Zoovu partners with Clozd to boost their sales win rate

Summary

• When the market normalized after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoovu needed a faster way to hear directly from their prospects and adjust to their new buying reality. 

• Clozd helped Zoovu turn buyer feedback into outcomes—clarifying their pricing and packaging, tightening sales execution, strengthening their messaging.
  
  
• As a result, Zoovu improved their late-stage conversion rate by more than 2.5x and cut their time to closed-won by over 50%.

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Riding the e-commerce wave

E-commerce boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the United States, even as total retail sales declined in mid-2020, retail e-commerce sales jumped 44.5% year-over-year. Globally, e-commerce’s share of all retail sales rose from 16% to 19% in 2020.

For Zoovu, this surge in online shopping created a tailwind. 

As enterprise brands scrambled to improve online conversion and reduce buying friction, Zoovu’s AI-powered search and product discovery platform helped retailers and e-commerce brands connect the right products with the right customers—faster, and with more confidence.

Simply put: Their goal was to make buying easier and more effective, eliminating friction that leads to lower ROI and unnecessary returns.

“We were all stuck inside,” said Ken Yanhs, chief marketing officer at Zoovu. “We needed to buy things, but we couldn't go to the store. So everyone went online, and e-commerce budgets grew exponentially—they could spend on a bunch of different tools, platforms, and solutions. So COVID drove a lot of the growth within Zoovu.”

But in 2023, as things gradually returned to normal, Zoovu faced a new challenge: Customer satisfaction and retention were strong, but they found it difficult to maintain the growth they saw during the pandemic. Their internal research continued to show evidence of strong product-market fit—but with consumers tightening their budgets and their customers prioritizing essentials over big purchases, they had to get creative in finding a way to increase their sales conversion rate.

“The fundamental challenge for us was a slowdown in our new business acquisition,” said Thomas Shields, head of product marketing at Zoovu. “There was increased competition and increased noise—and a meaningful shift in the way e-commerce companies were buying and budgeting for new projects. We had great existing customers that were continuing to buy new products from us, but it was getting more challenging to win new customers.”

Zoovu’s team had already analyzed funnel performance, reviewed sales calls, and evaluated deal and finance trends. But there was still a “last mile” problem: They needed direct, systematic insight from their prospects (especially the ones that said no) so they could identify the factors that were creating friction late in the sales cycle—and understand what they needed to change to win more of those deals.

This is where Clozd entered the picture. 

“What was missing was a really strong set of data that came directly from our prospects—not from old customers who had bought in a different paradigm,” Thomas said. “We needed to hear from those prospects directly. And Clozd provided clarity and the ability to get to a consensus around how to fix our new business acquisition challenge.”

Moving quickly to improve their conversion rate

Once they decided to partner with Clozd for their buyer feedback program, Zoovu’s team moved quickly. Their initial focus was on capturing insights around new business losses, and Clozd completed the first round of interviews within a month.

These interviews uncovered three specific areas where Zoovu could make quick adjustments and see immediate results:

• Updated pricing and packaging to meet the new realities of the market
• Refining their sales pitch to remove buyer confusion
• Segmenting their buyers into clear tiers so their reps could tailor the right offer faster

Zoovu’s platform and buyer base are broad—with multiple product capabilities, multiple buyer types, and multiple deal shapes—which makes this kind of clarity even more important.

“The loss analysis immediately helped us understand the friction points in the sales process and buyer journey,” Ken said. “Once we got that, we were like, ‘Okay, this is incredibly helpful. Let’s really dive deep and come up with how we fix these things quickly and get those changes into the sales cycle.’ What we saw was an immediate shift. We dramatically increased our conversion rates—it was night and day compared to the previous quarter.”

Since making those changes, Zoovu has more than doubled its late-stage sales conversion rate.

“Where we really improved is stage-three conversion—from SAO to closed won,” Ken said. “So it’s actual sales, and our 2.5x improvement is the clearest result of the work Clozd has been doing. It’s a huge deal for us.”

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Expanding their customer feedback program

Though they began with closed-lost opportunities, Zoovu’s team quickly expanded their program to include interviews with new customers—the deals they’d won. This gave them the opportunity to validate the changes they’d implemented from their initial loss interviews.

“We don’t only want to win new business—we want to expand those accounts,” Ken said. “What we’re seeing is ‘land and expand’ is an approach that’s working really well. Landing at a price point where people are like, ‘Okay, I’ll take that pilot,’ and then making sure they see the value in our solutions. This strategy hinges on understanding why we won and being in lockstep with the expectations of our customers, and that’s where Clozd is really helpful.”

Zoovu plans to use Clozd for churn interviews and at other critical touchpoints to ensure that they’re building the right capabilities and delivering outstanding customer service. 

The ability to capture feedback at moments throughout the entire customer journey (and having access to that data through the Clozd Platform) helps them develop a complete picture of what really matters to their customers. It also makes it easy to share critical insights with teams throughout their organization. 

“I think what stood out for us with Clozd compared to any other research firm is that the platform enables me to really collaborate in a way that’s effective, fast, and accurate,” Thomas said. “Clozd has a codified system for both qualitative and quantitative data, so we have easy access to the specific factors that drove our customers’ decisions, along with powerful qualitative quotes—and that’s been really useful.”

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Get to know: Zoovu

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Zoovu provides an AI-powered search and product discovery platform used by enterprise B2B and B2C brands around the world. Their platform helps companies unlock and enrich product and customer data to power intuitive ecommerce experiences—like AI search, conversational assistants, guided selling, and visual product configurators—that guide buyers to the right products and simplify complex purchase decisions. Today, leading organizations across retail, manufacturing, and technology—like Microsoft, Canon, Bosch, and more—rely on Zoovu to boost conversions, reduce abandonment, and create personalized online journeys that deepen customer engagement and drive measurable growth.