Spencer Hong

In this session, Spencer—who runs Alteryx’s win-loss analysis program—talks about how integrations and tech innovations have empowered his team to identify trends and deliver game-changing competitive intelligence.

Clozd: Today we're speaking with Spencer Hong from Alteryx. He's a senior product strategist, and we're excited to hear about his experience with win-loss and how he's been utilizing it at Alteryx. Well, I guess to get started, just tell us about yourself and your role there at Alteryx.

Spencer: Yeah, I'm a senior product strategist, primarily focusing on competitive intelligence. I've been at Alteryx for three years, and part of my role involves win-loss analysis, which is how the partnership with Clozd came about.

Tell us about the win-loss program at Alteryx and how you utilize it. Let's get into the details.

Yeah, so the partnership started before I joined Alteryx and has been going on for about five years now. It's really grown over that time, especially in the three years I've been part of the team. Primarily, the reason the partnership works so well is that by working with you month in and month out, you get to know our business a little bit more each month, and that really helps fine-tune the research that you help conduct for us.

How have you seen the program evolve over that time? Obviously, you said five years is a long time to be doing a win-loss program. How has it evolved over those years?

Yeah, I mean, our product portfolio has significantly evolved over those five years, and because of that, the win-loss program has evolved as well. As you know, our partnership is a little bit unique. We interview on a quarterly basis on pretty niche topics. Those topics really help reinforce our product roadmap and our go-to-market initiatives.

Can you tell us more about that? How do you target those different areas each quarter? How do you go about deciding which ones to go after or not go after? How has that process been on your side?

With any successful technology investment, it does require buy-in from the top down, and so on a quarterly basis we meet with our product as well as sales leadership to identify what areas of interest they want to better understand. So, in some quarters it might be more about product enhancements—for example, what do customers love about our products, or maybe areas that we can improve. Sometimes it's about better understanding our go-to-market strategies. If our customer success teams are increasing our renewal rates, how are they doing so? Or maybe it's looking at how we're attaining new logos, but it really depends on what our leadership would like to focus on.

Got it. Is it every quarter you switch for sure? Are there some quarters you guys stay the same because you want to learn more? How do you guys go about that? Is there a certain cadence you kind of look for?

Yeah, that's a great question. What we try to implement is, in the same quarter each year, we’re focusing on that same scope of research. So we don't really replicate the same scope after each quarter. We really want to get as many different types of information as we can get from win-loss analysis. So Q1 of this year, we had a similar scope to Q1 of last year, but the scope from Q1 to Q2 will vary drastically.

And obviously because you're repeating those scopes every year or so, what have been some of the benefits you've found by being able to switch the focus and the scopes on a kind of regular basis?

Yeah, it actually helps us because we do it on a quarterly basis. We get four scopes each year, but then after each year follows, we can actually see trends across those four different scopes. So it really just allows us to cover multiple different areas of research versus just one area of research each year.

I know one big thing you take care of at Alteryx and look into is the competitive intelligence. What do you look for in regards to competitive intelligence from win-loss?

Yeah, I mean it's probably three core pillars. Pricing information is what a lot of our account executives are always asking for in terms of our competitors, because some pricing is publicly available, but we all know discounting practices and other strategies can really drastically vary the pricing information that customers are given. Second is, why do customers like our product over Competitor X's product?

And then third is more of those customer testimonials and references. If we can connect two customers together to better understand why they chose Alteryx in the first place. So it's pricing information, product differentiation, and then at the end of the day, like customer testimonials and quotes.

That's great. Obviously, you guys use a competitive intelligence tool like Crayon. How do you utilize the feedback from Clozd and Crayon together?

Yeah, I mean, up until probably three to six months ago when Crayon and Clozd came together and announced an integration, before then we would use the information gleaned from the Clozd win-loss reports and embed those into our battle cards housed on Crayon.

Now with the new integration, we can have a more seamless and facilitated process to actually directly embed those insights from the Clozd win-loss reports into our battle cards so that our sellers have the most up-to-date, real-time information possible. Just yesterday, we had an interview get published where we won a significant deal against a competitor, and there were several product differentiations that we were able to update the battlecard in real time once that interview got published.

Have there been any areas where you guys have taken action based on the insights that you've gotten from win-loss?

One insight that we recently gleaned was that a specific player in our general market was employing a takeout campaign. We actually found that information out through a win-loss report, and then we were able to provide additional materials for sales on talk tracks to navigate that takeout campaign that that player was employing. We actually wouldn't have found out about that takeout campaign probably until way later in the game when it would've had more impact on our business, but we were able to get to it earlier on.

Now that you've been doing win-loss for a while, what are some suggestions or recommendations you would have for somebody that was just starting off on a win-loss program?

Yeah, probably two points. First, as I mentioned, is that buy-in from your leadership, because the distribution of the insights is only going to go as far as your loudest speaker or champion.

And then, second, is to start small. When we first started with our Clozd partnership five years ago, we had one scope because at the time we had one product. So, focus on two or three areas that you really want to answer, and then as you get information that answers those questions, then you can kind of snowball. But start small, and also have that top-level buy-in.

Is there anything else that you want to share about win-loss and how it's impacted yourself and your career?

Yeah, I mean, information is key, especially in the data and analytics space, and the information that we get from the Clozd partnership is something that we couldn't buy off the street. Analyst firms can't provide that information of why customers love our products versus the market. So, we really value the Clozd partnership, and we can't wait to see what progresses in the coming future.