About LaunchDarkly

LaunchDarkly is the first scalable feature management platform. It allows development teams to innovate faster by fundamentally transforming how software is delivered to customers. With the ability to gradually release new software features to any segment of users on any platform, DevOps teams can standardize safe releases at scale, accelerate their journey to the cloud, and collaborate more effectively with business teams.

Challenge

Because LaunchDarkly is pioneering a new category, understanding how to stay competitive in a quickly evolving market is challenging. They realized they needed a way to keep a pulse on their unique competitive landscape, so they turned to win-loss analysis. Keith Messick, CMO at LaunchDarkly, joined the company and realized that the current win-loss program was too informal, leading to too many decisions made based on tribal knowledge.

Solution

Messick realized the best solution for LaunchDarkly to keep tabs on their competitors was to level-up their win-loss program using a third-party solution. After evaluating Clozd, Messick committed to a pilot program. Since then, LaunchDarkly has run two annual programs with Clozd.

"Clozd is a third-party, non-biased vendor that shows us where we should improve, so it makes it easier for all of us to be on the same page.”

Amelie Sutsakhan | Product Marketing Manager

Result

Amelie Sutsakhan is the product marketing manager in charge of competitive intelligence, and she currently runs the win-loss program. She says that competitive intelligence continues to be a primary driver for their win-loss program with Clozd.

Besides keeping close tabs on LaunchDarkly’s complex, competitive market, Clozd has provided significant value in other ways. “Clozd helps us get important information that helps us move forward, scale larger, and increase our business," Sutsakhan said. "Having said that, it’s on us to take the learnings from the interviews and actually act on them.”

Sutsakhan views her Clozd consultant as a massive help in bringing about org-wide change. She leans on him to turn the win-loss insights into actionable plans for LaunchDarkly. “I love working with Scott," she said. "He’s amazing. He follows through with everything we give him. Not only that, but he also advises us on what initiatives are going to be the best use of our time. He doesn’t just do what we tell him—he provides guidance and advice, and we appreciate that.”

As many product marketers do, Sutsakhan had difficulty gaining internal buy-in from LaunchDarkly’s sales team when she joined the company. She found Clozd to be incredibly helpful in overcoming the gap between marketing and sales by bringing the product marketing team recognition. “One victory that’s happened because of Clozd is that I’ve gained more recognition from other teams in our organization, especially the sales team," Sutsakhan said about bridging this gap. "Clozd allows product marketing to prove that we’re valuable to those other functions.”

LaunchDarkly’s sales org now sees marketing as a partner to help advance and grow the company.

The primary reason Sutsakhan says Clozd is effective at fostering collaboration is that the data-driven nature of the Clozd interviews removes “finger-pointing” from conversations. “What’s interesting about Clozd is that now no one is finger-pointing at anyone because we can point to actual data gathered in the win-loss interviews,” she said. Rather than focusing on whose shortcomings led to losing a deal, LaunchDarkly focuses on what can be done to improve.

Going forward

LaunchDarkly is looking forward to working with Clozd for the foreseeable future. Clozd is currently working on connecting LaunchDarkly with other companies that have faced or are facing similar obstacles to brainstorm how to overcome them. Sutsakhan is working with her consultant to coordinate these meetings and ensure that no sensitive information is left unprotected. “Clozd can be a bridge between companies that are facing similar problems," she said. "If both companies want to, they can meet and share tactics and learnings.” She believes that this will be a considerable value-add Clozd provides.

"I’ve been at different companies where we’ve always wanted to do win-loss, and it’s really time-consuming, so there’s never enough time, resources, or people to do it. Every company should have a win-loss program. It’s a no-brainer.”

Amelie Sutsakhan | Product Marketing Manager