During a recent interview with Clozd, Sanjay Puri (VP Product Marketing, Avalara) shared three tips for anyone looking to implement a win-loss interview program.
Sanjay currently serves as the Vice President of Product Marketing at Avalara (NYSE: AVLR) a Seattle-based software company. Sanjay is also the co-founder of a pre-seed stage investment fund and startup accelerator called 9Mile Labs. Previously, Sanjay spent years building demand generation engines and defining the core product positioning, messaging, and growth strategies for key product lines at Microsoft, Opsware, HP, Edifecs and Oracle.
In response to the question, “What advice you would give to other product marketers, specifically around win-loss interviews?” Sanjay shared the following tips.
The first one is start the damn program. Doesn't matter how big you make it. Start with few interviews- two, five, ten, twenty per month, whatever number makes sense at a regular cadence that is right for your business and budget.
Continue to monitor [the program] closely. It's not a fire and forget . . . look at the results and then start to hone in on exactly what you want to achieve out of the program. Sometimes you go into it with a hypothesis and other times you may decide that you just want to start a program because it makes sense. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for something like this. You will have to match the win-loss program and you have an opportunity to match this win-loss interview program with whatever your strategic drivers are and then fine tune it until you are getting what you need out of the program.
There is no better way for product marketers to gain credibility within an organization or to gather support for your initiatives than bringing the voice of the customer into the equation . . . cite a customer testimonial and all arguments come to an end because that's the end of opinions. Opinions, while they're very interesting are not very valuable. Direct customer feedback is and I really believe that bringing direct customer feedback, whether it's through win-loss analysis or other mechanisms for product marketers, is one of the best ways to make yourself credible and effective.
To hear the full interview with Sanjay Puri, watch or listen to the webinar:
Win-loss interviews is one of the best ways for product marketers to gain comprehensive competitive intelligence, core messaging value propositions, and to truly know the voice of the buyer. Learn more about starting your win-loss interview program here.
