Blindspots with Host Ryan Sorley
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Hear from the Executives, Investors and Founders who leverage win-loss insights to drive growth and beat the competition, on the Blindspots Podcast — the only win-loss podcast for and featuring the executives, founders and investors who make win-loss analysis a fundamental part of their growth strategy. Hosted by Ryan Sorley, Founder at DoubleCheck Research and VP, Win-Loss at Klue.
Blindspots is brought to you by The Compete Network, powered by Klue. The number #1 compete community for content, education, events and more.
Available episodes
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Nov 16, 2023
Using Win Loss Analysis to Improve Revenue Process | Jess Iandiorio, Meg Fitzgerald, Ray Grady
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
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
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Nov 3, 2023
How Win-Loss Powers Brand Perception | Meg Fitzgerald
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
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Oct 19, 2023
Finding the Story in the Data | Carol Meyers
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
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Jul 18, 2023
The Future of AI and Win-Loss with Ray Grady
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
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Jun 30, 2023
Why Investors Invest in Win-Loss Programs with Chris Fountain
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*
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And catch past episodes of Blindspots here*
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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.
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Jun 16, 2023
CEO, Board Member and Advisor Tom Ebling
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**
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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
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May 31, 2023
SEASON 3 PREMIERE! Chief Growth Officer at Emplifi, Vijay Gupta
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
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May 12, 2023
Gaining a Critical Edge in the Highly Competitive FinTech Sector
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.
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Apr 11, 2023
Shifting from Flywheel to Enterprise: How Atlassian's Sales-focused Win-Loss is Helping Ensure Success in New Markets
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.
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Oct 25, 2022
Salsify's Secret Sauce for a Successful Win-Loss Program: It's All About Collaboration
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.
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Oct 5, 2022
Behind the Scenes on Forrester's Win-Loss Program Launch and How it Fits in Their Overall VoC Practice
Listen as Derek O'Grady, VP of Customer Experience at Forrester shares with DoubleCheck Research helpful frameworks and advice for building and managing a successful win/loss program.
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Aug 11, 2022
Launching an Effective Win-Loss Program with Valerie Bonaldo of Seismic
In this episode, Valerie Bonaldo of Seismic joins Blindspots to talk about the step-by-step process of launching a new win/loss program. In our conversations, Valerie shared some really specific information about:
* How to get (and keep) stakeholder buy-in
* Her unique tool for getting everyone on the same page from day one
* The importance of asking the right questions in the right way
* Her approach to defining program focus and doing efficient outreach
* How she uses customization to make sharing win/loss finds more effective
* The importance of focusing on wins
Listen now and stay tuned for more practical lessons from this brilliant guest!
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Jul 12, 2022
Uncovering the Voice of the Customer with Win/Loss Analysis with Elvis Lieben of Gong
Listen as Elvis Lieban, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Velocity talks with DoubleCheck Research about how Gong’s project-based approach to win/loss research helps tap the Voice of the Customer, how to gain stakeholder buy-in, how program findings are shared throughout the organization, and the super effective way Gong measures program impact.
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Jun 16, 2022
Transitioning from Tribal Knowledge to a Data-driven Win/Loss Program
Today on Blindspots by DoubleCheck, Geoffrey sits down with Jonathan Bedard, SVP of Product Marketing at Bullhorn, to discuss the ins and outs of successfully transitioning an organization's win/loss approach from an informal, tribal affair to a formal, data-driven program. Along the way, he shares some inspiring stories about exactly how this transition positively affected Bullhorn’s bottom line and ability to pivot quickly in a competitive market. If you are starting to think about launching your own win/loss program, you don't want to miss out on this conversation as Jonathan shares some tactical tips to get one off the ground.
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Jun 10, 2022
Season 02 | Trailer
Welcome to Season 2 of Blindspots! A podcast for all things win/loss and churn analysis.
For the next several months, DoubleCheck Research’s Research Director, Geoffrey Palmer—a storyteller, a playwright, and your podcast host—will engage with win/loss program leaders in the B2B technology space. These insightful conversations will deliver practical advice on how to leverage win/loss and churn analysis to get a leg up on the competition, improve the buying process, gain market share, and increase revenue.
Enjoy!
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Apr 6, 2022
Discovering a more efficient way to do market sizing with Ryan Detwiller of ScalePath
In this week’s episode, we welcome Ryan Detwiller, founder and CEO of Scalepath—a company that is changing the way companies tackle the previously labor-intensive task of market sizing. Over the course of this in-depth conversation, Ryan defines the four levels of market size, and shares real-world insights about the value of accurate market sizing. Be sure to stick around until the end of the episode to learn how Scalepath is helping early-stage and more mature companies to avoid common market sizing pitfalls and make better growth decisions.
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Feb 2, 2022
Ensuring the Success of Your Next Product Launch
In today’s episode, we are joined by Dave Daniels, founder of BrainKraft, a company dedicated to helping B2B companies develop the skills and processes to plan and execute successful product launches. Dave shares insights about why some product launches fail, and walks us through the BrainKraft Product Launch FrameworkTM—a tool that guides organizations through the entire product launch process, from risk assessment and establishing objectives to the final post-mortem review and every step in between. Along the way, we discuss the difference between responding to demand and creating it, key questions you need to answer about your market segment, and the two questions everyone should add to their win/loss boilerplate to help identify a product’s unique value proposition. Listen now to hear the whole conversation and get a jump start on ensuring the success of your next product launch.
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Jan 17, 2022
Trailer
Welcome to the Blindspots podcast. This show is designed to help marketers and researchers understand just how to address blind spots in key, go-to-market areas through primary research efforts. This podcast is brought to you by DoubleCheck Research, an established leader in win/ loss and churn research and analysis with a mission to help clients improve their win rates by turning buyer insights into competitive advantage. My name's Ryan Sorley. I'm a founder, a researcher, a soon-to-be author, a husband to one, and a dad to three, and your grateful and humble podcast host. Each show, I will engage with marketing, sales, product, and competitive intelligence experts in the B2B technology space in meaningful and thought- provoking conversations with actionable strategies on how to help product marketers and those with a love for research drive value across their organizations. So make sure to check out the show and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Thanks so much for joining us.
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Dec 1, 2021
Powering Your Sales Kickoff with Win/Loss Data with Miko Bird and Chris Herrin
This episode of Blindspot includes a fireside chat hosted by DoubleCheck's VP of Research, Bruce Kasrel, with Miko Bird and Chris Herrin discussing Sales Kickoff preparation. Miko, Director of Competitive Intelligence at Optimizely, and Chris, Senior Product Manager at BeyondTrust, share their expertise that can help you maximize your SKOs impact on your organization. With insights into compelling customer quotes, leveraging resources and data, and best practices to utilize your win/loss analysis, these two ensure you leave this episode with valuable takeaways. Listen now!
Key Takeaways:
📊05:52 - 07:01 Leveraging resources and data for SKO preparation
🔁07:02 - 08:36 SKO preparation is an ongoing process
🔥08:55 - 10:40 How to make a compelling customer quote that resonates with sales
👏11:06 - 13:04 Impactful customer quotes to drive the message home with sales
🗝13:57 - 15:44 The trick to sharing negative feedback in a way that is effective and productive
🤝 15:56…
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Nov 9, 2021
Transforming Qualitative Data Analysis with Dovetail's Benjamin Humphrey
Today on Blindspots by DoubleCheck, Ryan sits down with Benjamin Humphrey to discuss how his platform, Dovetail, is revolutionizing the research field by giving users analytical superpowers and allowing them to embrace a whole new way of analyzing and consuming qualitative data to gain insights. Benjamin, Co-founder and CEO, dives right into how Dovetail began, including why they pivoted to what their platform is today and a look into how they will continue changing the research field and what can be accomplished with qualitative data. Listen now, and you'll learn how Dovetail can give you in-the-moment access to relevant research creating a ripple effect of positive change across your organization.
Key Takeaways:
✔️ 05:06 - 06:59 How Dovetail Learned From Their Customers To Become What They Are Today
📈 08:52 - 10:32 Dovetail Use Cases
👏 10:44 - 12:32 Centralising Your data in One Place To Understand The Story Your Data Tells
💥 13:06 - 15:44 Getting Accurate Insights…
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Oct 12, 2021
Maximizing Your Growth Rate Through PLG Strategies with Kyle Poyar
On this episode of Blindspots by DoubleCheck Research, Kyle Poyar is here to discuss Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategies. Kyle is the VP of Growth at OpenView, helping companies fuel growth to become market leaders. As an expert on PLG, Kyle shares what it means to be a PLG company and his knowledge on product-led growth strategies that can help you successfully impact your organization's growth rate. He gives us insight into how to make this strategy successful and what results a company can expect when committing to a PLG strategy. Listen now!
Key Takeaways:
💡 03:19 - 04:12 What Exactly is Product-Led Growth(PLG)?
🧩 05:16 - 06:13 Capturing End-User Research to Enable Your Organization's PLG Strategy
🧐 06:13 - 07:23 How Do You Scale Your End-User Research To Inform Your PLG Strategy?
🎬 08:30 - 09:40 Translating PLG Research Insights Into Concrete Actions
📐 09:53 - 11:49 The Measurable Impact After Adopting A Product-Led Strategy
😣 12:09 - 13:59 Common Challeng…
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Sep 14, 2021
How To Leverage Win/Loss Insights To Strengthen CI Efforts
In this week's episode, we dive into how you can strengthen your CI efforts by leveraging win/loss insights. This fireside chat is lead by DoubleCheck's own Bruce Kasrel and guests Paul Senatori and Carlo Cadet. Paul has over 20 years of experience in CI and is currently the Director of Competitive Intelligence at SiteCore. Carlo leads the Content and Product Marketing teams at BitSight as the Senior Director. As experts in the field, these two share which CI deliverables are most important to the sales team, how they adapt CI efforts when working with non-sales stakeholders, and—of course—how to leverage win/loss in CI efforts.
Key Takeaways:
💡 04:12 - 04:56 Fueling your Competitive Intelligence Efforts with Win/Loss Insights - Carlo Cadet
🗝 04:56 - 07:02 Fueling your Competitive Intelligence Efforts with Win/Loss Insights - Paul Senatori
🖼 08:22 - 10:32 Collecting Intel From Key Sources is Vital to the Success of Your Competitive Intelligence Program - Paul Senatori…
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Aug 10, 2021
Exploring a Monetization Practice to Fuel Growth with Chris Mele of Software Pricing Partners
This week, Ryan sits down with Managing Partner at Software Pricing Partners, Chris Mele, who shares his knowledge in pricing and why you should develop a monetization practice. Chris tells us one of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is not to update its pricing strategy. Rolling out new pricing is complex and risky, but if done well can level up your company's growth. Luckily today, you'll learn about critical pieces of a monetization practice to help you upgrade your pricing and elevate your business.
Key Takeaways:
🧩 05:48 - 07:52 Expand beyond the price point
🗝 08:35 - 09:34 The key to build a more optimized pricing strategy
😣 10:03 - 11:10 What is the number one mistake most companies make when it comes to pricing?
💡 10:46 - 10:57 What is a monetization practice?
📣 12:34 - 14:25 The reality of discounting
📞 16:51 - 17:57 Finding the right time to discuss pricing is key
💸 19:27 - 21:06 The impact of the pandemic on pricing
🥇 21:57 - 24:5…
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Jul 19, 2021
Building Insightful Buyer Personas with Adele Revella of Buyer Persona Institute
In this week's episode, we are joined by Adele Revella, CEO & Founder of Buyer Persona Institute. The methodology at Buyer Persona Institute helps marketers further understand how, when, and why, decisions are made by buyers. Within their training, Buyer Person Institute built a framework called the Five Rings of Buying Insight to help reveal insights about buyers' decisions and gain buyer trust. Tune in now to hear how Adelle unpacks the building blocks of a successful buyer persona effort.
Key Takeaways:
07:59 - 08:49 📊 Understanding the Effects of the Pandemic on Buyers
09:16 - 10:01 🤔 What is the Difference Between Profiles and Personas?
10:27 - 11:26 🔑 Helping Buyers Trust You Have the Right Solution
12:59 - 13:55 🧩 First of The Five Rings of Buying Insight
18:24 - 19:03 🏆 What is the Sample Size to Identify Patterns Across Buyers?
20:25 - 21:18 🌍 Meaningful Differences in Each Sector and Industry
22:20 - 23:11 👂🏽 Candid, Open Conversations for Peop…
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Jul 12, 2021
Exploring a Best-in-class Competitive Enablement Program with Jason Smith of Klue
Today's conversation is with Jason Smith who is the CEO and co-founder of an award-winning competitive intelligence company called Klue. Jason and his team at Klue provide a lens into your competitor's world by capturing, managing, and communicating market insights across the web. In this episode Jason expands on informative topics that he knows can help you get ahead of competitors. Learn how to get the most out of your CI data, ethical approaches to mining data, and the best way to further ingenuity in the professional world. Continuous updates to the way we handle CI that are aimed at market enlightenment will enable you and your team to win more business. Jason and everyone at Klue knows how important it is to stay at the top of your game in an industry that evolves overnight. He is passionate about the tools that himself and his team have come up with to help. So listen in and learn how to build a best-in-class competitive enablement program with this week's Blindspots guest.
Key…
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Jul 5, 2021
Creating Relevant Outbound Emails with Jeremey Donovan of SalesLoft
Joining Ryan on today's podcast is Jeremey Donovan an SVP of Sales Strategy at Salesloft. Today's guest not only found success in the professional setting, but he also practices archery, weaving, and many more hobbies that he attempts to keep himself busy with. When Jeremy isn't shooting a bow he spends a considerable amount of time with his team pouring through millions of outbound emails. His team believes strongly that the key to a successful relationship in the marketing and sales world is using the right language when engaged with a client, while also adding added-value content. Jeremey gives great tips on how to avoid creating norms out of novelties and the perfect amount of personalization necessary to maximize engagement in any situation.
Key Takeaways
👋 6:52 - 8:40 What type of greeting should we be using?
🏃♂️ 8:51 - 10:19 How to get people to respond and act on your emails.
👩💻 11:32 - 15:16 Qualitative insights into your customers perceptions.
🤹…
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