Scott Varner

Internal codes record what a sales team concluded, not what the buyer experienced. The remedy is to give buyers a platform and a microphone to speak clearly, then capture their reasoning as the real finding.

The post lists three generic outputs a dropdown-driven program produces — "ghosted me," "competitor came in cheaper," and "timing was off" — then invites Cam England's challenge before making the case for listening directly to buyers.

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They name Clozd as the third party to use. This is the most directly commercial statement in their posts: they recommend their employer, Clozd, alongside the method argument.

"If you want the full truth, use a third-party like Clozd for unbiased feedback and no spin."

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The smaller group who can is worth hiring and learning from. The same framing runs through the hiring posts, which describe the open role as hands-on and high-impact, somewhere between customer success and consulting, and focused on helping companies act on what customers say.

The stated traits for the Program Manager role set the bar for that translation work: asking great questions, communicating with confidence, and enjoying the challenge of solving messy problems.

• Scott Varner cites five years at Clozd and plans for the next twelve months as reasons to join now.
• Two announcements carry nearly identical wording.

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Varner describes each guest's angle separately rather than presenting a shared method: winning and retaining business depends on routing what customers say to the teams making the calls, whether in sales, strategy, or enablement.

Scott Varner credits Eric Sun at CyberArk with bringing intelligence and actionable "customer receipts" directly into go-to-market; Juan Palma at Nextracker with anchoring strategy in customer feedback for a relationship-driven industry; Megan Zidon at Infios with spreading sales-enablement coaching feedback cross-functionally; and Mindy Regnell at Klaviyo with giving customers and employees a voice. Drake Lenhan at Sitecore is described as pairing storytelling with data to lift win rates.

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As a program develops, the question changes: how to set a starting point, handle many changes over time, or level up across companies and stages.

Scott Varner credits Monique Eddleton with building or leveling up programs at three different companies at three different points of maturity, and Dustin Ray with setting a baseline at Huntress and monitoring many changes over time.

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Open this first for the core argument in one short post.

Scott Varner argues that a win-loss program built only from CRM dropdowns and internal notes produces fast, vague, generic reasons: the buyer ghosted, a competitor came in cheaper, the timing was off.

• They compare that output to Boomhauer, whose speech is rapid but unintelligible.
• The fix is to give buyers a platform and a microphone to explain what actually happened, and to use a third party such as Clozd for unbiased feedback with no spin.

For brands planning a campaign

For a B2B SaaS team assembling a win-loss or churn program, this post makes the case for pairing structured CRM fields with direct buyer interviews. It names a specific approach—third-party interviews—that shapes how the program is scoped and sourced.

Scott Varner highlights free, on-demand Win-Loss Week 2025 sessions and each contributor's angle: Dustin Ray sets a baseline at Huntress and monitors many changes over time; Monique Eddleton builds or levels up programs at three companies at different maturity stages; Eric Sun at CyberArk brings intelligence and "customer receipts" to go-to-market; Juan Palma at Nextracker anchors strategy in customer feedback for a relationship-driven industry; Drake Lenhan at Sitecore combines storytelling with data to lift win rates; Megan Zidon at Infios spreads coaching feedback cross-functionally; and Mindy Regnell at Klaviyo gives customers and employees a voice.

For brands planning a campaign

These named sessions offer a ready shortlist for benchmarking a proposed program. The practitioners could also be collaborators or comparison points when a campaign needs a specific angle rather than a general win-loss expert.

Scott Varner and Johnny Holmgren describe an open Program Manager role for someone with a strong background in strategic account management or customer success.

• The hands-on, high-impact job is framed as "somewhere between CS and consulting," centered on helping companies act on customer feedback.
• The stated qualities are asking great questions, communicating with confidence, and enjoying messy problems.
• Varner notes five years at Clozd and plans for the next twelve months.
• A second announcement carries nearly the same role description.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand planning a customer-insight engagement, this reveals the operating model: senior, consultative, and embedded with client teams. It helps set expectations for the support a program would include.

The remedy is to give buyers a platform and a microphone to explain the actual reasoning behind a deal.

Direct buyer interviews, not internal reconstruction; the buyer’s own words bring clarity.

For brands planning a campaign

For a B2B SaaS company rebuilding win-loss or churn analysis, Varner’s strongest hook is to treat buyer interviews as the primary input and CRM codes as a starting index, not the finding. They advocate listening before reporting.

Examples: Source 1

Their recurring theme is that few can. They describe the program-manager role as hands-on, between customer success and consulting, and focused on helping companies act on what customers say.

Pairs the insight function with a delivery role so findings change internal behavior.

For brands planning a campaign

Build a customer-insight campaign around the gap between analysis and action, not data collection. Varner advocates a program with a defined owner, decisions, and follow-through; they ask who changes behavior when the feedback lands.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The point: a first program, a maturing one, and an established one need different approaches.

Set a baseline, monitor change over time, and adapt the technique to the company’s stage.

For brands planning a campaign

Sequence content or services by customer maturity: a baseline-and-track approach suits early programs, while method refreshes suit established ones. Ask Varner to place a prospect on that maturity spectrum before proposing a program shape.

Examples: Source 1

Feedback feeds the go-to-market muscle rather than a retrospective report.

For brands planning a campaign

Frame customer intelligence as an in-cycle input for sales and marketing, with named owners. Varner’s content fits campaigns about routing feedback into GTM decisions, especially in relationship-led or enterprise sales motions.

Examples: Source 1

They argue that internal interviews and CRM notes carry bias that a neutral interviewer avoids.

Before booking, ask whether Varner offers this as a service; the post recommends it but does not document an offering.

For brands planning a campaign

Consider the vendor framing: Varner publicly names Clozd, so a competing brand should expect that association in any collaboration and plan messaging that does not require them to critique Clozd. For their audience, neutrality is the selling point of a program read.

Examples: Source 1

Their Win-Loss Week post curates other practitioners and notes what each does well: pairing storytelling with data to lift win rates, owning feedback in sales enablement, and giving customers and employees a voice.

For brands planning a campaign

Varner’s posts show how they evaluate talent and whose work they amplify, a useful signal for sponsored event programming or practitioner roundups. A brand seeking a curator or event host for a customer-insight audience can consider this, if the roundup format fits the campaign.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Two posts advertise a Program Manager opening on their team for someone with strategic account management or customer success experience to help companies act on customer feedback.

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One post contrasts two customers of the same vendor who gave identical high NPS scores but described radically different relationships — one only hearing from the vendor at renewal, the other getting answers on the spot with no handoffs — and argues that value delivered across the whole customer journey prevents churn.

• Another covers a podcast appearance on win-loss research, including the claim that most loss data in CRMs is flat-out wrong and that asking buyers the right way produces usable insight.
• Carson's material directly extends Varner's argument about why feedback should be gathered by a neutral interviewer and what that looks like in practice.

Carson emphasizes retention and the full customer journey: alignment across sales, success, and engineering, and consistent engagement between renewals.

• Varner's posts focus on win-loss program design and the gap between analysis and action, including the skills needed to translate findings into action.
• Carson also shares article links and podcast appearances, where the practical examples are more concrete.

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One post explains CSAT — how the score works, what low scores signal about churn, and how to calculate the percentage. This overlaps with Varner's subject matter: both argue that you have to ask customers directly about their buying decisions, then turn their answers into something the business uses.

Okoyenta's posts are introductory practice guides for individual CSMs — one question to ask, one metric to compute — rather than arguments about program design.

• Varner's material assumes a program already exists and focuses on where its evidence should come from and who owns the follow-through.
• Readers looking for the basics of post-sale customer conversations should start with Okoyenta; those deciding how to build a win-loss or churn program should start with Varner.

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One post lists the challenges Elliott sees teams face — revenue plateauing and deals stalling, sales, marketing, and customer success failing to work as one, teams unable to tell what is working, and waiting for a polished pitch before going to market — then describes private training combined with advisory sessions as the remedy.

• The diagnosis matches Varner's: the challenge is not gathering information but getting functions to act on it together.
• The post is framed as a podcast conversation, the same format Varner uses in the roundup.

Elliott works with founder-led teams on growth strategy and selling discipline, so the examples focus on pipeline and team focus rather than win-loss or churn evidence.

• Varner's posts focus on the intelligence layer — what buyers say and whether anyone changes behavior as a result — and on staffing that function.
• Readers looking for training and coaching for a sales team should look at Elliott; those building a customer-insight program should look at Varner.

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Her material takes the customer success perspective: the first question a CSM should ask after a deal closes is "why did this customer buy?"—what outcome they hope to achieve, what challenges they raised during the sale and what expectations were set before handover.

• She makes the sales handoff the pivot point: a CSM should arrive knowing those answers and use the first post-sales conversation to validate them, because the same product serves different customers for different reasons.
• Her CSAT post adds a measurement layer: CSAT as an early-warning signal for churn, a way to spot advocates and a health check on whether customers are getting value.
• She also gives the scoring rule: only the top two ratings count toward the official percentage.
• For companies facing renewal-time churn, missed onboarding outcomes or a weak sales-to-CS handoff, this approach addresses the buyer decision while there is still time to change the outcome.

The coverage stops at the installed base.

• Scott Varner’s posts focus on account-team mindsets and metrics: definitions, a scoring formula and a framing question for CSMs.
• They do not describe lost-deal interviews, competitive loss reasons or why buyers chose a competitor—the front half of a win-loss program that Varner and Carson both argue for.
• Nor do they lay out an interviewer, interview guide or named owner for acting on findings, the core of Varner’s proposed approach.
• If you need someone to run the win-loss research, ask how they would cover lost deals and put the findings into action.
• Posts date from mid-2026.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Her material addresses companies with plateauing revenue and stalled deals, and names recurring causes: sales, marketing and customer success working at cross purposes; uncertainty about what is working; teams waiting for a polished pitch or asset before going to market; founders who want out of day-to-day selling; and general overwhelm about where to focus.

• Her response is capability-building: private training programs blended with hands-on advisory and strategy work, which she describes as training meets consulting meets tough love.
• She also draws on labour-market evidence, presenting compensation-trend data showing growth-marketing and marketing-communications roles among the fastest-growing in Canada’s tech sector, and connecting that demand to a training partnership preparing growth marketers for the sector.
• She is a better choice when a campaign needs to build the team’s execution capability or make the case to leadership using hiring and compensation data rather than customer interviews.

The same buyer decision — why customers buy and why they leave — is approached from the selling and enablement side, not from buyer evidence.

• Scott Varner's posts do not describe interviewing buyers, analysing lost deals, or measuring post-sale satisfaction, so a program built around buyer-stated reasons would still need that method from another source; Elliott's contribution sits upstream in the team that has to act on the findings.
• The posts are also anchored to a specific market and community — Canadian tech, Calgary programming, a named training partnership — so a company outside that context gets less directly transferable detail.
• Posts date from late 2024, the oldest in this comparison, which matters if the need is current commentary.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

His posts describe customer interviews conducted for vendors and frame the win-loss problem much like Varner: most win-loss data in CRMs is flat-out wrong; price is rarely the real reason for a loss, even when the CRM says so; deep discovery can backfire and damage credibility; and regularly scheduled customer conversations—not analytics alone—change decisions.

• Carson also extends the analysis into retention.
• He contrasts two customers of the same vendor, both giving identical high NPS scores but describing radically different experiences: one hears from the vendor only at renewal, while the other finds sales, success and engineering speaking the same language, with no handoffs.
• That contrast makes NPS and value delivery across the customer journey the central question.
• For companies facing renewal-time silence or satisfaction scores that offer little insight, his posts provide more to work with.
• Posts date from October 2024 and March 2025.

This is the closest overlap in the set, and the tradeoff is scope and role.

• Both Carson and Varner argue for buyer interviews and reject CRM-only win-loss reporting, so the method alone will not distinguish them.
• Carson’s posts cover interview-based win-loss research plus retention and NPS analysis, with a strong focus on the customer journey and the metric itself.
• Varner’s are narrower, centred on translating buyer feedback into action and on the practitioner role responsible for follow-through, with a stated preference for a neutral third-party interviewer.
• If you already trust your retention measures and want a tightly scoped win-loss-and-churn translation program, Carson’s broader retention framing may be more than you need.
• His posts also lean on NPS as a diagnostic; if you have doubts about NPS as a measure, ask how he would adapt that part of the approach.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2