Boost win-rates like a Twilio PMM
As product marketers, we look at metrics from all over the business. One metric that's commonly tracked is win-loss. There are many factors that influence win-loss from sales effectiveness to positioning.
Today, we’re talking about how one product marketer studied win-loss deals and turned it into a highly targeted pre-sales marketing program for Twilio. That product marketer is Brandon Penn, a B2B marketing and go-to market leader who has helped scale some of the biggest names in tech. He’s a force to be reckoned with in the tech industry, having scaled enterprise go-to-market programs during Twilio's hyper-growth phase and led pivotal marketing initiatives at Shopify Logistics and Runway.
In this conversation, Brandon is sharing his incredible insights on crafting strategies that not only resonate with customers, but deliver tangible success.
Understanding Win-Loss Analysis
We begin by discussing the importance of win-loss analysis. For Brandon, it was about donning the customer’s shoes and identifying the reasons behind wins and losses. At Twilio, he discovered that the primary obstacle was often not about losing to competitors but simply losing to inaction—companies deciding not to move forward with Twilio because they couldn't fully grasp its ROI or how to leverage its suite of communication APIs effectively. This realization was pivotal, steering Twilio towards creating battle cards and objection-handling materials that refined their positioning.
Creating Tailored Marketing Strategies
Through collaboration with the product marketing team, Brandon helped craft a program that enabled Twilio's sales teams to compete more effectively, catering messages specifically to company scales and industries. He talks about the approach that not only enhanced deal expansions but also accelerated enterprise sales cycles, demonstrating remarkable improvement.
Crafting ROI Calculators and Technical Blueprints
A highlight of our conversation is Twilio’s creation of ROI calculators and technical blueprints. These tools were designed to provide potential customers with tangible evidence of the value they could derive from Twilio’s solutions. Brandon explains how he and his team utilized internal benchmarks and customer case studies to build these calculators, allowing prospects to visualize ROI outcomes over several years. Simultaneously, technical blueprints provided a roadmap for implementing Twilio solutions, dovetailing each customer's unique journey towards digital transformation.
Sponsorship and Successful Program Implementation
We also touch on the program’s official branding, Foundry. Initially a pilot effort to support sales reps, it quickly became integral to Twilio's strategy. Foundry offered customizable sessions that showcased what clients could achieve with Twilio, eventually acting as a growth channel that continues to attract valuable leads.
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
As product marketers, putting ourselves in our clients' shoes and focusing on their needs is paramount. Brandon emphasizes that every marketing tactic must be rooted deeply in customer understanding. Whether devising new programs or enhancing product offerings, centering decisions around customer pain points ensures genuine value creation.
The Message Critique Segment
Finally, we segued into a message critique of Default.com, analyzing its messaging strategies and drawing comparisons with Ramp.com. Brandon discusses the importance of clear, simplified messaging that easily communicates core value propositions. This discussion inspired our “barbecue test”—if your messaging wouldn’t make sense while bantering at a barbecue, it’s likely in need of simplification.
Brandon’s unique insights are invaluable for any product marketer eager to enhance their win rates, tuning into customer needs and thinking outside traditional frameworks to see impressive results.
LINKS:
Connect with Brandon:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandoncpenn/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: So product marketers look at metrics from all over the business. One metric that's, uh, commonly tracked is win-loss. There are many factors that influence win-loss from sales effectiveness to positioning.
Today we're gonna talk about how one product marketer studied win-loss deals and turned it into [00:01:00] highly targeted pre-sales marketing program for Twilio. With that, it is my pleasure to have Brandon Penn on the show. So let me tell you. Why I've always been blown away by Brandon. He's a B2B, marketing and go-to market leader who has helped scale some of the biggest names in tech.
So he built enterprise go-to market programs at Twilio. during the hyper growth period, he ran marketing at Shopify Logistics, which was later acquired by Flexport. And most recently he was head of Marketing at Runway. That's a finance startup, rethinking business planning. Brandon's got a deep understanding of what it takes to drive growth, tell compelling stories, and build brands that really stand out. So Brandon, thank you for being here. It's amazing to have you on the show.
[00:01:55] Brandon: Awesome. so excited to be here. And, you know, as I was prepping actually for, [00:02:00] for today's podcast, I was thinking about like the last time I did a podcast. And it's been a while. Uh, I don't do too many of them, but when you reached out and you told me about what you're building, I could not say no.
So very excited to be here.
[00:02:11] Elle: Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. well, let's dive right in. I.
wanna hear about two different things. Brandon, first for our listeners, what is Twilio? And then tell me more about what was going on at Twilio when you created this highly targeted A BM program with the sales team?
[00:02:29] Brandon: Yeah, sure. So to set the stage for those unfamiliar with Twilio while its messaging has evolved over the years since you and I have been there. fundamentally it's a suite of communication APIs, and so if you want to add SMS email, voice, et cetera to your product, you can essentially use Twilio suite of APIs, to build those into your product suite.
and so I joined Twilio at a very interesting, time. This was 2017, a point where Twilio had already been public for about a year. Uh, but there was this very [00:03:00] big initiative internally to focus on moving up market and successfully, cracked the enterprise. And so my role at Twilio and I joined in 2017 was on the solution marketing team, where I focused specifically on, competitive intelligence and win-loss analysis.
And so what this meant was. My day-to-day involves analyzing data within our CRM interviewing customers who chose Twilio. and at the same time, more importantly, those who also didn't move forward with, with Twilio to really understand the reasons why we were winning and losing deals. And the biggest insight from my time doing this analysis was.
even though the data showed, uh, we were losing to some competitors that came up in various verticals of the business, the biggest reason actually that Twilio was losing certain deals. Was, this was ultimately the status quo. That was the number one reason. It was companies deciding not to move forward with Twilio because they couldn't understand really the, the full impact of the [00:04:00] ROI on Twilio.
And at the same time, again, going back to the suite of API communications, where to start building and how to get the most value out of the different use cases. And so with this insight, uh, I partnered very closely with yourself and the rest of the product marketing team. To create battle cards.
Objection handling materials. Really work on refining our positioning to enable our sales teams on how to compete more effectively. and that also led to myself hopping into deals, to support the reps and talking to prospects on, here are the things that you can do with Twilio. we, as you're very familiar with, broke it up into like a crawl, rock run format that was hyper tailored to the size of the company, the industry that they were in.
But also what they were ultimately trying to achieve from a digital transformation standpoint. and so in terms of, you know, the impact that that had, we would go in, we would share these awesome storyboards, these technical blueprints, these ROI analyses, and we really just started to see [00:05:00] our, our sales cycle, just take off.
We saw a really cool percentage increase in terms of deal expansion. And because these prospects understood, okay, here's how I can get started tomorrow. and the value of adopting each use case as they scaled. Uh, we also saw a deal acceleration, which was really, really amazing to see as well.
Especially enterprise cycles, you know, can be anywhere from six months, uh, or longer. And so being able to speed up the velocity of those cycles was an amazing win.
[00:05:32] Elle: Wow. Okay, so I, there's a lot that you gave here and I just wanna unpack a little bit. So one thing you mentioned is the, one reason why Twilio was losing deals and that's to do nothing, and that's so often overlooked when doing win-loss analysis. I think product marketers can be so focused on competitors, competitors, competitors.
There is another option, which is to not do [00:06:00] anything at all. And sometimes you lose to doing nothing instead of losing to a competitor. And that's still something that the sales team needs to be equipped to handle. and it sounds like not only did this program work in competitive situations, but also in non-competitive situation when the alternative to.
Using your product is to do, use nothing at all. so I just wanted to call that out that this program that you've created, is applicable to both situations. the other thing that's I, uh, wanted to call out is that in order to get to the point where you realized, hey, we should put together this.
Hyper targeted a BM program where we're building out these use cases and blueprints. you had to study deals and you had to go really deep into what customers needed to see before they engaged in a deal. Okay, let's back up for a minute. Let's say that I wanted to try to replicate, or, iterate on a similar, initiative [00:07:00] in my role in my organization like, let's say I wanted to increase win rates for my product.
What I wanna do with you, Brandon, is outline the steps that A PMM would need to take. So it sounds like step one would be to study win-loss data, right? Understand why we are losing deals. And it sounds like for in the situation, that you were in, or I guess that Twilio was in, was that they discovered that, Twilio was losing deals because of perceived value.
So let's say that we've accomplished that. I've studied my win-loss data. I've discovered that my customers have a, misperception of value for what my product does or, or can do. I guess what's the next step? Where do I go from here?
[00:07:48] Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a really great point. And I'd say even to, to simplify it further, at Twilio we have this value of wearing the customer's shoes. And great marketing isn't [00:08:00] about what we want to say. It's about what our customers need to hear. And I find that the best brands and the best product marketers, I'd argue that actually product marketers more than any function in the org, uh, should be the most customer obsessed because that's ultimately how you can create real value.
And if you don't start with a customer, I think just first principles, nothing else matters. And so, I, I guess the message that I'm trying to get across here is, product marketers should have the deepest understanding, and that's really what I focused on, is like, how can I get the deepest understanding?
How can I not just take this, like the data that our sales reps were inputting into our CRM and take that at face value. How can I code deeper and actually speak to the customers to understand, uh, firsthand why we're winning and losing? And so, I bring this up because I'm not gonna recommend that, like there's a playbook or, or a step, uh, that like every team should take when trying to replicate this.
I ultimately think it depends on where your business is currently at, what that data is telling you. And [00:09:00] so I think starting with a customer really helps do that. And I can't imagine, just like I. How easy it is nowadays. I mean, I spent like hours and days analyzing a lot of this data, but now with a lot of these AI tools, it just makes it so much
easier to, to gather that data, which is,
which is crazy. uh, it's really crazy. It's been, it's been fun using tools like I. Uh, of course Jet, GBT, but like you.com and grok now, uh, to do like deep research on the market, the, the competitive landscape and what that looks like, and how you can use a lot of that to inform your decisions and what you're trying to do, internally from a product marketing standpoint.
So your question about, this concept of value, you know, when folks hear the word value, I think. Oftentimes they immediately jump to price. Oh, it's because we're priced too high. But value is so much more than that. Value in addition to the cost of something is how are you going to get the most out of the solution?
How easy is it? It to build or implement this, product into [00:10:00] your day-to-day operations. Is it saving you time? Are you seeing an increase in efficiency? What are those things? And ultimately, at Twilio, what we focused on is really just helping customers understand that. So we would spend time gathering inputs to say.
Okay. You know, how many, just as a, as a, an example, how many messages are you trying to send? What is your current cost on if you had an existing solution, what was that? how many hours would you say you spend time doing this? And based off of a lot of the benchmarks and data that we had internally from our customers, which was a, a huge benefit at Twilio, we were able to actually build these really cool ROI calculators for the various use cases that customers can just input their data and see.
for example, when the ROI would be, what would be, uh, the ROI on year one, year two, year three, where ultimately, it would pay for like purchasing, Twilio would pay for itself. you know, twofold, threefold, just because of the impact they were able to see within their business as a whole.
[00:10:59] Elle: Got it. [00:11:00] Okay. So what I love about this is that you. Took the data that you were able to discover internally and not only use it as insights for bettering your sales team, improving efficiency or effectiveness, I should say, of the enablement for sales, but also making it available to customers to get value from.
That's really interesting. and I know this isn't something we talked about, when we were preparing for this conversation, but can you tell me a little bit more about how would one create a value or ROI calculator? obviously it starts with some kind of benchmark data that you have to get somewhere.
Best place to get that is internally, of course. any other tips about that?
[00:11:47] Brandon: Yeah. So, when we were building these ROI calculators, we were using, Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Actually, Microsoft Excel was the preferred just because of the, the capabilities of the macros and what you're able to build with. Within the certain [00:12:00] files. And so to your point, yes, a lot of it started with gathering kind of benchmarks.
And so what we looked at at Twilio was, an example, actually, a good place to start is, every company nowadays, I feel like social proof is just becoming, uh, incredibly important. you know, has customer stories, has case studies, and within those case studies and within these interviews, you're oftentimes asking like, what was the impact of purchasing this solution or, or implementing it.
And so those impacts could be anything from cost savings, time savings. you can essentially take those inputs, aggregate them across various industries or company size. And what you'll get is like loose benchmarks on, hey, these are the average, as to what customer's experience on top of using your product or solution.
And so that's where we started as like one input. Uh, obviously there's, there's other inputs, but we essentially built these calculators using those benchmarks. And so, all the customer or prospect had to do is [00:13:00] saying, okay, if you wanna understand the ROI or the perceived impact of implementing, let's say, personalized emails using Twilio, SendGrid, uh, you would essentially input those, Things that we need in the calculator and it would spit out like, okay, here's the expected ROI and what you should see. you know, most of the time that's really what customers wanted. Now we weren't promising. That was like, okay, you're gonna see this. but we were saying like, Hey, this is very much built on top of our customer benchmarks.
And so, based off of companies that are similar to you. Your size, your industry, this is what they saw. and we have high conviction that what we're looking at and evaluating today will drive the same results for you.
[00:13:41] Elle: Yeah, absolutely. So with the ROI calculator, was it more of a sales enablement tool and the seller would maybe walk through it with a customer live, or was it like a polished, webpage that a customer kind of self-serve? And put things on their own.
[00:13:59] Brandon: [00:14:00] Yeah, great question. So it was primarily a tool that we focused a lot on enabling our global sales team on how to best use. Um, so we had a great sales and inland team that we partnered with. To essentially host these ROI calculators in our CMS, and then we would train our reps on being able to effectively.
Open up the calculator, make a copy, and use it for their deals. And if for whatever reason it was a more comprehensive analysis that was needed, they would actually just ping, uh, myself and the team directly and we would hop in, as I mentioned, to support our sales reps and our strategic AEs. With being able to run these ROI and economic analyses for our prospects and clients.
and then to your point, it actually later then turned into a growth channel. And so, uh, shout out to, uh, Kavia Gupta on my team at the time who took this and actually worked really closely, uh, with our marketing team to spin up, a messaging ROI calculator for [00:15:00] Twilio. that still to this day drives valuable leads to Twilio because they're able to self-serve.
on Twilio website, just input some of their key, uh, data points and see the expected ROI of implanting uh, Twilio solution.
[00:15:12] Elle: I love it. That's amazing. Also, love that we have a shout out already to another incredible PMM. okay, so you, we have this incredible, uh, ROI calculator that started. As a tool for sales and then evolved into a growth channel. that's amazing. But you also mentioned blueprints. Tell me a little bit more about what that looked like.
I.
[00:15:35] Brandon: Yeah, so. Going back to Twilio at its core, you know, being a suite of communication APIs, this again, was like 20 18, 20 19. Uh, the concept of API first SaaS was a relatively new concept. I'd say that, you know, we've seen huge players in, in this market across industries, uh, like Stripe, new Relic, et cetera.
and because of the [00:16:00] nature of APIs, we didn't really have the most robust demo library, so you couldn't really say like, okay, you want, like, here's what this does, but kind of like dream it, like feel like. here's the audit of possible and what it could look like. But we very much had to, take that and put it into the customer's words.
And so in terms of like the blueprint design and the storyboarding, I. What we effectively did was, with our enterprise clients, we would actually just talk about like, what is the customer journey that you want to achieve? Just in your words, what are you ultimately trying to build and do from a customer engagement standpoint, I.
Once the customer shared that with us, we actually had an illustrator on the team that would mock up these beautiful storyboards, to show, okay, your customer as an example, let's just say I'll give Best Buy. best Buy would essentially say, okay, this was during the time of Covid. if a [00:17:00] customer wanted to purchase a new washer and dryer machine, let's say they start on the Best Buy website, they're talking with chat, but then they convert to wanting to do a phone call.
Well, most of the time, uh, and we all know this as consumers, when you're switching from a chat bot to a phone call or even to an email. Each of those channels that you switch to, you'll lose the context and you have to
start completely from the beginning. so frustrating.
[00:17:25] Elle: time.
[00:17:26] Brandon: Mo,
most of the times I'm just like, even when I'm, when like I'm talking to like an IVR nowadays at Twilio, you know, you can actually learn it.
Just smash the button zero. And just like, I
don't want to answer all these questions, just, just go directly to an
agent.
But yeah, so we, we would essentially whiteboard these things and when we were able to whiteboard that, and produce these really, neat creative storyboard illustrations. We would then, uh, show what's behind the scenes in each of these things.
So it's a little bit hard to explain without showing. but, you know, we would storyboard it and then we would say, this is the technology that [00:18:00] Twilio has that essentially powers this workflow or this mockup to be a real life scenario. And so, uh, we would essentially technically map out the roadmap and understand, based off of the understanding of, okay, these are the current, technologies and systems that the client has, their, you know, their CRM, their ERP, whatever it may be, what they're trying to accomplish, and show how Twilio kind of connects all the dots and fits into the picture so that when a customer was say like, okay, perfect, this is what I need.
They can take that blueprint. And just start building internally with their developer team. Or if they didn't have developer resources. We had an amazing expert services team and program at Twilio where we would partner really closely and hand off those blueprints to the expert services team that would actually go and build that exact solution that we whiteboarded for the customer.
[00:18:51] Elle: That's amazing. That's amazing. And I could imagine this, if some PMM out there wanted to iterate on this concept. [00:19:00] If you have a professional service team or if you have partners, like channel partners who offer services on top of your product offering, this would be a great opportunity to loop a channel partner in.
so I love that concept. Okay, so you had, these use case blueprints, the storyboard, the ROI calculator. These are great assets and I'm sure the sales team. Loved them. So when you were launching, did you have to do a pilot program? Did you have to get buy-in? I mean, who was your executive sponsor?
[00:19:35] Brandon: Yeah, that's, that's a fantastic question. So, you know, as we were piloting this stuff, a lot of it, as I mentioned, was just our sales reps asking if I can join the call to share some of this stuff or conduct some of these ROI analyses or just talk about how Twilio was differentiated. I. and I, I just noticed, like as I got pulled into more and more sales conversations, there were a handful of asks and, you know, we could pick up [00:20:00] themes that were kind of the same.
And so there was this one bucket of I want to really just like understand the art of the possible with Twilio. And so we called those like dreaming sessions or are the possible sessions where we would go in, ask these questions and do some, uh, high level whiteboarding together to then turn into one of these storyboards that I was mentioning.
Uh, the second piece was customers wanting to have the technical blueprint analysis. So it was like, okay, like I know you have this demo at Twilio, but what does it actually look like, if I were to implement it today and showing how the various. Twilio suite of communications fit within their technology stack.
And so we would just, you know, show the more technical blueprint analysis of how that storyboard and how that are the possible actually became possible. And then lastly, the, the second theme was like customers wanting to understand the value and the ROI of Twilio. And so we decided to very much design our suite of the program was called Foundry, by the way.
I don't know if I mentioned that it's [00:21:00] been since re rebranded, but it still today is, is like a crucial part of how how the Twilio Enterprise team sells. but yeah, that's how we designed our, our services for our kind of, essentially for, for our prospects and customers.
[00:21:13] Elle: Y Yeah. Yeah. So you, you just name dropped Foundry. that was gonna be my next question, is what this looked like from the customer's perspective. so programmatically calling it Foundry, tell me a little bit more about how that came to be, and then did you have to do marketing for Foundry or I guess what was the, the transition to this hyper-focused A BM style program that's officially foundry.
[00:21:37] Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. So we called ourselves Foundry, uh, at the time, and Foundry was essentially like that special ops pre-sales team, if you will, that would go in and support our clients with running these various services. And in terms of having to market it, um, we found a few channels to be very successful.
one was just, you know. Because of the enablement work that we did, sales knew based [00:22:00] off of the client that they were trying to sell into, uh, kind of the, the certain hurdles that they were trying to overcome, when it would be a good fit to engage the Foundry team. So if they found that this opportunity would be a good fit to loop us in, they would submit like a, a ticket within our internal process.
that was one example. the second was actually marketing it on the enterprise page. So if you go to twilio.com/enterprise, I still think this page is live today. I'll have to, I'll have to
double check. but it would talk about Foundry and again, it's been rebranded and I think it's executive engagement programs now.
but you could essentially, you know, learn more about how you get this white glove service to really like hop into an executive briefing center with the totally executive team. do these are the possible sessions, um, and really understand how you can get the most value out of Twilio. And so we, definitely had a landing page with some language around that.
and I'd say one of, one of the best forms of marketing was, oftentimes when that prospect converted to a closed customer, They would at times be able, like, [00:23:00] talk about their foundry experience, give us social proof that we would then, uh, leverage internally, but also that our sales reps can also pull in their slide decks to pitch, the various foundry offerings and the impact that we had.
[00:23:11] Elle: I love it. That's fantastic. so you've mentioned so much goodness here, Curious if you have any documents or examples that you'd be willing to share. Maybe a sample bill of materials to get started, or an example of what content might look like for customers to engage, with a program like Foundry.
or I guess now it's the executive, I've already forgot what you mentioned.
[00:23:34] Brandon: Ex executive
[00:23:35] Elle: Yeah. Executive engagement program. Yes. Yes. do you have any examples? And if you do, we can, drop 'em in the show notes.
[00:23:43] Brandon: Yeah, I'll, I'll have to do some digging to see, what I have a lot of it. you know, we're very, as I mentioned, hyper-personalized, hyper customized. Like ROI analyses and workflows and blueprints for the customers that we oftentimes delivered in like a 60 page slide deck that, the [00:24:00] customers took and, you know, started building against and executing upon.
Um, and we'd have various touch points throughout that engagement, uh, in terms of check-ins to see how that was going to ensure that, they would be success in doing it. So, a lot of it did have some like, customer sensitive information, but I'll have to take a look at the archive
[00:24:18] Elle: Yeah, Okay. so last question, uh, for you on this topic, Brandon. Any last piece of advice you have for a product marketer who's trying to create a highly targeted pre-sales marketing campaign to improve win rates?
[00:24:34] Brandon: Yeah, so I'd say, one, it starts with like being customer obsessed and understanding the customer more than anyone within the organization. That's probably like the number one. If I had to leave you like number one advice, it would be that I. the second piece is again, we have this value at Twilio called Draw the Al.
And a handful of other startups I think, have taken this to incorporate within their company values as well. But [00:25:00] what that essentially meant was there isn't like, yes, there are playbooks and there are frameworks to build certain things and you know, playbooks are playbooks for a reason. There is definite success.
well, I wouldn't say definite, but there's, uh, success stories behind those playbooks, which is why they are playbooks. But ultimately the story of Foundry and what we created, was just a, an idea. now companies have similar things. I know Stripe has an executive engagement programs that could be, you know, sim there, there's some aspects of that that are similar but also different to what Twilio is doing.
So I would just say like, be very open and think about, you know, if you focus on the customer and what your customer is trying to achieve and the themes that you're finding. very much work to build a solution, uh, and build a program that is going to best support your goals. And those could be, you know, existing things that companies have that you can find inspiration from.
But ultimately I think you're gonna find the most success, being able to create something that's hyper [00:26:00] personalized and design for what you're trying to accomplish and who you're trying to sell to.
[00:26:04] Elle: I love it. Yes, absolutely. The customer obsession is so real for product marketers. I think it there you have to have a natural empathy to be. A product marketer. and that goes so hand in hand with the customer obsession. I could not agree more. alright, so now it's time for our next segment. So this is our message critique segment.
This is where we as product marketing experts, analyze real world messaging. But here's the fun part, you, Brandon, my guest, get to choose the company. and before we get started, I wanna establish some ground rules here. So once you pick the company, we're gonna walk through three things, uh, related to this message critique, exercise.
So first I wanna hear one thing that you love about the messaging, what's working, what made the product stand out to you? And then second, share one [00:27:00] thing that you wish the PMM had done differently. Something that could have made the message more clear or stronger or more impactful. and then third, where could this go next? How could you iterate on the messaging? Um, what creative campaigns could the PMM think about? maybe how could they test it or take it to the next level? So this is all about learning and refining our craft. No negativity. Just a thoughtful, constructive critique.
Sound good?
[00:27:27] Brandon: All right. Let's do it.
[00:27:29] Elle: Okay, let's get into it.
So, tell me about a product or company that has caught your attention. Good or bad, somewhere in between.
[00:27:36] Brandon: Yeah. So there's this company called Default, default.com, and I don't know if you wanna pull it up
on, on your
[00:27:43] Elle: Yeah, I'm gonna pull it up right now. default.com.
[00:27:46] Brandon: Yeah. So this is a product that, during my time at Runway, uh, we use heavily, to really support with automating our inbound funnel and increasing the conversion rates from. at the point in time when someone books a demo all the [00:28:00] way to them being a clo, a closed one customer. And so why I'm choosing default is because, uh, I loved using m as as a customer, but also, uh, they just recently went through a big rebrand.
Um, and so this is very much like the new messaging. And,
[00:28:15] Elle: yeah. We'll back up for a minute. Tell me what do they do?
[00:28:18] Brandon: Yeah. So default is, essentially a, a go-to market solution. Uh, there's a lot of these go-to-market software, but they focus very much on making inbound scheduling much easier.
So if you have a clearly defined ICP customer, you can take that criteria. Let's say a company, you're like, you're targeting companies with minimum 50 employees, upwards of a thousand. Specifically financial services industry, you can use that criteria to say if you click book a demo and you input that information, if you meet that criteria, you can book a meeting on a sales calendar like right then and there versus I.
Having to request that demo wait for sales to follow up. Sales might [00:29:00] take anywhere from 24 to
40 hours to follow up. And so you're very much increasing the conversion rate of like, Hey, you're qualified. I want to show you a sales calendar now. So you can book that demo, and really start that sales conversation.
And similarly, like if they aren't qualified, you can design with default these other workflows that would push you into like a really great self-serve flow, uh, or push you just different things, um, that just make. Inbound so much easier. I call this like the leaky bucket problem, right?
This is a well known like phrase, which is like, you can have the best marketing you can do, have the best paid acquisition in the world. But if you aren't able to fix like the actual inbound workflow piece, you're, you're losing leads at every single stage. And so default very much, as I mentioned, you were using 'EM runway very much helped automate that entire process and have, uh, and really bring us confidence in increasing those conversion rates from a sign up to a qualified lead to a sales qualified lead, et cetera.
[00:29:56] Elle: I love that. You know, it also sounds like it really captures the [00:30:00] eagerness of the prospect too,
right? Rather than making them wait, like, ah, their energy kind of goes down after that point. So, I love it. Okay, so let's, what do you, let's, let's walk through the
[00:30:09] Brandon: Yeah, let's take a look. Let's take a look. So, when you go to the default homepage, you see here like their, their hero copy. So, uh, revamp inbound with easier routing, actual intent and, and faster scheduling. and then the, the subheader unlock efficient growth with one platform that automated scheduling, routing, enrichment, and intent workflows.
So I guess, you know, looking at this, I like that the headline is action oriented. I think it's great. I think it highlights key things that default does, which as I mentioned, automated scheduling, routing, enrichment, and I think that the subheader, this concept of all in one solution, I know that's becoming, I dunno, a little bit cliche almo like nowadays or I'd say like overused, where like everyone's talking about like.
Hey, you can use, I mean, even at Twilio, it was like one platform for all your
customer [00:31:00] engagement. but I do think within the space that they're in, like there's this concept of go to market bloat. Like prior to default companies would have, like, if you weren't using default, you're using like 10 different various products, and solutions for
like your inbound tech stack.
And so I think there, that's an important note that they hit on in terms of like feedback. I think that there's a little bit of repetitiveness between like the headline, the revamp statement, and
the subheader. There's some repetition in terms of features, right? I think there're mentioning routing.
They're mentioning intent. Yep. They're mentioning scheduling. And so from a product marketing standpoint, I think. my, my opinion of like, when you're trying to create good positioning and more importantly like really good hero copy, it's like how do you explain what you do in as few words as possible
without losing
clarity? you're familiar with [00:32:00] ramp. Ramp has has, you know, grown incredibly fast over the last few years. But I was recently on Ram's website, and I don't know if this is new messaging or not, but if we pull up their website, and just compare and contrast the two different companies.
Okay, time is Money Save both. I think this is just genius, right? It's very few words, very short, very to the point. And you can get a sense of the overall value proposition of ramp. and so once they have that like very crisp header, uh, they then go to explain what, uh, within the subheader, what they
actually do.
Right? So easy to use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting, and a whole lot more. Again, all in one place. You, you see the similar messaging and so. For default. I think there's an opportunity to do that. a great test when trying to come up with like hero copy or any messaging. I call this like the parent test.
if you showed this messaging to your parents, would they understand what the company does? If the answer is no, that means that there's an opportunity for that messaging to be simplified. Now, my parents aren't [00:33:00] in tech and so, you know, take that with a grain of salt. But you can use that as a, as a, as a guide more or less to really make it easy to understand.
I always like to think like, don't try and complicate things. You know, the ramp example time is money, save both. It's just very simple, very approachable language.
[00:33:16] Elle: Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, another test that I've heard, I think it's called The barbecue test,
where, so where if you, if you go to a barbecue, you take this messaging, and you. if someone asks you, oh, what does revamp do? Well, revamp. sorry. What does default do You say, well, default lets you revamp inbound with easier routing.
Actual intent. It festers. 'cause you're like, you wouldn't talk like that as a barbe at a barbecue. You know?
[00:33:41] Brandon: exactly.
[00:33:42] Elle: So, I'm on board with that. Like, very simple to the point. We don't have to use verbose language just to get our point across.
[00:33:52] Brandon: All right, so key takeaway listeners. Organize a barbecue with your parents if you're trying to refine your messaging.
[00:33:57] Elle: [00:34:00] Exactly.
[00:34:00] Brandon: I'll also say, um, I was just realizing, I, I noticed scrolling, scrolling down on, on the new homepage. I'm actually featured there. caveat, I, I, by no means am an investor in this company, so I'm not talking to my own book. Uh, I'm
just, I'm just, a, I'm just a happy customer. Um, so yeah, that was
that was funny.
See. And, and even on this, I love, as you're scrolling through the homepage, this is actually beautiful. again, this, this was just released I think a week or two ago, and I know, Nico, the founder and, and the default team really well. But, um, what I love here is each of these core product capabilities.
They're making it even stronger by showing the social proof and
showing a customer story
that's very much associated with that product capability. So,
[00:34:44] Elle: yes, I also really like that they right next to the product capability, they show you an illustration to help you firmly understand. So kudos to that team. You guys are doing a great job. maybe tweak [00:35:00] your header. Okay. Amazing. Brandon, before we go, uh, I wanna have a gratitude moment and say thank you so much for your willingness to share your knowledge and expertise with me, um, in the product marketing community today.
Thank you so much. and.
[00:35:18] Brandon: at you. I think this is, uh, an incredibly fun project that you're work working on.
[00:35:22] Elle: Yay. Thank you. I know for me personally, expert marketers like yourself have firmly shaped my PMM craft, and I'm curious for you who are maybe one or two pmms who have really impacted your career and, you know, this is a great opportunity to give some public kudos.
[00:35:39] Brandon: Yeah, so the two pmms that come to mind, uh, were on my team at Shopify. Danny Gibson and Theo Earl, two of probably the best product marketers I've ever had the, the opportunity of working with. So they're fantastic and I'm calling 'em out 'cause they should totally get on this pod and share their insights.
[00:35:59] Elle: Amazing. [00:36:00] Danny and Theo, I'm coming for you sliding into your dms.
[00:36:04] Brandon: I can definitely help with that.
I can, make a warm intro.
[00:36:07] Elle: Thanks Brandon. Um, okay. And my last question for you, where else can we access your expertise? Is it just best to find you on LinkedIn?
[00:36:16] Brandon: Yeah, li LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. Um, send me a connection request. if you do, you'll also see some of my, I try not to be too cringe, but, you know, LinkedIn content, you kind of have to be cringe, so Yeah,
de definitely, that's
[00:36:32] Elle: all just
embracing it.
[00:36:33] Brandon: Me.
[00:36:34] Elle: Great. I love it. Again, thank you so much Brandon, and Thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take the next step in your own journey.
[00:36:46] Brandon: Thank you so much. [00:37:00]
