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.