Tank Talks
Tank Talks By Ripple Ventures
How Startups Can Best Forecast Sales with Spencer Dent of Clozd
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How Startups Can Best Forecast Sales with Spencer Dent of Clozd

Episode 94

Startups and small businesses have a lot of advantages over their entrenched competitors, but one thing that big businesses have access to is forecasting and business intelligence. Our guest today is working to level that playing field, Spencer Dent is Co-Founder of Clozd, a platform that provides world-class consulting and technology for win-loss analysis. We help our clients design and execute effective win-loss programs that uncover the real reasons they win and lose—so they can start winning more.

About Spencer Dent:
Spence has worked with sales and marketing teams throughout his career. Prior to receiving his MBA from Duke, he was an operator that helped small financial services sales teams. After graduating, he worked at Bain with sales organizations across a variety of industries. He moved on to Qualtrics, where he worked to expand operations across the globe and introduce new channels.


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In this episode we discuss:

02:27 Spencer’s journey to Co-Founding Clozd
04:04 The first sales experience that helped shape Spencer
07:11 What he learned at Bain that helped his career
09:29 Challenges and opportunities of early scaling at Qualtrics
11:44 How 6 years of business school failed to teach him how to be a leader
14:48 Why they decided to leave Qualtrics pre-IPO
20:37 Typical mistakes early-stage startups make when building their sales team
24:22 Why hasn’t anyone created win-loss analysis software before?
28:23 Losing because of price is weak analysis and won’t help your organization grow
32:20 What Win-Loss really means and what startup founders need to know about it
37:25 How a post-loss interview should be conducted
39:39 What data Clozd tracks above and beyond a CRM like Salesforce
43:06 Why buyer-feedback is the gold standard over feedback from the sales rep
44:38 Why they chose to include a managed service offering
48:42 Why they chose to take on a Series-A financing round led by Greycroft along with Madrona and Album VC
51:33 How the pandemic affected them and plans for the new funds

Fast Favorites

  1. 🎙- Favorite Podcast: Jim Rome, Dan Patrick

  2. 📰- Favorite Newsletter/Blog: The Clozd Newsletter 

  3. 📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: Airpods

  4. 📈-  Favorite New Trend: Win-Loss

  5. 📚- Favorite Book: Showtime, Dreamland, The Looming Tower

  6. 🤔 - Favorite Life Lesson: Work has to be done

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Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency
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