Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Nitin Kartik, Director of Product Marketing at Carbyne. In our conversation we discussed his experiences at various teams he’s worked at and how they’ve used win/loss interviews to influence marketing copy. In this post, I’ll summarize some key points of our discussion and the role of win/loss in product marketing.

Nitin's Background

Nitin Kartik brings experience various industries to his role at Carbyne. His career has spanned across healthcare (PPD), e-commerce (Amazon), automotive (TomTom), and media (SiriusXM).

"I've had the blessing of being able to see how product marketing works across all these different industries," Nitin explains. "And there are a lot of things that are in common. Of course, you know, some things are different."

What is Product Marketing?

Nitin divides product marketing into two main areas:

1. Inbound Product Marketing: This involves collecting competitive intelligence, conducting market research, and helping build product roadmaps.

2. Outbound Product Marketing: This focuses on "everything from sales enablement, you know, creating all the marketing collateral, the one-pagers and the website content and the videos and, you know, all that stuff. Sales training, like make sure that our sellers know how to sell our products well, creating battle cards so that if sellers are up against competitors, you know, they know how to pitch our products properly."

He uses this metaphor to describe the product marketing team:

"I like to think of us as air traffic controllers in a control tower at the airport. We see all the planes taking off and landing and we're guiding everything. And when we do our jobs well, nobody may know we exist when the planes are taking off landing on time. It's like, you don't even look up at that control tower. Something bad happens. Then it's like, 'Hey, what happened to that control tower?'"

Relationship Between Product Marketing and Sales

Nitin mentions multiple cross functional work between product marketing and sales:

• Informing sales about upcoming products

• Establishing guardrails to manage expectations

• Ensuring accurate messaging

• Providing motivation and support

"It's part cheerleader…It is tough being in sales, you know, like you eat what you kill. And so you may go through periods of feast and famine. And so you need that motivation."

He adds, "There may be situations where competitors may be looming large. And it may seem like doomsday. Oh man, that's it. We're screwed. We're done. So you got to be the person out there saying, 'No guys, we got this, you know, and this is why, and let's go get them.'"

Collecting the Voice of the Customer

Nitin shared some best practices for collecting customer feedback:

"The places we've done it well, we have buyer interviews, which are the gold standard when it comes to collecting those win-loss information"

He emphasizes the importance of recording these calls to capture sound bites and qualitative data.

He says it’s important to have a neutral party conduct these interviews: "Generally, when it's done well, it is not the sales team. Because the sales team, they're often biased, right?"

Challenges in Different Industries

Nitin points out that collecting customer feedback can be more challenging in certain industries, such as the public safety sector:

"Customers are hesitant to have their calls recorded. If you think about, let's say, you're talking to a police officer or someone like that, you say you're going to record the call. They're going to shut down and give you one-word answers."

The Value of Product Marketing

Nitin’s insights provide a valuable perspective on how teams approach buyer feedback and how marketing and sales work together to use it. As companies continue change competitive strategy, the voice of the customer and win/loss analysis will play a greater role in marketing, sales, and product.

Check out our blog for more on win/loss!