Today’s show is a demonstration on securing and retaining the right talent for a transformation.  Consistent quarterly performance depends on the right talent.  As a guide to the discussion, download our 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to the Talent phase on pages 100 – 105 of the PDF.

Joining us is Sean O’Brien, the Chief Administrative Officer of PGi. The CAO title is becoming more prevalent in the C-Suite, and is used to describe an executive responsible for two or more functional areas.  PGi is a global leader in collaboration software and services.  Any time you want to connect with people that you are not present with, PGi is the glue to make that happen.  Sean will demonstrate selecting and retaining the right talent for a transformation.

You began a transformation to drive up the valuation of your company.  Listen as Sean describes building vs. buying executive talent.  There’s an opportunity cost to assess based on the skills gap.  We discuss the approach to weighing the opportunity cost of building to fill skill gaps versus buying talent with the skills.  Sean describes how to take a step back and evaluate the existing executive team.

Why this topic? The revenue growth objective, during a transformation, is heavily dependent on having superstar executive talent. At times, the revenue growth strategy calls for a new set of competencies that the existing team does not possess.  Mismatch talent and strategy and suffer from significant execution problems.

Listen as Sean describes how to evaluate talent, both existing and new.  Take a step back and look at the existing executive team as if you’re looking at them for the first time.  Sean states, “in many cases, the talents, the skills, the people that were responsible for getting you to where you are today are not necessarily the ones that are going to take you forward into the future most effectively.”

It’s an opportunity to re-establish that you have the right people in the right roles to take your company through that critical transformation.

The final segment of the show addresses how to prevent a brain drain.  This occurs when outgoing executives bring top talent with them as they exit.  Sean describes concrete actions to show the retained talent that they are valued.  Don’t miss the action items Sean describes.

Evaluate your executive talent at a deeper level by downloading our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017.  Turn to the Talent phase on pages 100 – 105 of the PDF.  To request a workshop with an expert simply sign up for a MySBI account and check the box in your preferences to request a workshop. 

Today’s topic is understanding how to make the customer experience a competitive differentiator.

I recently interviewed Cigna’s Vice President of Global Product Strategy and Operations, Rob Wentling.  Cigna is one of the largest global health services companies in the world. Rob is accountable for creating and delivering an enterprise-wide product strategy including core product development and management processes critical in helping Cigna achieve its “Go Deep, Go Global, and Go Individual” strategy.

Rob has 25 years of business experience at some of the world’s great companies such as AT&T, ADP, The Hartford Insurance Company, and now Cigna. His experience includes business unit strategy, product strategy, business development, marketing, and development.  Listen as Rob and I discuss how the customer experience be a competitive advantage.

Why this topic? Customer’s expectations have risen, and failure to provide an exceptional experience for each customer can result in poor revenue growth. Some customers prioritize their experience over product performance, believe it or not, when making a purchase decision. This requires a deep understanding of the customer’s journey and each touch point along the way. Mapping this customer’s journey is a difficult yet mission critical task that when done correctly can result in exceptional revenue growth.

Today’s topic is understanding how to leverage sales development reps to generate leads for the sales team. If you would like to implement an outbound marketing program with a team of SDRs, consider having one of our experts spend some time with you in workshop. To get a feel for what's covered in that workshop, download our 10th annual workbook that we use in these workshops.

Joining us is Heather Young, the Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Rimini Street.   Rimini Street is a leading global provider for a third-party enterprise support.  This includes maintenance and support for SAP and Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Hyperion and RETEK software.

Why this topic? For many B2B companies, inbound marketing is not producing enough leads for the sales team.  As a result, many marketers have added a team of SDRs, sales development reps, to drive outbound marketing efforts in an attempt to meet the never-ending need for more leads.

Today’s topic is understanding how to determine which markets to compete in and which markets to avoid.

Why this topic? Many executive teams tend to focus most of their attention on gaining share in their existing markets. While it is necessary to maintain, and sometimes increase market share, changing your company’s exposure to growing and shrinking market segments should be a major focus.

Joining us is Jim Briles, the Chief Operating Officer of American Global Logistics. AGL manages the supply chain for customers who primarily import ocean freight from Asia into the United States. During the interview, Jim will demonstrate selecting the right markets by using AGL as an example.

Today’s topic is how to execute Account Based Marketing.  While B2B account marketing has been around for years, we discuss the modern techniques and tools for success. To follow along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to the marketing strategy section and flip to the ABM phase on pages 214 – 217 of the PDF. 

Demand generation and lead management does not work for companies with business models dependent on a small number of accounts but who spend a lot. Waiting for dream accounts to come to you will result in you missing your revenue targets. If you live and die by the big deal, growing revenues faster than your industry and your competitors requires a shift to Account Based Marketing. 

Joining us from Motorola Solutions is Massimo Sangiovanni, Vice President of Americas for Marketing and Inside Sales.  Motorola Solutions provides mission-critical communications products and services to public safety and commercial customers around the world. This is done by providing them with real-time information, and by arming them with intuitive, nearly indestructible handheld devices. Listen as Massimo describes how the evolution into modern account based marketing has positively impacted sales.

Today’s topic is how to launch new products successfully. 

Product launches fail to generate revenue when sales people and channel partners are not involved in messaging development during pre-launch preparations. When messaging is developed in isolation it is not compelling enough to get your customers to act. Stories told directly to customers by well-trained sales channels enable customers and prospects to answer “Why change?” and this stimulates latent demand while leading to exceptional revenue growth.  

Joining us is Toby Williams, SVP, Chief Product and Strategy Officer for Ellucian.  Ellucian is the world’s leading provider of software and services for higher education institution, serving more than 2,400 institutions and 18 million students worldwide.  Listen as Toby discusses how to create messaging to defeat the status quo.   This starts with market problems that the solution is solving and to capture it through the customer lens. 

Today’s topic is understanding how executives make purchase decisions.  Failure to understand, exactly, how the executive decision makers inside your target accounts buy will result in poor win rates, long sales cycles, and you missing your number.  To follow along, download our 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017.  Turn to the buyer segmentation phase on pages 274 – 276 of the PDF. 

Joining us is Gary Ackerman, the SVP Head of Global Sales at Pepperjam.  Pepperjam is a performance marketing company focused on helping global advertisers drive e-commerce sales.  During the interview, Gary will demonstrate how executives make purchase decisions by using Pepperjam as an example. 

Executives are changing the way they make purchase decisions. Some are altering their evaluation criteria. Others are involving more people in the decision-making process. Some are changing their preferences for how they want to engage with your sales team. Decentralized decision-making is becoming centralized, and centralized decisions are now being made regionally. And on and on. Failure to exactly understand how executives are buying will prevent you from growing revenue.

Today’s topic is how to deploy a sales process. The purpose of a sales process is to win more deals, win bigger deals and to do it faster.

Standard one-size-fits-all sales methodologies no longer work. The competitors can license the same sales methodologies from the same vendors you can, so there is no competitive advantage to be had by adopting the latest sales methodology from the sales training industry. To increase deal sizes, improve win rates and shorten sales cycles, you need to adopt a custom, proprietary sales process/methodology. 

Joining us is Lori Chmura, Vice President of US Sales for Cordis. Lori has over 28 years of business experience, and has deployed a version of a customized sales process during her tenure. During the interview, Lori will demonstrate how she has deployed a new sales process. 

Today’s topic is forecasting accuracy.  How to install a thorough forecasting and pipeline management process. 

Joining us is Evan Randall the Vice President of Sales Operations at Tableau Software. Evan is doing ground-breaking work in forecasting accuracy.  Listen as Evan breaks down the approach to drive forecasting accuracy.

The first segment of the show is focused on individual deal level forecasting. Evan describes how he uses predictive analytics to determine what is likely to happen.  He describes the importance of having a sales process with a level of simplicity to achieve adoption.  A well adopted and easy to use sales process enables you to collect good data. 

Today’s topic is how to build a high-performance sales culture where sales talent thrives. Joining us today is Vicky Oxley, Regional Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Comcast NBC Universal.  Vicky leads the West Region for Comcast, the nation’s largest TV, high speed internet and voice provider for residential and business customers. 

Peter Drucker famously said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and nowhere else is this truer than in sales organizations.  Yet, unfortunately, many sales leaders neglect investing in the culture of the sales department and this results to poor performance. This episode hopes to help prevent this from happening to you.  

Vicky describes the sales culture she has created to help talent thrive.  The program begins with an overview of the Comcast corporate and the specific sales culture.  Listen as Vicky explains how a customer experience culture strives to passionately driven to make every customer interaction the best possible. 

Today’s topic is how to evolve your strategy to stay ahead of the market. Joining us today is Jeff Ray, the Chief Executive Officer for Ellucian. A worldwide leader, Ellucian provides software and services to the higher education market. 18 million students around the world are touched by the software tools.

Why this topic? Strategic time horizons are changing. 5 year strategies are getting compressed to 3 year strategies and 3 year strategies are getting converted to 1 year operating plans with quarterly agile iterations. This time compression requires the CEO, and his executive leadership team, to build the capabilities associated with strategy evolution.

Listen as Jeff and Greg discuss how revenue growth, return on invested capital, and cash flow linked. Jeff describes Ellucian's advantage of a vertical market focus and the benefits to allocating resources.

Today’s topic is  new product launch. Joining us is Andy Wright, Executive Vice President of New Product Development at Cypress Semiconductor.

Cypress Semiconductor is the number one manufacturer of memory used in electronics.  Chances are that the device you are using to read this article right now is powered by Cypress.  Andy is responsible for corporate wide design and driving P&L for all design activity worldwide.

Andy and Greg discuss how to conduct a successful product launch.  A product launch hinges on being able to tell stories that compel your customers to act by answering the key question, “Why change?”.

Product launches fail to generate revenue when sales people and channel partners are not involved in messaging development during pre-launch preparations. When messaging is developed in isolation it is not compelling enough to get your customers to act. Stories told directly to customers by well-trained sales channels enable customers and prospects to answer “Why change?,” and this stimulates latent demand while leading to exceptional revenue growth.

Listen to Andy explains how his team works to identify launch risks early on. He controls launch risk by rapidly sequential phase gating. As each phase gate he evaluates whether he goes through the rest of the R&D phases.  

During the interview, Andrew will answer these questions:

• How should you determine your new product launch goals?
• How do you ready the entire organization for the launch?
• Where does sales enablement live, and who should own it?
• How should you measure success or failure of a new product launch?

Today’s topic is transitioning from sales training to sales enablement.  Sale enablement is about driving revenue per sales head up and time to productivity for new sales hires down.

Joining us today is Brad Kerst, Senior Director of Global Sales Enablement for Intuitive Surgical, a medical device company.  Intuitive Surgical is the leader in surgical robotics, manufacturing and selling the da Vinci® Surgical System.  Brad and Greg discuss the difference between sales training and sales enablement. 

Sales training is the focus on three core areas of technical product knowledge, industry knowledge, and sales skills and execution.  By comparison, sales enablement is a focus on the process and analytics to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales force.  Listen to Brad explain how both are interlocked, with training as the background and context and the enablement side is the execution. 

Brad goes into detail explaining how sales training and sales enablement are symbiotic.  Sales training develops the skills and sales enablement defines the behaviors and skills and generate the insights necessary to drive and maximize results.  In the final segment of the program listen to Brad describe his training certification process and blended learning approach.

On today’s show we discuss product strategy. Our guest is Peter Sheldon, the Vice President of Strategy at Magento Commerce. Magento is a leading e-commerce platform providing enterprise solutions. Before his position at Magento, Peter was one of the foremost thought leaders at Forrester on the topic of e-commerce.   

The goal of the call today is to think through product strategy using Magento as a use case.  Your company’s go-to-market model needs to flow out of the product strategy.  

There are different types of product strategy: Market Expansion, Market Share and Market Exposure.  Very different product strategies.  Spend the time to get these right.  Your go to market model for sales will be very different depending on which strategy is selected. 

It’s nearly impossible to build a sales and marketing strategy that makes your number every year if you don’t fully understand the product strategy.  The go-to-market strategy for sales and marketing changes significantly based on how you answer these product questions.  Listen to Peter bring the question of product strategy’s impact on sales and marketing to life with the Magento use case.   

Work with your product leader to get answers to these questions to align your strategies.  Peter answers a series of questions to help sales and marketing leaders understand the impact of product strategy on the overall go to market strategy. 

• Is your product strategy focused on participating in overall market expansion where rising waters raise all ships?
• As you compete in a mature market do you have to take market from your competitors to grow?
• Are you also exploring new growing markets and how to expose your products to grow?
• Do you find that the B2B market mimics the B2C world with a 2-3+ year lag time?
• Is your product strategy to enter fast growing product markets and take revenue from distant companies rather than direct competitors?
• Is your product strategy to define new products that are so innovative as to create an entirely new product category?
• Is your product strategy to grow by persuading existing customers to buy more of a product or related product?
• When adding new products requiring cross-sell/up-sell, how do you know when to use the existing sales force vs. a new sales strategy?
• Is the product strategy based on new product pricing and promotion in a mature market and is therefore likely to be temporary based on competitor retaliation?
• Is the product strategy to force smaller companies out of the market?
• For a concentrated market, is the product strategy to cycle through market share without sustainable share gain?
• Is the product strategy to execute bolt on acquisitions to complete or extend the product offering and leverage the current routes to market

Listen to Peter respond to each question and highlight how to avoid the traps and the approach the market challenges.

On today's show we discuss the different types of revenue growth and their impact on company valuation. Our guest is Charlie DeLacey, the vice president of corporate development and strategy at the Kenan Advantage Group. Kenan is a $1.5 billion dollar transportation and logistics business.

Charlie is responsible for driving and shaping the strategy of Kenan Advantage Group, who has experienced 10-15% growth on an annual basis.

The types of growth discussed include organic and inorganic, and the different returns on capital each type of investment drives.  For example, given the opportunity to grow the same amount of revenue through organic or inorganic, Charlie explains that typically organic growth will drive greater value creation.  However, there are other variables such as time, capital requirements and execution risks.  Charlie describes how to make the decision between organic and inorganic growth.

On this weeks’ SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we spoke with Greg Shepard, the chief strategy officer at Pepperjam. Pepperjam is a global digital marketing and performance technology firm, and Greg is responsible for evaluating trends, client feedback and internal requests to foresee opportunities for new product development. The topic of our conversation was injecting buyer behavior into the product strategy. Listen as Greg explains how he uses these insights to build and execute his product strategy.

During the episode, Greg will answer questions such as:

• How do you determine what buyer problems to solve, and what behaviors prove evidence of these problems?
• How do you determine if your product will beat the competition in the market?
• How often should you put your product in front of the buyers to get their opinion on the solution?
• How do you forecast wallet share?
• How do you test for product-market fit within each of your submarkets?

Buyer behavior is changing constantly. And these insights must be considered when it comes to new product development. It’s your best chance to ensure you are developing products that your buyers are willing to invest time, energy and money to solve. Listen as Greg describes how he uses buyer behavior data to successfully develop his product strategy

Your sales operations team must improve the efficiency of the sales team. Instead, sales ops has become a catch all that gets assigned the work no one else wants to do. On this week’s SBI Sales and Marketing podcast we spoke with Burke Lippert, senior director of sales operations at Spok. Listen here as Burke explains how she built an effective sales ops team from the ground up.

During the episode, Burke will answer questions such as:

• What business outcomes should a new sales operations team strive to deliver?
• What should the strategic focus areas of a new sales operations team be?
• What should the forecast and pipeline management process be for a new sales ops team?
• What should the processes for critical activities like territory design and quota setting be for new sales ops teams?

When deployed correctly sales operations can impact revenue growth in a meaningful way. But it must be properly staffed and built. Listen as Burke discusses the best way to do this. She will explain why you should not starve this key department. 

Do you have a list of dream accounts to target? Many marketers strive to replace leads with opportunities for the sales team using account based marketing. We recently interviewed Leo Tucker, the senior vice president of global marketing for PGi. Listen as he discusses his approach to account based marketing.

During the interview, he will discuss topics such as:

• Why it’s critical for sales teams to sell to a list of targeted accounts.
• Why current demand generation efforts fail to generate enough revenue.
• How to improve the relationship between sales and marketing through account based marketing.
• How to get personalized content and messaging in front of right buyers at the right time.

If you live and die by the big deal, growing revenues faster than your industry and competitors requires a shift in your strategy. Listen here as Leo explains how to transition to account based marketing.

As a marketing leader, you must drive revenue growth by connecting corporate marketing with the field. SBI recently spoke with Tracy Hansen, the chief marketing officer at Renaissance Learning, the world leader in cloud-based assessment, teaching and learning solutions. Listen as Tracy discusses how she executes field marketing inside of Renaissance Learning.

During the show, Tracy will answer question such as:

• What business outcomes should the field marketing team deliver?
• What should the strategic focus of the field marketing team be?
• What percentage of the overall marketing budget should be dedicated to field marketing?
• What role should field marketing play between corporate marketing and sales?
• What types of campaigns should field marketing run?
• How can field marketing best partner with sales?.

Ultimately, field marketing is the connective tissue between corporate and the field. Without it, marketing teams will fail to produce revenue. Listen as Tracy describes how she has successfully implemented field marketing at Renaissance learning.

Content strategy and planning is a critical piece to your marketing strategy. As a marketing leader, you must earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers. We recently spoke with Steve Keifer, the vice president of marketing at LeaseAccelerator. Listen as Steve explains how he develops and executes his content marketing strategy.

Steve has over ten years’ experience and is responsible for driving the demand for LeaseAccelerator’s SaaS solutions. During the show, he will answer questions such as:

• Which customers and prospects have you prioritized and why?
• What information needs do these prioritized customers and prospects have?
• What content have you developed and how does it help your business?
• How do you develop your content marketing team in order to successfully execute strategy?
• How can you measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy?

For content marketing to generate revenue, you must understand what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it and in what form. Without this information, your content marketing efforts will fails to contribute to revenue growth in a meaningful way. Listen as Steven shares his insights on how to successfully implement a content marketing strategy. 

Traditional demand generation and lead management does not work for companies that are dependent on a small number of accounts that spend a lot. Instead marketing teams must replace leads with opportunities for the sales team. SBI recently spoke with Gahan Richardson, the vice president of corporate marketing at Cypress Semiconductors. Listen as Gahan explains his approach to account based marketing and how he uses it to set his sales team up for success.  

During the interview, Gahan will answer questions such as:

• Why is it critical for your sales team to go wide and deep inside of their accounts, building many relationships?
• What is the lifetime value of a key account, and why is it so much more than a typical account?
• If marketing dedicates budget to a list of dream accounts, does this improve the relationship between sales and marketing?
• Should you deploy multi-channel approach when launching an account based marketing program??
• Why should marketing leaders build a list of accounts, ranked best to worst, on revenue potential and propensity to buy?
• What are the best ways to develop personalized content and get it in front of the right buyers and influencers?

If your sales team lives and dies by the big deal, growing revenues faster than your competitors and industry will require a shift in behavior. Listen here as Gahan explains how account based marketing will help you make your number.

Getting an increase in sales head count is difficult. Additionally, when new sales people are hired, there is an expectation to generate revenue growth as quickly as possible. Essentially, sales enablement’s responsibility is to onboard new reps and drive revenue per sales head and time to productivity. SBI recently spoke with Kent Cissell, the senior vice president of sales operations at Heartland Payment Systems on this topic. Listen as Kent discusses sales enablement and why it’s key to the success of your overall sales strategy.

Kent oversees a varied sales operations team which includes the traditional sales enablement function at Heartland, one of the largest payment processors in the US. During the interview, he will answer questions such as:

• What are the business outcomes that the sales enablement team needs to deliver?
• What is the strategic focus of the sales enablement team?
• How are new sales reps onboarded, and what kind of sales readinesss program should be in place?
• How is sales enablement content developed and used?

Sales enablement is a key piece to your sales strategy. Neglect it and forgo adding sales head count in the future. Listen as Kent describes to how develop and execute a successful sales enablement strategy. And if after listening, you want to learn more, you can download our workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. It’s your step by step guide to a complete sales strategy, which includes a strong sales enablement program.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Dave Longaker, the chief revenue officer at Rovi Corporation about how to determine the best sales organizational structure.

We start the discussion by determining which of the 7 B2B sales org models is best to achieve revenue growth. Dave will discuss how to determine the types of roles, and the sales headcount need for each. Furthermore, he will explain how sales leaders should deploy their sales capacity against the market opportunity.

Dave will continue by discussing how to determine which sales channels buyers want to buy from, and what level of sales specialization they are willing to pay for. And he will walk our audience through how to effectively transition from one sales organizational structure to another in order to best achieve revenue growth.  

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Kay Kienast, a seasoned marketing executive, about how to develop your brand positioning and messaging in order to increase revenue growth.

We start the discussion by determining how to define your customer’s market problems and their pain. And she will explain how to articulate the opportunity provided to customer and prospects when solving their issues.

Kay will continue the conversation by explaining how to calculate the cost of doing nothing for customers. She’ll wrap up the show by giving the audience immediate take-aways on how to best determine your brand positioning and benefits.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

Not all revenue growth is equal. As an executive leader, your primary objective is to increase shareholder value. To do this, you must realize certain types of revenue growth are better than others. We recently spoke with Charles DeLacey, vice president of corporate development at Kenan Advantage Group. Listen as Charles discusses the different types of revenue growth and their impact on company valuation.

At Kenan Advantage Group, Charles is responsible for leading corporate strategy and planning, and strategic growth initiatives. During the interview, he will answer questions such as:

• Do the different types of revenue growth earn different returns on capital, and if so, why?
• Is organic growth better than growth through acquisitions?
• How should you determine whether to invest in organic growth vs. growth through acquisitions?
• Give the available capital, are the number of acquisitions increasing?
• What happens to the executive management team when a company gets taken over?

Ultimately, in order to keep your job, prevent a takeover by increasing your rate of high quality revenue growth. Selling your company at full price happens only when you are healthy. Listen as Charles explains the different types of revenue growth, and how they impact the way your company is viewed. If after listening, you want to learn more about emerging best practices that top leaders are deploying, download our workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. It will help you determine if your corporate strategy is on track to increase revenue growth the right way.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with John Suh, the chief executive officer at LegalZoom about how to connect your corporate strategy with your sales strategy.

We start the discussion by determining how to define your organization’s mission, vision, and brand. We’ll also explain how to determine your sales plan to hit your revenue growth objectives. And how to select the best sales organizational structure to make your number.

Mark will continue the conversation by discussing how to ensure the sales team is articulating the corporate strategy. John will also explain how to tie sales objectives back to the corporate strategy and how to ensure the sales team is living your brand in every interaction.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

People buy from people. Ultimately, there is no substitute for face time. This means organizations need a world class field marketing program. SBI recently interviewed Kim Salem-Jackson, the senior vice president of worldwide field marketing at Informatica about this topic. Listen as Kim shares her experience and insights on the subject of field marketing.

Informatica is the number one provider of data integration software, with over 5,000 customers. And Kim has over 15 years’ experience in the discipline of field marketing. During the interview, she will answer key questions such as:

• What role should field marketing play when it sits between corporate marketing and field sales?
• How should you determine the goals of the field marketing team?
• Who should drive the initiatives of the field marketing team?
• How should you build an annual plan for the field marketing department?
• How should field marketing partner with the sales team?

At the end of the day enterprise organizations need to have a great field marketing program. It will allow your reps to increase face time with customers and prospects. Listen to hear how Kim has properly developed, and executed her field marketing strategy. Help your marketing plan get field level execution to maximize lead flow.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Mark Roberts, the chief marketing officer at ShorTel about how to develop your marketing strategy as a new marketing leader.

We start the discussion with how and why new CMOs should consider a new brand strategy. Mark will also discuss whether or not you need a new marketing campaign process, and how to select the right organizational design.

Mark will continue the conversation by explaining how to extend your marketing capabilities by engaging and managing the right agency partners. He’ll wrap up the show by giving new marketing leaders 3 actions they can take immediately in order to effectively develop and execute their new marketing strategy.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Terry Hicks, the chief product officer at Infusionsoft, about integrating his product strategy with his go to market strategy.

We start the discussion with how Terry develops his product strategy. He’ll explain how determines what markets to compete in and what problems to solve. He’ll also discuss how to determine how your products can uniquely win against the competition, and how to determine how they should be marketed and sold.

Terry will continue the discussion by next explaining how he develops his go to market strategy. He’ll explain how to develop the product positioning and pricing strategy for your products. And how to ensure the entire organization, product, sales and marketing, is ready for the new product launch.

We conclude our talk by looking at the first three actions product leaders can take right now to immediately make an impact with their product strategy. Terry will explain in detail how you can successfully integrate your product and go to market strategies.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Todd Doolittle, the recently appointed head of sales operations at Concentra, about the challenges and opportunities faced by new sales ops leaders.

We start the discussion with Todd’s biggest struggles experienced in the first 100 days of becoming the sales ops leader. He’ll explain how and why he prioritized his sales ops team’s efforts immediately. And he’ll go on to describe how his team gets a lot done with minimal headcount and budget.

Todd will continue the discussion by describing how he deals with unrealistic expectations and timelines, and how he says no without receiving any political blow back. Todd will describe how his sales ops department is a key piece to Concentra’s overall sales strategy, and how he partners with the sales leader to accelerate the organization's rate of revenue growth.

We conclude our talk by looking at the first three actions newly appointed sales operations leaders can take right now to immediately make an impact, and to be seen as a strategic part of sales and operations planning.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? Subscribe to SBI’s Sales and Marketing Podcast and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we discuss how to implement a sales organizational structure with Todd Skiiles, senior vice president of sales and solutions at Ryder.

In our first segment, Greg and Todd discuss how to implement a hunter farmer sales organizational design. Todd shares how he decided to implement this model, and what the results of this shift in org models have been. He also explains how to assess your current sales team against new profiles in the org chart, and how to make adjustments if needed.

In our second segment, Greg and Todd discuss whether or not it is necessary to make adjustments to the sales compensation plan to accommodate the new sales org design. He’ll also explain how this change effected Ryder’s overall sales strategy, specifically how it changed his team’s interactions with Ryder’s customers.

In our final segment, Todd summarizes all the above information into an action plan you can apply to your sales organizational structure implementation.

Ready to Make Your Number?

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we discuss how to conduct a successful product launch with Andrew Wright, vice president of design at Cypress Semiconductor.

In our first segment, Greg and Andrew discuss launch planning. Andrew shares how to determine the goal of launching a new product, such as revenue expectations and how to decide on the initial set of target customers. He also explores how to set up organizational readiness, specifically with the sales team, to make sure they are ready for this product launch. He then briefly touches on who is responsible for the launch, how to figure the launch budget, what risks to take into account and how to measure the success or failure of the new product introduction.

In our second segment, Greg and Andrew discuss how to execute the product launch. Andrew shares time objectives, sales enablement, reference customers and testimonials. Then he elaborates on how he measures success during and after the launch.

In our final segment, Andrew summarizes all the above information into an action plan you can apply to your own product launch.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we discuss sales strategy, specifically how to lead a very large sales team in the business services industry, with Stephen Mohan, senior vice president of Republic Services.

In our first segment, Stephen shares the organizational structure at Republic Services and explains why he chose this model. He also shares how his sales team integrates with the operations team and explains the pros and cons between a centralized functional sales structure versus a decentralized branch sales structure.

In our second segment, we discuss the challenge associated with drawing the line between sales and customer service.  Stephen talks about who owns the churn number, cross-selling and upselling at Republic Services and what their approaches are. He also discusses the role of customer service in his organization.

In our final segment, we summarize everything we discussed into three actions audience members can take immediately to operate their sales strategy.

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On this week’s SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, we speak with Tracy Cote, the senior vice president of human resources at Genesys, about attracting and retaining top sales talent, being an easy company to buy from and sell for, and using strategic alignment to support the sales team by making it everyone’s job to sell. Tracy’s company made SBI’s list of Ten Best Companies to Sell For in 2016, and she shares exactly what they did to make their sales process so solid.

In our first segment, we discuss why people want to work for Genesys. We analyze each aspect of the work environment, from the steps of the buying process to employee compensation and leadership training. Next, we discuss how they support the sales team by introducing the latest technology to upgrade both the employee and customer experience.

In our second segment, we discuss curating positive strategic alignment and making sure the company’s vision permeates everything the employees do, so they are all working toward a common goal. In our final segment, we conclude with steps to take to get your company aligned and your sales department as strong and as happy as possible.

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SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast Episode Summary

On this week’s SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we analyze SBI’s Eight Disciplines of Sales Execution with J. Scott Tapp, the EVP of global sales, marketing and field operations at PGi. Using Scott’s company as a guide, we analyze each step and apply it to a real-world B2B sales situation.

In our first segment, we cover step one, connecting your B2B sales strategy from the CEO to the sales rep. We discuss how Scott ensures his company’s sales strategy is aligned from the top of the company to the bottom. In step two, we discuss how to track your reps’ daily sales execution objectives. In step three, we discuss how to achieve those objectives by encouraging proper sales behaviors.

In our second segment, we continue with step four, where we break down common issues in a B2B sales strategy, and we analyze the best way to overcome or outright prevent these sales hurdles in your strategic planning process. Step five covers strategic alignment among your functional peers to aid in the success of everyone. In step six, we discuss how to take feedback from customers, employees, prospects and more, and convert that feedback into a useable sales strategy.

In our final segment, we discuss step seven, where Scott details his annual planning process and his tips for a successful strategy, and step eight, which covers multi-year planning. We finish up the podcast by giving a short summary of today’s topic, and Greg shares his thoughts on the best way to successfully align your company with all eight disciplines.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast we talk shop with a different sort of guest. Rather than examining sales strategy with a sales leader or corporate strategy with a CEO, we’re joined today by a product expert, Merijn te Booij, the executive VP of product strategy at Genesys, to discuss connecting a sales strategy to the product roadmap.

We begin by looking at the steps to building an effective product roadmap: performing a market scan, prioritizing market problems, involving your sales force and finding a product market fit. From there, Merijn discusses his usage of the Lean version of Agile, where one creates strategic alignment between the product organization and sales organization using cases and milestones.

From there, we look at how to use your sales force to inform your decisions when determining if something should be a new product, new release or new bundle. We also break down the concept behind MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and talk through the challenges the MVP-based development cycle faces and how to avoid ideas that’ll distract your sales force from making their sales.

As always, we conclude our conversation by summarizing how to put all these learnings into action, so your sales strategy can stay on track with your product roadmap and you can hit your numbers.

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This week on SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Kermit Randa, CEO of PeopleAdmin, about connecting corporate strategy with execution.

We start with a discussion of cascading strategy where Kermit explains the hierarchy of objectives and how it can shape your company’s values, focus and business strategy from the top down. We also review how to assign goals that help your talent see how their work on the individual level ties back to the company’s overall mission.

Kermit goes on to describe how you can add flexibility to your sales plan by focusing more on your rhythm than on your calendar. We look at the four forms of feedback that are important for any company that is undergoing strategy development: customer, prospect, competitor and employee feedback. We also discuss tools for measuring and evaluating these types of feedback to help hone your sales and marketing strategies and ensure your functional leaders remain strategically aligned with your corporate strategy.

We conclude our talk by looking at the first three actions you can take right now to immediately connect your corporate strategy with your execution.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with SVP of Strategy at Magento Commerce, Mark Lenhard, about how to develop a revenue growth strategy quicker than both your industry and competitors. Magento Commerce offers an open-source digital commerce solution to 250,000 companies.

In our first segment, Mark covers company revenue growth relative to industry revenue growth. We discuss how to analyze the industry, its customer, the driving demand behind the growth strategy and how to determine critical success factors.

Next, Mark explains the strategy in choosing the proper market groups, and later we explore the theory of three forms of strategy development advantage: product differentiation, cost and customer experience.

In our last segment, Mark shares in detail three actions companies can take immediately to help increase revenue growth.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we’re doing things a little differently. Rather than dishing sales strategies with a CEO or CMO, we’re joined instead by a CFO to get into the nitty-gritty of pricing strategy, the backbone of any successful product marketing campaign. Our guest today is Lauri Hanover, the CFO of Netafim; a global pioneer of the drip revolution. Together, we discuss how to improve your company’s marketing strategy by determining the perfect price in regards to your costs and product market.

We start with an in-depth look at the biggest influence on a sound pricing strategy: costs. We look at how to factor for the costs of building, marketing, selling, installing and supporting your product. Next, we look at determining a product price relative to these costs along with your product strategy as well as outside influences, such as market trends and competitor pricing. We end our conversation by discussing the first steps to putting a new pricing strategy into action so you can get your company on the right path toward better pricing and probability so you can hit your mark.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, Greg Alexander, CEO of SBI, and Steve Rutledge, senior vice president of global sales operations at Genesys, discuss how to develop and execute a sales operations strategy using SBI’s revenue growth methodology.

We start by discussing how to establish objectives and identify which internal processes the sales team owns and outline the biggest obstacles to success.

We also hear Steve’s views on the difference between sales ops and sales enablement and how the two should work together.

In our final segment we cover key takeaways and practical advice on what to do if you were put on the hot seat tomorrow and challenged with how to develop and execute a soup to nuts sales strategy.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Robin Saitz, the chief marketing officer at Brainshark, about how to integrate a marketing strategy with a corporate strategy, a product strategy and a sales strategy—something Brainshark does for thousands of companies, including half of the Fortune 100s out there.

We start by discussing how Robin connects the dots between vision and mission when crafting a functional approach to corporate strategy, product strategy, sales strategy and marketing strategy.

With this four-part marketing strategy laid out, we then talk about how Robin’s actually integrates her marketing strategies with a product roadmap and incorporates input from the sales organization into her marketing plan.

From there, Robin shares some tips on selling a strategic marketing plan internally, from the CEO to the product leader and the sales leader. We conclude by examining the first three steps leaders need to take when developing a solid four-part marketing strategy.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Ted Grulikowski, vice-president of the B2B unit at Market Source, the world’s leading sales outsourcing company, about taking a new product to market by recruiting and managing a team of resellers.

In our first segment, we discuss how Ted helps his clients grow their reseller revenues (2:38) & how he helps them overcome the common obstacles they face when trying to increase their revenue growth with resellers (3:30).

In our second segment, we look at the process of determining an ideal reseller profile (8:10), scoring & quantifying individual reseller value (9:36), determining an efficient coverage model (10:53), recruiting resellers from competitors (12:15), avoiding channel conflict with internal sales teams when outsourcing (14:15), recruiting reseller partners (15:30) & organizing internal channel groups (17:04).

In our final segment, we discuss learning from mistakes (19:20), identifying and mitigating risks when planning a growth strategy (20:25), and then outline three key takeaways that will help you achieve the sales growth you need to make your numbers in 2016 (22:40).

Today's guest on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast is Chris Bittner, the Senior Director of Global Sales and Channel Strategy at Autodesk.

We asked Chris to help his peers support their company's sales strategy by discussing channel selection and channel optimization. We cover important tactics of channel management, including product channel fit, which channels the end customers what to buy from, the ideal channel partner profile, and how to deal with channel consolidation that's going on these days. By the end of our episode, you'll learn the three things you absolutely need to do to have an optimized sales channel.

As we begin the last month of Q1, sales leaders should be focused on executing their strategy. In order to execute, you must enable your sales team with the tools they need. Click here to listen to our podcast on this topic. It is an interview with Bill Quinn, the Chief Operating Officer of the global sales organization at Broadridge. Broadridge does just under $3 billion per year in annual sales. Bill describes how he drives excellence in sales enablement throughout this large organization.

During this interview, he will answer questions such as:

• What should the objectives of the sales enablement team be?
• Who should own sales enablement?
• How do should you develop sales enablement content?
• How can you drive the adoption of the sales enablement program?

The sales enablement team needs a well thought out strategy to support the sales organization. But too often organizations have a series of tactics masquerading as a strategy. It causes execution issues, and the effort becomes fractured across the organization. If you want to be sure you get it right, click here and listen to Bill’s insights. His experience will help set sales enablement leaders up for success.   

Developing and executing your company’s revenue growth strategy is not easy. Too often the corporate strategy stops with the executive team. When, in fact, it needs to trickle down throughout the organization. Listen to how John Myers, CEO at Rentokil Initial, has successfully does this at his company. 

Rentokil Initial is one of the largest business services companies in the world with 60,000 employees across 60 countries. As you can imagine, developing and executing a revenue growth strategy in a company of this size is no easy feat. Despite this challenge, John has been able to effectively translate his strategy throughout the entire organization.

During this podcast, John will discuss:

• How to define your company’s mission, vision and values.
• How to ensure your customer’s experience matches your brand promise.
• How to determine the organization’s financial objectives.
• How to know which markets to compete in, and which to avoid.
• How to determine your sustainable competitive advantage.

Your corporate strategy must be more than just a series of tactics. To make your number, you need to develop and execute a complete revenue growth strategy. This strategy needs to pull insights from the external marketplace and use this data to make key choices. Choices like “why do we exist?” Your strategy will set the direction for the entire organization. Listen to this podcast to hear how one of your peers has been able to do exactly that.

It’s marketing’s job to set the sales team up for success. To do this, the marketing and sales strategies must be aligned. We recently spoke with Clint Poole, the Vice President of Marketing at Lionbridge about this issue. You can listen to the episode here. Clint is responsible for driving demand for the company’s new solution offerings via a multi-channel demand generation program. This has given him great insight into how to align marketing and sales.

During the interview, Clint will tackle topics such as:

• How to ensure your brand promise is communicated correctly by the sales team.
• How to create both demand generation and sales enablement content.
• How to nurture leads until they are sales ready.
• How sales can play a role in helping marketing campaigns be successful.

We will use SBI’s playbook, “How to Make Your Number in 2016” to guide our conversation. If at the end of the show, you want a copy we’ll let you know how to get it.  

Aligning the marketing strategy to the sales strategy in a large businesses is hard to do.  Why? Because the two strategies are the most closely tied of any of the functional strategies. As a marketing leader, you must think through how you are going to help make the sales team successful. What is the key? A well thought out methodology. If you do not have a structured approach you will lose both time and money. Click here to listen to how one of your peers has done it right.

Product leaders must set up their marketing and sales team for success. If they don’t, those teams have no chance of accomplishing their objectives. Listen to our recent podcast on this topic. It’s an interview with Todd Wells, the Senior Vice President of Product Development at Frontier Communications. Frontier is a $11 billion dollar telecommunications provider that has been around since 1935.

During this interview, Todd will answer questions such as:

• How do you determine which markets to compete in?
• How do you determine the cost to build, market, sell, install, and support a product?
• How do you work with marketing to develop messaging?
• How do you work with sales to enable them to sell the new products?

We use SBI’s 6 Step Revenue Growth Methodology to guide our conversation. If at the end of the show you’d like a copy, we’ll let you know how to get it.

It is mission critical for the product team to be in alignment with marketing and sales. It’s the only way each functional team will be successful in achieving their objectives. And it starts with a well thought out product strategy. Listen to how one of your peers has set his organization up for success.

Are your product and sales strategies aligned? Too often companies miss their number because these teams are not on the same page. Listen to our recent podcast on this topic. It’s an interview with Inna Kuznetsova, the President of Inttra Marketplace. The company offers container booking, shipping instructions, and tracking services via its SaaS offering. 21% of the world’s trade begins at Inttra.

As President, Inna has responsibility for strategic alliances across the organization. While at IBM, she developed a solution to misalignment between product and sales. She now uses this process at Inttra, and will walk our audience through the concept.

During this interview, Inna discusses:

• The concept of a Product Council.
• How she develops the product road map.
• How she launches a new product.
• How to determine which channels your buyers prefer.
• How a product should be marketed, sold and bought.

To grow your company, you will need to successfully bring new products to market. Product and sales must be aligned or you’ll have a disaster on your hands. You should slow down, think through your strategy, and rely on a proven methodology. You can start by listening to Inna’s interview here.

Are your territories balanced? And have you placed the right reps in the right territories? This is no easy task. If you are one of many that struggle with this issue, listen here. It’s an interview with Charles Race, the Executive Vice President of Field Operations at Informatica. Informatica is an enterprise software company with approximately $1 billion in sales and 6,000 employees.

Charles’ experience uniquely qualifies him to give advice on this subject. He has implemented an excellent process at Informatica. Specifically, he has succeeded at territory planning and headcount relative to quota capacity.

During this podcast, Charles answers questions like:

• How do you determine the potential of each account?
• How do you determine the optimal size of each territory?
• How do you design balanced territories?
• How do you assign quotas for each territory?

To guide our conversation, we use SBI’s playbook, “How to Make Your Number in 2016.” We walk through how to allocate territories for maximum revenue potential. We’ll also let you know how to get a copy at the end of the episode.

Capacity planning in large businesses is hard to pull off. The key is a well thought out methodology. A good place to start is by listening to Charles’ advice here. He will walk you through how he has successfully done this at Informatica.

Have you integrated your product road map with your go-to-market strategy? Most executives think they have. But in reality, their go-to-market strategies are a collection of tactics versus a coherent plan.

If you suffer from this problem, listen to this podcast. It is an interview with John deLorimier, the EVP, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Concentra. Concentra is a national healthcare company that focuses on improving America’s health, one patient at a time. They operate 330 medical centers in 40 states.

During this interview, John discusses:

• Concentra’s corporate, product, marketing, and sales strategy
• How he integrates to company’s product strategy with his go-to-market strategy.
• How to establish launch goals, and understand launch risks.
• Who is responsible for content creation and for training the sales team on the new offering.
• How to measure progress against the launch objectives.

We use SBI’s 6 Step Revenue Growth Methodology to guide our conversation. If at the end of the show you’d like a copy, we’ll let you know how to get it.  

Developing an actual go-to-market strategy is critical to a successful product launch. If you’ve had a launch failure recently and want to see hear one of yours has done it successfully, listen now. 

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by Marc Osofsky, the Senior Vice President and General Manager at Lionbridge Technologies, to discuss how to accelerate revenue growth by entering new markets with new products using a thorough product strategy.

In our first segment, Marc tells us how he located his hidden growth opportunity by using various forms of detailed market research. Leveraging this research is how Mark and his CEO worked together to build a business product strategy that aligned with the overall corporate strategy. 

Next, Mark walks us step-by-step through the various stages of his product strategy process including determining objectives, developing a brand promise for a new set of customers, sizing up the competition and building a differentiated set of capabilities that allowed Lionbridge to win in the new product market. Mark then discusses how he and his team built their product roadmap and goes into detail about the various things encountered like developing and integrating the product, marketing, sales and HR strategies into the broader strategy for this new market.

In our last segment, Mark sends us off with three tactics on product strategy you could put into effect in year one, year two, and year three in order to help continue making your number.

Understanding product strategy is just one small part of hitting your number year after year. For more weekly sales and marketing insights like this, subscribe and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by Paul Loftus, the Vice President of Sales and Revenue Retention at the tax and accounting division of Wolters Kluwer, to discuss building a sales strategy that helps support your sales transformation all the way through.

In our first segment, Paul shares with us an example of a current sales transformation he’s experiencing, what caused the need for it in the first place, the objectives of the transformation and its results.

Next, Paul walks us through the nitty gritty process of how he carried out the new sales strategy in order to implement the sales transformation. We also discuss how to engage with customers, the changes made to the organizational structure, how he and his sales team managed to launch a new sales channels during the transformation, as well as, how he handled the company talent profile augmentation. We then touch on the obstacles and mistakes Paul encountered thus far in implementing the new sales strategy transformation.

In our last segment, Paul sends us off with three immediate tactics sales teams can implement to successfully execute a sales transformation.

Understanding sales strategy is just one small part of hitting your number year after year. For more weekly sales and marketing insights like this, subscribe and leave us a review! Your feedback will help us improve our show and continue to bring you content that keeps you at the top of your game.