don't have anything in place, what should we do? This is the way companies get this started. They go check their CRM data, see what they can learn there. They go, talk to the internal team, see what they can learn there. They have some initial conversations with buyers to see what they can learn there. And then typically what that points them to is, wow, there are some areas that we really need to go dig in on.

Talya Heller:                                          Mm-hmm.

Spencer Dent :                                         And they actually think about how do they go scale up a program at a greater length and it turns into, okay, I went and talked to five customers, let's go try to talk to another 20 customers to actually, we should be talking to 40 customers every quarter. And that journey can take a year for a company to go through. We've also seen it happen in a matter of weeks. But such good advice for someone who's just starting, like, you got to get your hands dirty. You got to go talk to customers, look at data, talk to people, start to formulate the hypothesis of what's going on. And that will make you really intelligent about how you think about setting it up and moving up that maturity curve. This has been awesome. Talya, thank you so much. If I'm a product marketer or a competitive intelligence professional, and I would love help and advice from you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Talya Heller:                                          Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn or you can go to my website downtoatee.co.

Spencer Dent :                                         Awesome.

Talya Heller:                                          And reach out to me there.

Spencer Dent :                                         Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you so much for your time. Wish you best of luck. Have fun down in Texas.

Talya Heller:                                          Thank you for having me, Spencer. Always a pleasure.

Spencer Dent :                                         Yeehaw. Thanks.

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