Blindspots with Host Ryan Sorley

This week, Ryan is joined by Jess Iandiorio, Meg Fitzgerald and Ray Grady as they discuss how the C-Suite are using Win-Loss Analysis. From gaining support and including incentives for Sales and Marketing to aligning Win-Loss with business priorities, they share their expertise on running Win-Loss and where it can go wrong.

This episode was taken from the session ‘How the C-Suite are Using Win-Loss Analysis to Improve their Revenue Process’ at Compete Week 2023.

00:00 - Introduction
03:36 - What goes into a great Win-Loss program
06:41 - CRM as a Starting Point
09:16 - Changing CRM Fields
13:14 - Aligning Incentives in the Revenue Team
15:50 - A CEO's Perspective on Win Loss Data Presentation
17:02 - Handling Large Volumes of Deal Data
18:21 - Handling churn data and understanding market perception
19:05 - Advice on Rolling Out a Win Loss Program
21:46 - Avoiding the Pitfall of Unused Win Loss Insights
23:52 - The CEO should lead Win-Loss initiatives
26:19 - Should Product Marketing run Win-Loss?

Learn more about how win-loss and competitive enablement work together:
www.win-loss.com

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Meg Fitzgerald, Senior Vice President at Insight Partners joins Ryan this week to talk about how Win-Loss can be used for more than just sales… it can direct Brand decisions. They talk about how to measure the ROI of brand investments from using the voice of the customer, voice of your employees and the issues with deficient investment in brand.

Key Moments:

00:00 - Introduction

00:20 - Measuring the ROI of brand investments

06:31 - Are companies deficient in brand investment?

09:22 - Brand investment at different maturity stages

15:06 - How many customers to interview for Win-Loss analysis

17:48 - Resources needed for early stage Win-Loss analysis

21:50 - Difference between early and growth stage Win-Loss analysis

24:59 - Turning Win-Loss data into insights

27:15 - Are Win-Loss insights valuable to board members?

29:43 - Brand measurement for late stage companies

33:47 - Unique vs. generic objectives

36:10 - Not letting AI be a disruptor

Carol Meyers, board chair of Crunchr and Go-to-Market advisor, joins Ryan to talk about her experiences with Win-Loss analysis over her accomplished career. They touch on how to use Win-Loss data to inform when you have a real competitor, how to present Win-Loss at a board meeting and how AI will affect the business landscape for Sales and Marketing.

Key Moments
00:01 - Introduction
00:59 - The importance of Win-Loss analysis
04:35 - Win-Loss programs vs. Win-Loss projects
06:57 - When to go after a competitor
09:01 - Other sources of data to use with Win-Loss
10:40 - Do companies understand the importance of competitive intelligence?
14:01 - Taking action on Win-Loss insights after board meetings
17:10 - What it takes to run a Win-Loss program
20:30 - How AI will affect business and competition
23:10 - How AI will change Sales and Marketing
27:20 - How to start a Win-Loss program

Learn more about how win-loss and competitive enablement work together:
https://klue.com/win-loss

Check out the Compete Network to find the industry's best competitive content all in one place: https://thecompetenetwork.com/

Sign up for our weekly Coffee & Compete Newsletter for your weekly dose of the best competitive content: https://klue.com/newsletter

Ray Grady has been in tech space since the early 90s and has never seen anything as powerful as AI. He joined host Ryan Sorley to talk about the impact he thinks artifical intelligence will have on society, government and tech. He also shares the intensely high returns he's seen from win-loss programs he's sponsored for the companies he's led.

Catch up on all Season 3 episodes of Blindspots at https://klue.com/shows/blindspots.

Blindspots is brought to you by the Compete Network: the #1 community for competitive intelligence and enablement professionals.

Key Moments

(00:10) Ryan's first-ever customer at DoubleCheck
(01:29) How Tom leverages win-loss insights
(04:29) How big is the gap between seller intel and buyer intel?
(06:38) Using win-loss insights to drive decision making
(08:23) Gaining competitive intelligence through win-loss analysis
(12:15) Presenting win-loss insights at board meetings
(14:26) How Tom used win-loss insights to inform mergers and acquisitions
(18:13) Tom's advice for starting a win-loss program

Production Team:

Host: Ryan Sorley
Producer: Ben Ronald
Audio Editor: Michael Panes
Supervising Producer: Adam McQueen

Chris Fountain is an operating partner at Frontier Growth, a private-equity firm investing in B2B SaaS companies.  Their partnership-based approach means that Chris will never tell his portcos to invest in win-loss. But given how much return Chris has seen on a relatively small investment thanks to win-loss analysis, you can be sure he strongly recommends it.

Chris joined Ryan to talk about  how win-loss can and should inform all your strategic initiatives (product roadmap, GTM, overall positioning), how AI might change the win-loss game and much more.

You can watch the full interview on Klue's YouTube Channel

And catch past episodes of Blindspots here

Blindspots is brought to you by the Compete Network: the #1 community for competitive intelligence and enablement professionals.

Key Moments

(00:00) Intro
(01:37) What it means to be a growth PE Firm
(03:11) The partnership approach to investing
(05:56) When does Chris recommend win-loss to his portcos?
(08:54) How win-loss insights should be delivered to the board
(14:37) Whats the right number of data point for win-loss analysis
(17:37) How will AI change investment decisions
(22:06) Chris's advice to other investors looking at win-loss programs

About the Compete Network

The Compete Network is your home for the best content, events, and resources on competing. From building your first battlecards to enabling thousands of reps, the Compete Network brings together the biggest names in the competitive enablement community.

Learn from the best in the industry, connect with other competitive professionals, and share your own experiences with the community. It all happens on the Compete Network powered by Klue.  

Tom Ebling is the former CEO of Demandware, a company that was acquired by Salesforce in 2016 for $2.8 billion. Today Tom is a Board Member and Advisor to SaaS companies. He joined Ryan to talk about how win-loss insights have driven him and his teams to make better, more strategic decisions.

From identifying a product gap that led to an acquisition, adding some much-needed nuance to buyer intel limited by seller bias, and proving one of his CEO-competitors was making stuff up, win-loss analysis has been a fundamental part of every company Tom has worked at.

You can watch the full interview on Klue's YouTube Channel

Blindspots is brought to you by the Compete Network: the #1 community for competitive intelligence and enablement professionals.

Key Moments

(00:10) Ryan's first-ever customer at DoubleCheck
(01:29) How Tom leverages win-loss insights
(04:29) How big is the gap between seller intel and buyer intel?
(06:38) Using win-loss insights to drive decision making
(08:23) Gaining competitive intelligence through win-loss analysis
(12:15) Presenting win-loss insights at board meetings
(14:26) How Tom used win-loss insights to inform mergers and acquisitions
(18:13) Tom's advice for starting a win-loss program

Production Team:

Host: Ryan Sorley
Producer: Ben Ronald
Audio Editor: Michael Panes
Supervising Producer: Adam McQueen

In the Season 3 Premiere of Blindspots—the win-loss podcast for and featuring executives, founders and investors—host Ryan Sorley sits down with Emplifi's Chief Growth Officer Vijay Gupta.

At Microsoft, Adobe, Salesfiy and Emplifi, Vijay has led GTM teams with two strategic pillars in mind: 

• Understand the buyer way better than anyone else.
• Understand the competition way better than they understand you. 

Win-loss analysis has been the vehicle for unlocking and reaching both strategic goals. And Vijay joined Ryan to talk about what it takes to get there.

Blindspots is brought to you by the Compete Network: the #1 community for competitive intelligence and enablement professionals. 

Watch the entire interview on Klue's YouTube Channel

Key Moments

(00:20) Meet Ryan Sorley
(02:11) Two strategic priorities for go-to-market motions
(04:55) Making tweaks to your program while maintaining consistency
(11:00) Making win-loss work at scale
(13:37) Win-loss in the boardroom
(18:25) Next steps after the board meeting
(22:07) Win-loss surprises in the boardroom
(24:26) How to articulate the value of win-loss programs
(26:19) How to internally position your win-loss program
(28:17) How win-loss programs fail (and what you can do about it)

Production Team:

Host: Ryan Sorley
Producer: Ben Ronald
Audio Editor: Michael Panes
Supervising Producer: Adam McQueen

In this episode of Blindspots, Sheri Chin, CMO, and Sarah Spagnola, Senior Director of Demand Generation, from Galileo Financial Technologies share their story on how their organization is staying ahead with win-loss analysis in the fast-moving financial services sector. Galileo's success in helping fintechs launch, scale, and grow their businesses is attributed to their deep expertise and understanding of their customers' needs. The architects behind Galileo's win-loss program explain how insights from win-loss interviews are crucial in delivering exactly what customers need exactly when they need it.  

In this episode of Blindspots, Mike Dupuy, Product Marketing Manager at Atlassian, talks about how Atlassian uses win-loss to successfully move into the enterprise space by enabling sellers to meet enterprise buyers where they are to provide more comprehensive and integrated solutions. 

Mike also chats about a key building block for a successful win-loss program,  how Atlassian's win-loss program began with sales in mind but has found many valuable applications across the organization, and how Atlassian approaches sharing win-loss insights internally. 

In this episode of Blindspots, Nathan Teplow, Director of Competitive Intelligence at Salsify, talks about the pivotal role of cross-functional collaboration and program evangelism in the success of a win/loss program. 

You will also learn how to get stakeholder buy-in from the get-go, how to select the right candidates to interview, how to share program findings effectively, and how to define program success.