Joining us for today’s show is Bryan Adams, the co-founder and Managing Partner for Integrity Marketing Group. Matt and Bryan use the How to Make Your Number in 2018 Workbook to share emerging best practices. Access the latest Workbook and flip to the Objectives Phase of the Corporate Strategy section, found on pages 40-47.

Today we are going to demonstrate how to create clarity throughout the entire company by getting everyone laser-focused on the real drivers of revenue growth. 

Why this topic? Organizations that have too many objectives and priorities have none. They risk accomplishing nothing of significance. A CEO’s strategy often goes unexecuted because the sales, marketing, and product leaders are in their silos pursuing what they feel is important. This causes strategic misalignment and results in sub-par revenue growth. 

Bryan is an executive leader who rose through the corporate ranks as one of the youngest VP’s in his industry, and then, as an entrepreneur, started his own thriving business. Bryan is an expert on building, growing, and scaling a business. 

In the first segment of the program (6:18) Bryan shares the top goals of his business and the greatest challenges they face. He explains (8:03) how different types of growth earn different returns on capital, revealing that not all growth is equally value-creating. And, he walks us through (9:23) the process of converting revenue growth into a proportional growth in cash flows. 

Watch as Bryan describes (12:57) the three sources of revenue growth: Market Expansion, Market Exposure, and Market Share Performance. Bryan reviews each source and how it applies to his business, in order to understand the drivers of revenue growth. 

We wrap up the show (26:48) by discussing what strategic trade-off decisions should be made to prioritize long-term value creation. And Bryan discloses his willingness to forgo short-term profits to earn better return for shareholders (27:00) in the long-term. 

Joining us for today’s show is Randolph Carter, the VP of Marketing in North America for Rentokil. Randolph answers questions out of SBI’s 2018 Workbook to share his deep knowledge of campaign strategy and planning. To follow along flip to the Marketing Strategy section and turn to Phase 6, Campaign Planning found on pages 264-269.  

Today we are going to demonstrate how to capture the attention of customers and prospects through campaign strategy and planning. 

Why this topic? Every market has a “sweet spot.” Campaigns and campaign budgets generate revenues when focused directly at this “sweet spot.” Campaigns that are not hyper-targeted do not. To generate a return on marketing campaign dollars requires a clear objective, timeline, budget, accurate lists, correct media mix, and compelling calls to action. 

Randolph brings a wealth of experience from his role, heading Rentokil's expanded marketing efforts across all of North America. Listen as Randolph demonstrates how to build a marketing campaign model that will drive revenue growth and help you make your number year after year.  

In the first segment of the program, Randolph shares his own experiences and evolution in building marketing campaigns to demonstrate their significance in company expansion.  We begin with discussing objectives and logistics for a new marketing campaign.  

This dialogue delves into specifics on the ideal objectives, timeline, budget, and results of a marketing campaign. Randolph gives specific and detailed advice on managing every aspect of the campaign, with examples from his years of experience. He discusses the importance of sales enablement for the campaign budget, and the importance of working alongside the sales team. Randolph then delves into the topic of addressable markets and methods for targeting those markets. He discusses the importance of focusing in on and monitoring addressable side markets that have the size and potential for growth. 

We're a company that's growing both organically and through acquisition but our key target, as I say, is growing organically. There are lots of ways of doing that and the marketing campaign is certainly one that's gaining in importance for us over the last couple of years. We do two to three campaigns a year, and they last three to four months each. The key is sitting down and working with the sales team, so that it goes in our plan and in their plan. 

The budget we break down into marketing and sales enablement. On the marketing side, we're looking at pay per click. We build that budget overall and we say to the sales team, "Okay, what do you think you can achieve in order to get sales growth?" and then we measure the return on investment on that incremental sales growth.

We segment our markets by industry type, then we sit down and talk to the sales team. It's very much a process hand-in hand, but we look at which segments we've got a compelling offer from and where we think there's a sizable and big enough offer for us to go after. Once we've got that first segment identified, we think about the sub-segments or groups with in it. We focus in on an addressable side market that's got size, scope for growth and where we have a winning proposition. 

The second segment of the show focuses on demonstrating how to capture the attention of customers and prospects from marketing campaigns. Randolph addresses the two market segments of his business and the ways in which he builds provocative and differentiated campaign messages. 

If I think about the commercial side first when we're developing a campaign, the first thing we do is our research into the chosen sectors or segments and create what we call our “Segment Bible." Our Segment Bible is a really in-depth look at everything we can find, namely through desk research and contacts about that segment. 

The residential side is more about understanding our customers and consumers and getting into the nitty gritty. The secret to the sauce is that final drop of detail. We've got people, who we train incredibly highly to do a great job, but they are using many of the same tools that our competitors have. So, differentiating your business is critical. 

To build the campaigns, we look at the trends within the sectors or segments, the influencers and their motives. What are their needs? We'll look at where those people are shopping online, where they are doing their research, what forms are they looking at? From that, the marketing managers will work with our creative team to distill it and come up with the themes for the campaign around which we base all our communications, propositions, etc. and drive it through from there. 

 We end the show discussing the question, “How do you make sure that the campaigns have enough content at the right points of the buyer’s journey?” Randolph provides guidance on how to select the right channels and the right content, and later convert inquiries into buyer interest.

Joining us for today’s show is Steve Bonvissuto, the Executive Director for Innovation at MarketSource. Today, we're going to demonstrate how to improve the productivity rates of the sales team with smart sales systems design. 

Why this topic? Too much technology and the reps never ever meet with customers because they become data entry clerks. Too little technology and the reps waste countless hours administrative tasks that could have been automated. You kind of think about revenue growth, it sits between these two extremes. 

Steve is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic with 30 years of experience transforming strategy and translating into results for Fortune 500 companies. Listen as Steve demonstrates how to build a sales technology strategy that will drive revenue growth and help you consistently make your number. 

In the first segment of the program, Steve shares the use-case of his company to illustrate the demonstration.  We begin with discussing the extent to which technology is changing sales performance.  

This dialogue delves into three different lenses of sales enablement. One lens being about the process in which people work, and the importance of an efficient and streamlined process to ensure the effectiveness of any technology. Another lens being the focus on driving productivity using the skills of the sales teams. This lens hones in on the strengths and weaknesses of sales teams and identifying where instructional design needs to be applied to increase the team’s skills and acumen. 

The final lens is about technology and making sure technical productivity is as high as possible. Making sure that when we look at sales enablement technologies we’re increasing our productivity, reducing time, and increasing quality. Steve explains how to deal with the confusion that the proliferation of technologies poses to a sales force: 

It's typical that see customers in this analysis paralysis phase, and for us, it's all about learning. We look at where in the funnel are we trying to have an impact; is it the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel? Then, what is exactly we're trying to accomplish? Are we increasing the skill or acumen? We like this idea of failing fast and developing a use case and trying something quickly. So, for us it's about testing as many products as we can, developing those use cases, and seeing what the outcome is. Within 30 days, we can determine whether something fits in our environment or a customer environment. 

The second segment of the show focuses on demonstrating how to improve the productivity rates of your sales team and the usefulness of sales outsourcing using smart sales system designs. Steve addresses sales tech integration and importance of a company’s CRM. 

If you think about the customer life cycle all the way from creating demand to servicing a customer for life, your CRM is a key component of that. You want your sales force or CRM to be a tool that your people want to use to do their job, not just another task they need to do at the end of the day in order to get credit for an activity. I would suggest that most companies look at their CRM and make sure that they're designing it in a way that serves the needs of each individual role in the sales organization. Then, bolt on tools are going to serve each of the areas of the funnel: predictive analytics on the front end, lead scoring tools front end, so that you have the highest possible quality leads and you're focusing on the right prospects and the right personas. 

We end the show discussing the question, “What is the best approach for the audience to determine the budget for sales technology?” Steve provides guidance on how to reduce the cost of sales enablement technology to further increase profit and sales efficiency.