Webinar Title: Building the Business Case for Win-Loss Interviews

Presented by: Clozd

Featuring: Code42, PSI, Sauce Labs

Date: March 31, 2020

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Clozd's VP of Operations, Braydon Anderson, hosts a conversation with experienced product marketers from Code42, PSI, and Sauce Labs about how to build a successful business case for establishing a win-loss interview program at your organization.

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Featured Guests

Molly Hickey

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Code42

Molly Hickey is a go-to-market expert with 9 years of experience researching buyers, their purchase journeys, and how companies can more effectively position and message their products to resonate with and convert their audiences. When not diving into data and collaborating with her awesome team at Code42, Molly likes to ski: downhill, uphill, and behind a boat.

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‍Alissa Lydon

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Sauce Labs

Alissa Lydon is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sauce Labs, With 6 years of experience in the software testing industry, she strives to constantly share her expertise through effective, data-driven storytelling. From educating the market on best practices, to constantly advocating for the customer within Sauce Labs, her goal is to ensure that everyone she works with is set up for success. Outside of work, you can find her reading all kinds of books, traveling to faraway lands with her family, or catching a baseball game (Go A's!).

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‍Graham Killian

Senior Product Marketing Manager, PSI

Graham is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for PSI Services, one of the world's leading workforce testing providers. Graham has been with PSI for nearly 4 years, taking part in the company's rapid growth, completing more than 10 business acquisitions in that short span. Graham works as part of a Global Product Marketing Team and leads win-loss and competitive intelligence initiatives. His objective is to not only keep up with the ever-changing demands of modern buyers and the constantly-shifting competitive landscape, but rather to get out in front of them.

Braydon Anderson:

We'd like to welcome everyone out to the webinar today. We're excited to have you here with us, especially with everything that's going on in the world right now around COVID-19. We hope you're all doing well and staying safe. We're going to give everyone a few minutes to join the webinar and we'll plan to start in about one to two minutes. However, while we wait, this is an opportunity for you to win some Clozd swag. We're going to have a sweepstakes. All you have to do is go into clozd.com/webinarsurvey. There's a brief three question survey about how well you've been social distancing yourself, as well as the state of win-loss at your company. So take the survey. You'll get entered in and we're going to pick three random winners. So take the next one to two minutes and we'll get started shortly.

Great. Thanks to everyone that entered into the sweepstakes. We'll keep the survey open throughout the webinar for those of you that haven't had a chance to take it yet. But now let's get started. Again, thank you for being here. We hope that everyone is staying safe and staying positive during this time. In order for Clozd to provide the best webinar experience that we can, we have prerecorded each of the conversations that you will hear today, given the changes in the market around COVID-19 and the effects that it's having on the economy win-loss is becoming more important than ever. Each of the prerecorded conversations occurred before the COVID-19 outbreak. But the principles that they will share today are universal to building a business case for a win-loss interview program. Additionally, our team has built content specific to the value of win-loss and how to implement it in the current economic climate. We will email that out later this week to everyone that has joined the webinar.

Let's get started. We're excited to talk about win-loss analysis, and specifically, how to help you build the business case and show the ROI of starting a win-loss program at your company. So we invited three senior product marketing managers to simply have a conversation with me about their tips and best practices, what to watch out for, and really the value they've had from running a win-loss interview program. So let's go ahead and meet them real quick. So first, my name is Braydon Anderson. Currently I oversee operations and marketing at Clozd, which is a provider of win-loss services and technology. Our first guest is Molly Hickey, who is the senior product marketing manager at Code42. We're also joined by Alissa Lydon, who is a senior product marketing manager at Sauce Labs. And lastly, our third guest is Graham Kilian, who is the senior product marketing manager at PSI Services. We're really excited to have them here with us to share their insights on win-loss.

Before we start the conversation and the interview with each of them, I'd just like to briefly set the stage and explain what win-loss analysis is. Simply put win-loss analysis is the process of systematically tracking and analyzing the reasons you win and lose sales opportunities. Rigorous win-loss analysis helps companies validate their strengths and identify areas where they can improve in order to increase sales win-rates. Specifically for B2B organizations that sell sophisticated solutions, a win-loss interview with the buyer is really the most effective way to learn why a deal is won or lost. In most cases, these conversations with buyers last about 20 to 30 minutes and drill into many areas, including product or solution offering, the sales experience, pricing and packaging, competitive landscape, et cetera. Clozd then delivers those insights back to our clients via innovative technology to really make it easy for users to consume and share the findings across the organization.

The insights for these interviews enable organizations to fill critical product gaps, refined pricing strategies, optimize sales messaging, track competitive and market trends, fix sales execution problems, and more. In fact, according to one gardener study, rigorous win-loss analysis can help organizations improve their win-rates by as much as 50%. Clozd was founded in 2017, really to bring a new perspective and new technology to the win-loss space. And we've been fortunate to design deliver win-loss programs for the three companies that are actually represented by our guests here today. Those being Code42, Sauce Labs, and PSI.

So with that, let's jump into some questions with our guests about the benefits of win-loss interviews, as well as hear their tips and suggestions for those who are looking to implement win-loss for the first time. Our first guest is Molly Hickey. Molly is a go-to market expert with nine years of experience researching buyers, their purchase journeys, and how companies can more effectively position and message their products to resonate with and convert their audiences. We're not diving into data in collaborating with their team at Code42, Molly likes to ski downhill, uphill and behind a boat. So Molly, the first question that I have for you today is what is uphill skiing?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Hey, Braydon, well, thanks for having me. Uphill skiing is known to us here in Minnesota as a cross country skiing. There's no real big hills to go down, so we're mostly skiing up.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Okay. Got you. Well, cool. Well, thanks Molly. And again, great to have you. Thanks for joining us today. So let's dive into this. Maybe tell me just as we talk about win-loss, and specifically at Code42, why do you feel there was a need for win-loss analysis at your company?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yeah, so at Code42, we have a fairly long history of doing win-loss calls, but had stopped because we were changing directions in the market and offering a few new products. So there was a period of time where the program faltered, as our product changed and we needed more feedback, we started to reach out organically to our buyers and to our marketplace. So we would try to reinvigorate that program. And I and my colleagues would ask salespeople if we could get an introduction to their prospects, give them a call. And we had a really, really hard time actually getting in touch with them ourselves. But there was a ton of emphasis, especially in my department and in the sales department around actually speaking to these people, and not relying on some of our notes in Salesforce and that sort of thing, because we were talking to a new buyer in the department. Our product had a lot of new functionality and every deal was really important for us to be able to chat with that buyer.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. Okay. So it sounds like you were doing some of these interviews yourselves, but it lost momentum. Is that what happened there internally?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yeah. It was really uncommon in, especially last calls, but also when calls that we could actually connect with the buyer. Sometimes they would respond to our email, but we would never actually get anything scheduled. Sometimes they would say, we've already talked to Code42 about this. I've talked to my sales person a number of times about why I'm not going forward. So it was really hard for us to get real candid conversations.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. So at that point you decided that it made sense to maybe look for another, like an actual vendor to go in and run this program for you, more so how can we be more consistent with it and how can we get a higher participation rate, is that right?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yeah, that's exactly right. So how can we have a consistent cadence? We wanted something where we were hearing, just like you said, consistently from buyers on a monthly basis so that we could incorporate that feedback really quickly, and that we didn't have this huge bulk of feedback later in a cycle and later in the year and not consistently throughout the year. But also, yeah, because we really weren't getting the data that we needed.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. Okay. So tell me a little bit about that process. Did you guys, as you started looking for vendors, did you do like a pilot? Just tell me a little more about that process.

Molly Hickey:                                        

Yeah, so we looked at a few vendors, and everyone that we found, other than Clozd, was more of a traditional research house, and Clozd right away impressed us because of the access to data, because we could see it on an ongoing basis, and because we had access through the portal. And we really connected with the people at Clozd, which was an awesome experience. So we did a pilot, because it was hard to get budget, right? The people on my immediate team were like, "Yeah, we've been trying this for months and we can't get anyone on the phone." But the general feeling at the higher levels was like, you just need to call more frequently. You just need to dedicate more time to this, which is really hard when we have our own 40 plus hour week jobs anyways. So they said, "Okay, fine. We can do a pilot with a limited number of calls, because we're really interested in getting some of this feedback before the end of the year and before our sales kickoff for 2020." So that was the impetus.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

Got you. So you mentioned some of these other people in the organization that maybe were a little skeptical, might be the right word, but what were some of the other leaders and stakeholders that you needed to work with to make this happen?

Molly Hickey:                                        

Yeah, so I'm in the product marketing department. My boss is the VP of product marketing, and reports to our CMO. Certainly had to convince him ultimately for budget, but realistically it was more convincing the sales team, the larger marketing organization, and the product organization that we couldn't do this by ourselves, that we needed some real help. And I would say we have an incredible sales organization at Code42, and there was no doubt that we needed this data, and that this data would be incredibly helpful for us.

So the great thing was, when we reached out to sales, they were like, "Yep, we need to do these calls." They were somewhat concerned about it being a third party, because they thought maybe they wouldn't understand our product, or maybe people would... We're in the security industry, maybe they would think it's fishing or something like that. But we chatted about the questions that would be asked. The product marketing team took on a lot of the effort of figuring out the accounts that we wanted to talk to, knowing our story in those accounts, and being sure that we equipped Clozd with that information. So I think sales didn't feel like there was a huge lift, but they also were able to put the brakes on, if there was a really specific account that they were still working. So that was great. And the product team was really excited just to get any feedback. They've been trying to do some of these calls themselves, and are able to when they have the personal relationships, but again, not at the scale, and with the consistency that we need.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

Got you. So it sounds like there was some excitement, at least, internally from these other teams to get it going. What was it like to get budget for this new initiative then?

Molly Hickey:                                          

So after, basically for the pilot itself, we were able to get to a comfortable number of calls that by the end of the year we could have some real solid data. And I think that was the biggest shift for us. So by the end of the year, we had about 17 calls worth of data. And it revealed for us some insights that we certainly wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And some things that were pretty contrary to what we had initially thought about how our buyers were purchasing, and why they decided or didn't decide to use our product.

So I packaged all that up and shared it before our sales kickoff with my VP, who has a pretty close relationship with our CMO, who was new at that time, and our CEO. And they were blown away. They were shocked that we were able to get this kind of data. And that a lot of it was pretty contrary to some of the other indicators that we've gotten from like, Gartner and Forrester or just from PR data and demand data, about our customers and our marketplace. So it was super interesting, because at the beginning of the year, we go through this, we present it, my boss takes it to the CEO. I'm able to share it with our sales team and our product team. I'm actually able to give people direct access to the Clozd platform, which is great, because seeing is believing. People who were allowed to an organization could look right at the transcripts of those calls and see the trends, and the responses.

So it kind of flipped. I started writing on my proposal for the year, and what I needed budget for, and what was really important to me. And before I even had the chance to ask for budget for a consistent monthly year long engagement with Clozd, the leadership at Code42 was reaching out like, what's our plan for win-loss calls company? How many more are we going to do? What's our monthly plan? So it was pretty great.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

Yeah. So it basically went from, we need to fight to get money to when are we doing more?

Molly Hickey:                                        

Exactly.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

It was like it happened there.

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yeah.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

That's really cool. I love the story. So help me understand this a little more, I know it's different at every organization, but let's say I'm a product marketing manager. How do I get to see you're involved? What specifically did you do in your instance to get some of these senior leaders involved, specifically the CEO, who was so thrilled at the results?

Molly Hickey:                                        

Yeah, well, in my organization we're lucky we have a pretty marketing and sales focused business. Our CEO comes from a marketing background. So he sees a lot of what product marketing and demand marketing can do as directly relevant to revenue. So anything that we do that we think is tied to revenue and can impact our odds of success in deals is something that he's really interested in, considering and looking at. So knowing that I put together an executive summary of all the data that we've gotten from our last call pilot, and really positioned it as things that could help our salespeople change the way that they're selling, or that we could change the way that we're messaging and positioning our product to increase our odds of success.

And I knew my boss had a fairly regular cadence with the executive leadership team. And I was like, "Can you just take my stuff someday and see if you can present it?" And he did. And I'm lucky I've a really supportive boss. So that was awesome. But it was also great because just at the end of the year, at the beginning of 2020, we had a new chief marketing officer come into Code42. So it was great to be able to have some recent data that was really impactful to show her and to prove the value of our team a little bit.

Braydon Anderson:                              

Got you. No, that's great. That's great insight is one approach to working, managing your manager and managing their manager. I think that's a really great approach to doing it. So that's great input. Molly, this' been awesome. I've loved the story. I've loved what you guys have done. Maybe just in our last couple of minutes here, two common questions I'd love to ask are, first, what are some of the key benefits of win-loss interviews that you've seen for your org?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yeah.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

That you can share.

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yes. Yeah. Without diving too deeply into the data itself, I would say that hearing directly from buyers is incredibly revealing. It really highlights differences in understanding perhaps, but also times when we're just not hitting the mark with our buyer, when they're looking for a really specific solution, and we know our product can achieve it, but we're not positioning it in a way that resonates with those buyers. I think that's the number one thing that I've found in any direct contact with buyers. And if we can actually have a regular cadence of understanding that, and testing the way that we iterate on in our sales motion, and our product messaging. It's really helpful to reach our buyers more effectively, we're doing so much and we're spending so much money on going out and finding buyers, why not measure whether or not the message is resonating.

Braydon Anderson:                                

Yeah. That's awesome. That's great. The last question I'd have for you is what tips do you have for other product marketers looking to invest into win-loss?

Molly Hickey:                                          

I would say, start with the pilots, see what you can get. And I've been asking for budget for a while, but as the year ends, and you're looking at that fourth quarter and there's still budgets sitting around. I was like, "I will gladly take some of that, please. I have it all set up. I know what I want to do with it." So keep asking, start with a pilot. Clozd was really flexible with us and we were able to do that. And we found a lot of great insight. What it also let us do, the pilot also let us really refine the questions that we wanted to ask. We realized that some of the questions that we'd started with or thought were really important were redundant, or didn't get the type of responses we needed. So we're actually starting out this year with a whole new set of questions, which is great. And I think we'll get a lot more detailed information.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

And that's a great point. I think oftentimes we think to start a program it's got to be flawless from day one. The best programs are ones that are adaptable, that are changing. It's a matter of let's get started and then grow with it as the program grows and make the appropriate changes. But don't expect it to be perfect from day one, right?

Molly Hickey:                                          

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. You don't know what you don't know until you start.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

That's right. Well, Molly, this has been awesome. I really appreciate the time today and appreciate your input and your insights. So we'll let you jump, and we'll continue on in the webinar, but again, thanks again for being here.

Molly Hickey:                                        

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Of course. Great. So our next guest is Alissa Lydon. Alissa is a senior product marketing manager at Sauce Labs. With six years of experience in the software testing industry, she strives to constantly share her expertise through effective data-driven storytelling, from educating the market on best practices to constantly advocating for the customer within Sauce Labs. Her goal is to ensure that everyone she works with is set up for success. Outside of work, you can find her reading all kinds of books, traveling to faraway lands with her family or catching a baseball game. And apparently her favorite team is the A's. So thanks for being with us today, Alissa.

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Thanks, Braydon. It's great to be here. And yes, go A's.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

That's right. The first question, where's your favorite far away land to travel to?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Oh, that's a really good question. I've been to a lot of different places. I would say South Africa ranks pretty high on my list. It's a really magical place with great people and just lots to do and great food. That's always a big prerequisite for me, is the food scene.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

That's great. So who thought that you'd be getting a travel recommendation on today's win-loss webinars? Thanks for that Alissa.

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Of course.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Great. Well, let's dive into some win-loss questions. So maybe just diving into it, tell us a little bit about the story of win-loss at Sauce Labs, and maybe why you felt there was a need for win-loss at your company.

Alissa Lydon:                                        

Yeah. So as you mentioned in the introduction Sauce Labs is a software testing company, and we're a fairly small startup. I mean, we're actually medium sized. We're about 300 employees. And when I started going down the path of win-loss, I think what would started me thinking about it was just this fact that we have all of these different stakeholders who are obsessed with the customer who are really focused on how to maximize our time with the customer. And there are lots of loud voices in the room that have all their different data sources that they use, product has their set of data. Sales has their idea. Marketing has our own ideas, and we felt this larger need as a company to start unifying those sources and unifying our voice to make sure we're all on the same page when it comes to how our customers are experiencing our product and our people.

And myself personally, I was getting the sense when I was in a lot of these meetings with leadership and with cross-functional teams that a lot of the evidence that we already had about why we won or why we lost deals was quite anecdotal, or we felt like that we were being pulled in a lot of different directions based on whoever was the loudest voice in the room at the time. There was little to no data that might back that up. It's more like, "Hey, sales has lost a few deals to a competitor in a row. That must mean they're a major threat." And not to discount our sales folks there at the front lines, but what's the larger story here. Is that actually true? What data can we use to validate that? And then what can we actually do about it? So that's why I started thinking win-loss might be a great program to help solve some of these issues.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

Okay. And why win-loss specifically?

Alissa Lydon:                                        

I think for me win-loss is a great way to get that direct voice of the customer. I mean, we can all draw our own conjecture based on how we feel about our product, how we feel about our sales cycle, but at the end of the day, we're all human and we all bring our own biases and our own ideas. If we want the truest voice of the customer, it's best to just go directly to them. And in my research and my experience win-loss is that great way to tap in directly to the customer voice and get rich data directly from them.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. Okay. So what were the next steps then for you? How did you start building the case? Did you start with a pilot? What happened next?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Yeah. So building the business case was a really interesting task. Like I said, we're a fairly small company, we're funded, but sometimes it pays to be a little bit scrappy in the beginning with brand new initiatives like this, we had never done anything like win-loss at Sauce Labs before. So my theory was to start small, find out what metrics matter most to the folks who would eventually sponsor this initiative, and then prove out that value quickly with a really short pilot program. So I decided to take leadership with the blessing of my boss, the head of marketing, and built out that pilot program to prove the value to the executive stakeholders that we needed a program like this in a broader fashion.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

So tell me a little bit more about who were the stakeholders that cared most about it, and who you felt like you needed to convince at your organization?

Alissa Lydon:                                        

Yeah. I actually consider myself pretty lucky in this, because I partnered early with our head of marketing on this, and then she saw the value immediately. We were able to get all the heavy hitters in the room from the outset. So we had our head of marketing, our head of sales, our head of product and our head of engineering to help kick off this pilot. So I was able to get all of them in a room, kind of understand, again, what metrics matter most to them, understand what they want to know about our customer. And then get that directive to go out into the field and start conducting those interviews to find the data that would be most beneficial or salient to them.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

You did something really interesting there, Alissa, that I like it. I think oftentimes when we get this concept of wanting to start win-loss, it's like, "I'm going to go get some data. I'm going to go do it myself. Maybe I'll hire a third party, or maybe I'll go do the interviews myself." But what you did that was really interesting was you got a lot of other people involved early on in the process, right?

Alissa Lydon:                                        

Yeah. And we kept the communication open as much as possible. So even now that it's a fully scaled out program, we have quarterly meetings where we give updates to the executive sponsors. And they're very engaged, even a year plus into this. So keeping those lines of communication open and adjusting with them as their outcomes change and their metrics change keeps the program relevant and top of mind for everyone.

Braydon Anderson:                      

Yeah. And I really liked that, because I think oftentimes we don't get these people involved, and then we go get the data and then we go and give them the data without them having any input on how it was collected or knowing it's going on. And sometimes there's like this, "Whoa, Whoa, Whoa." Type of response to it. But what you did is great, is you were able to get them involved, you found out what questions they were trying to solve, what questions they had, and got their input just from day one. And we've seen the most success especially when doing a pilot, when organizations do this, and in our key person that we work with is working very heavily with their internal stakeholders. So I think that's a great takeaway from me from this interview already. So I love that. Anything else you would add there, Alissa?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

No. Yeah. Just keeping the lines of communication open, like you said, is what's going to keep a program like win-loss running.

Braydon Anderson                              

Perfect. So maybe tell me then at that point you did the pilot and how did you secure budget both for the pilot and for the ongoing program later on?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

So the pilot didn't require any budget. I did it all myself. I just bootstrapped it using me, myself and I. so I guess it was less about getting the budget and more about getting the approval from my manager to focus on this, and take my focus off some other items to dedicate some time to proving out win-loss. And I think for then securing budget for the larger program, when we decided to scale it out, I think it goes back to the stuff we were talking about before. If executive leaders, if leadership can see the value, and they can see how the metrics that we're gathering or the data we're gathering in win-loss helps them achieve their particular goals for their team, whether that's product increasing engagement or sales, closing more deals, then that budget just seems to magically appear it seems, right? So I think, again, taking this data, which we as product marketers find all this data incredibly rich, but then how do we translate bits and pieces of this data to what makes most sense for sales or product or eng, I think is where you can start getting those approvals pretty easily.

Braydon Anderson:                        

Cool. That's great. So just in our last minute or two here with you, I'd love to understand maybe, and share what you can share, but what are some of the key benefits of win-loss interviews you've seen for your org?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Yeah. I think starting from just product marketing as a product marketer, I think that win-loss is just a treasure trove of data for us. It helps us really understand where we are currently in regards to our product, whether it's our features or our pricing and packaging, we can get direct feedback there. We can get feedback into how we stack up against our competition. We can even get insight into the sales process, and it helps inform us how we better enable our sales team to sell the value of our product.

But for the larger organization, I think I mentioned at the beginning about how we felt like we were being pulled in a lot of different directions and we needed to unify on a singular voice. Win-loss has really helped us as a cross-functional product marketing sales team really unify us in identifying where we're succeeding, where we can focus on for improvement. So we all kind of are singing from the same song book. And then for Sauce Labs as a whole. And I think this is aspirational for us still, as we're still only about a year in, and we're trying to find the best way to leverage this data. But I think that win-loss is really going to help enable all of us at Sauce Labs become better spokespeople for our customers. We have even more insight than we did before into how our users feel about our product, what they need, what are their buying habits, and how we as employees of Sauce Labs can help serve our customers best moving forward. So I think that's the true power of win-loss is it helps everyone understand, our customer, by giving them a real voice.

Braydon Anderson:                      

That's so beautiful. I love it. I love it. Well this has been great, Alissa. The last question I'd have for you is just what tips do you have for other product marketers that are looking to invest in win-loss?

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Yeah. I would say in the beginning, if you're looking for buy-in, don't be afraid to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty a little bit, and get a little bit of experience. I think for me just doing those first couple of interviews myself really made me appreciate how hard this is. I mean, to do this would be a full-time job. And I really appreciated that by doing that pilot. So it's okay to get your hands dirty a little bit in the beginning. Get as cross-functional as you can, as early on in the process, we kind of already touched on this, but getting that buy-in early is key to success. And then I think this is a goal for us, a tip that I'm still searching out answers for, is find ways to democratize the data. Don't hoard it or be precious with it, share it as much as possible, not just with leadership, but find ways to engage with your colleagues, your peers, on getting this data into their hands so they can become better at their jobs.

Braydon Anderson:                              

I love it. Alissa, this has been great. A lot of great points that I think will help a lot of product marketers. So we appreciate your time today. We'll let you jump, and we'll move on to our next guest, but we really appreciate the insights that you provided to us today. So thanks again.

Alissa Lydon:                                          

Awesome. Thanks so much Braydon for having me. This is really cool.

Braydon Anderson:              

Of course. Thanks. So our last guest today is Graham Kilian. Graham is senior product marketing manager for PSI Services, which is one of the world's leading workforce testing providers. They deliver secure global assessment solutions for talent management, professional credentialing, and higher education. Graham has been with PSI for nearly four years, and feels very fortunate for the opportunity to take part in the company's rapid growth and evolution, completing more than 10 business acquisitions and experiencing explosive organic growth during that short time. Graham works as part of the global product marketing team focused on the talent management market, where he leads win-loss and competitive intelligence initiatives. Graham, it's great to have you with us today.

Graham Kilian:                                        

Thanks for having me Braydon.

Braydon Anderson:                                

And how long now I've we actually have been working with each other? We're coming up on a year now, is that right?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Close to it. Yeah, I think we started with you guys back in may, maybe June of last year. So we're getting close to a year.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Awesome. Cool. Well, it's been great having you as a client. So, cool. Well, let's dive into this. Graham, tell us a little bit about PSI, and what you guys have been doing for win-loss, and why you felt there was a need for this at your company?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Sure. Yeah. So as was mentioned in my bio, PSI is a company that has changed a lot just in the past four or five years. We've made a lot of acquisitions. And so our footprint in the market has changed drastically in that time. But I think for every company, it's a little bit different. But I think every business in their own way right now, in today's market with technology advancing at the rate that it is, we're all trying to address the challenges of that constant change. So for us it's really understanding our changing market, understanding our changing customers, and then understanding how PSI, with all the change that we've had, really fits into that competitive landscape, really how we're positioned in the market, and the perception of our consumers.

So as far as win-loss intel that we already had, we may have had some from some of our legacy business acquisitions, but we didn't have really anything that reflected what PSI is today. And I think with all of the change that is constantly happening, and how fast it's happening, it's really important for businesses to keep a finger on the pulse constantly of where their business is positioned in the market, relative to market needs, as well as relative to their competition. And so then that's really what led us down the path to win-loss analysis.

Braydon Anderson:                                

So why did you feel like win-loss was the right route to solving what you were trying to find?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Yeah. So as a product marketer, I think that it's important to understand that every business and the actual processes that we undertake to get things done and be successful may be different, but at the end of the day, there's some underlying things that you have to do to be successful. So for myself and for our company, we really like using the Pragmatic framework. So if you've heard of Pragmatic Institute. Pragmatic, if you look at their framework, the two things that it really starts with in order to be successful as a company is understanding market problems. And one of the key ways to do that, outlined by Pragmatic, is win-loss analysis.And so that's kind of how we initially really started talking about win-loss analysis as a key part of understanding those market problems that we need to be addressing through our solutions.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. Okay. Yeah. Pragmatic marketing is great. Great content. So from there you guys realize you need to win-loss. How did you start building the business case? Did you do a pilot? Or what was the next step at your org?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Yeah, so I think that the key is really identifying who the key stakeholders are, who those decision makers are within your organization. And then understanding what are the key value drivers for them, right? So what are the benefits that win-loss can provide that are going to really positively impact their goals and objectives? So it was really understanding who my internal audience was, and what was going to be most important to them. So within our business and every business, once again, it's different. But we have a few different cross-functional teams that have to work together. And at the end of the day, those market problems should really be at the center of what all of those groups are doing.

And so within our business, we have a lot of experts and I'm sure this is common within a lot of organizations. We have a lot of experts that have deep expertise. We have a lot of client facing folks, both in our sales and consulting groups, who are deep in the trenches and very in tune with what customers needs are. They're hearing feedback from customers all the time. At the same time within our organization, we had a lot of this really good anecdotal evidence from these experts, them telling us about things that they were hearing and extrapolating ideas of what we should be doing from what they're hearing, or at least what they think they know about the market. But we didn't have a whole lot of feedback coming directly from the customer. We didn't really have that customer voice at the center of those market problems that we were identifying.

So for us, win-loss was very important to either A, validate what we think we know about the market, but really more importantly, make sure that what we are saying about the "market" is coming directly from the consumer. And a big part of that is also understanding that often times, our client-facing teams are hearing from our loudest customers. And if we really want to grow our business, we need to make sure that we're focused on feedback from those outside of our core customer group. How are you ever going to grow your business if you don't understand what the market's asking for outside of your current client mix?

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. We love to focus on the squeaky wheel, and those clients are important, but there's so much more out there oftentimes. So for you, you mentioned this little bit about the key stakeholders, and I know it's different at every org, but for you who were the actual stakeholders? What were their titles? And what did it take to maybe convince them, if convincing was needed, to the value of a win-loss program?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Absolutely. So being in part of the product marketing team, I sit under the global marketing division. So of course, before you go running around the entire organization and evangelizing a new solution and trying to get everyone on board, you should probably start with your boss. So that's where I started. I started with the vice president of global marketing. So she obviously understood the value that win-loss could provide, but at the same time, you needed to make sure that you both were on the same page with what those value drivers were, what type of value we thought we could deliver across the business, and also work with that individual to identify the further stakeholders, the other leaders within the organization that we were going to need to get on board. So having her as a leader of the marketing team in my corner definitely went along way when it came to bringing this concept to others within the organization.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

Got you. That's-

Graham Kilian:                                        

So we started with marketing. Marketing was the first place to start, but obviously win-loss, a lot of it is about sales enablement. And we really want to be able to show that we can provide a return on the investment if we were to go with a vendor for win-loss analysis. So the next group of course, had to be the sales team. So getting sales leadership involved. So going to the vice president of corporate talent management sales, even going to the vice president of the overall talent management group who is involved with both sales, as well as product development, getting them on board, and getting them on board with ideas of how we can actually increase revenue by using win-loss analysis. How do we shorten time to close, and things of that nature, recognizing revenue in shorter periods of time. The things that they were really focused on and that were important to them. And then from there, it became getting the other groups involved that we knew would be able to use this feedback like customer support, R&D, and even our product teams have become very interested in the feedback we're gathering.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

That's great. I had a follow-up question specifically about the sales org. You're mentioning these different things that they obviously care about, how receptive were they when you're telling them, "Hey, we have a way that we can increase revenue and do it faster." I'm just curious, were they receptive to that? And what was that process like?

Graham Kilian:                                        

Yeah. And breeding with sales leaders, anytime you talk about helping them make more money, their ears tend to perk up. So when we started talking dollars, it all started to make sense. And I think that Clozd was really good actually in that process of providing us with some resources and tools that help to show ROI, helped to show some case studies and research, around those KPIs that win-loss analysis can impact. So having some data to back up what we were talking about, I think went a long way with them. And yeah, I mean, once again, once you're talking about how to increase revenue, and settle some of their pain points around longer sales cycles and things of that nature, and losing competitive deals, those are the types of things that really resonate with sales leadership.

Braydon Anderson:                            

Yeah. That's great. Which leads me to my next question around, how did you secure budget as part of it? But also did you start with a pilot? Because you referenced how you losing competitive deals. We found that often very true that an organization start these, "Hey, have us come and interview some of your key losses, and everyone's going to be interested in the input. If someone can give us data as to why we lost this really important deal, all we're going to be all ears." Right? So how did you guys start with the pilot? Was that part of the budget process? Tell us a little more about that.

Graham Kilian:                                        

Yeah. So for me in my situation last year, I was very fortunate that I had thought ahead, I had planned ahead, and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with market research, but I knew that I was going to need to bring in some outside help to do it. So I had set aside a budget at the beginning of the year for market research. It hadn't necessarily been earmarked for a win-loss analysis yet.

So for us as an organization who, once again, we hadn't really done much win-loss or any win-loss as PSI. So the concept, I think is the first thing you have to gain buy-in. First gain buy-in on the concept of win-loss analysis, gain agreement from leadership that you need to be gaining these insights directly from your consumers, and then evaluate how valuable it is to your organization, and [inaudible] they may be willing to invest in those types of insights.

And so that was part of that process of gaining buy-in, and the more buy-in you can gain, the more you can make your case for ROI, the more likely your organization is going to see a reason to invest in it, because they see the value they're going to get back out of it. So that was something that was really, really key for us.

Braydon Anderson:                                    

That's great. I love it. Graham, this has been awesome. I think just as we wrap up here, the last couple of questions I like to ask are just, what tips do you have for other product marketers looking to invest into win-loss?

Graham Kilian:                                        

So I think, going back to my last answer and some before, to summarize, I would say, get the right stakeholders involved, understand what's important to them, and tie that to the benefits of win-loss. I would say, once again, get buy-in on the concept first, and establish if, and at what level your company is willing to invest in those outside resources. But no matter what, think ahead, budget ahead. Even if you don't know exactly where it's going to set a budget aside.

And returning to your question before about a pilot program, the pilot program is a great way, especially for organizations that are not only new to win-loss analysis, but new to investing in it. It's a great way to be able to dip a toe and get some of those early wins that can immediately raise eyebrows, open eyes, and show some of that value. I would say within the first five interviews that we did, we got some really great feedback that immediately started to paint the picture around some of the key business initiatives that we had, where previously we only had anecdotal evidence to back it up. So those would be my recommendations to other product marketers.

Braydon Anderson:                                

Awesome. I love it, Graham. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, and sharing these great insights. We're going to wrap up the webinars. Again, Graham, thanks for being here today and hope you have a good one.

Graham Kilian:                                        

Thanks again.

Braydon Anderson:                                  

We'd, again, love to thank our guests for being here with us today. I hope all of you have gotten a lot out of this. They've shared a lot of great perspective on how they've been able to build a business case, show the ROI, and then get a lot of value out of their programs. And so if you have additional questions for either the guests or for myself, feel free to reach out to me and I can connect you with each of the presenters, braydon@clodz.com, and we'll be happy to connect you. So again, thanks for joining us today and hope everyone has a great day.

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