Marketing leaders have faced numerous difficulties over the past year, but one challenge is not exclusive to just 2020 — sales and marketing alignment. Getting this correct is more imperative now than ever before and can make or break your growth strategy. Ultimately, companies that create strong alignment win 38% more deals and retain 36% more customers than those who are not aligned. 

On today's show, Lori Christiansen, VP of Marketing at Motus, joins SBI Managing Director Tony Erickson to discuss how market-leading companies drive alignment between sales and marketing to accelerate revenue growth.

The evolution of the Marketing leader role has transformed drastically over the years. Today, those changes are even more significant than what their role looked like nearly 90 days ago. Still, there is no telling what the second half of the year will bring for CMOs.

On today's show, Jim Kruger, CMO at Veeam, joins us for a glimpse into how a market-leading software company has been adjusting to the current market conditions and how they are preparing for the back-half of 2020.

Customer Experience is no longer just a buzz word that companies can throw around. It has become a megatrend that demands a complete mindset shift in not only executive teams, but it also requires buy-in from the board in order to thrive.

On today’s show, Ryan Hollenbeck, CMO of Verint, joins us to discuss what market-leading companies do differently to prioritize CX programs. In Ryan’s first segment, he shares 3 critical steps to building a world-class customer experience program.

At the beginning of stay-at-home orders, maintaining a connection with the customer base was a top priority for CMOs. Marketing teams worked quickly to stand up virtual communities and help customers in an authentic way.

Now, as executives look to the future and aftermath of the pandemic, continuing to invest time and resources into their communities remains an integral part of making their number — not doing so could create a costly disconnect and breed mistrust.

On today's show, SBI community expert and Executive Consultant Laura Hall shares how to continue strong community engagement and why this continuity is important.

As a marketing leader, if you have ever thought about where your next new form of revenue is coming from, the answer is Outbound Marketing. Eric Quanstrom, CMO of Cience, joins us to discuss how Outbound is the new normal. Do not be too quick to dismiss older methods of reaching customers, as Eric affirms cold-calling is not dead.

In this first segment, Eric shares the different methods and advantages to implementing an effective outbound motion.

Jill Rowley, former Chief Growth Officer of Marketo, discusses how this emerging role brings together sales and marketing leaders to leverage the power of their best salespeople, their customers.

Chief Growth Officer and Chief Marketing Officer discuss how to transition to a data-driven business and how to navigate the sales and marketing data mess.

Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder delves into the topic of ABM to help CMOs capture and implement this emerging best practice.

Joining us on the SBI Podcast is Andrea Brody, the Chief Marketing Officer for Bravo Solution, which has sinced merged with JAGGAER to create the world’s largest independent spend management company. 

Andrea is one of the top B2B revenue generating marketers with a passion for building brands. Andrea has a great story to share about how she led her marketing team to help her company achieve a successful exit strategy.

Joining us on the SBI Podcast is Sarah Kennedy, the Chief Marketing Officer for Marketo.

In today's show, Sarah details how to apply revenue attribution to marketing. Why this topic? CEOs, CMOs and CROs need to understand what sales and marketing activities help influence a revenue booking. Once you can quantify the value of those activities, then you can attribute revenue back to the activities that produced the revenue and use those insights to guide your marketing and sales investments.

On this episode of SBI TV, Matt and Marc Osofsky, CEO of Aberdeen, demonstrate the importance of Market Intelligence.

 Why is this important for your company?

 Many companies are flying blind, and this is especially true with B2B companies. Company leaders are forced to reactively respond, rather than proactively guiding their teams to a higher level of success.

Chief Marketing Officer for Caliber Collision, Greg Clark, demonstrates customer relationship management.

Our guest on SBI TV is Robin Saitz, the Chief Marketing Officer at Avecto. Robin is a transformational marketing executive who knows how to get off to a quick start in a new role.  In today's show we demonstrate how to get off to a fast start in a CMO's first 90 days. If you prefer to watch a video of the interview, click here. 

Getting off to a fast start actually starts in the interview process.  Robin interviews with the end in mind, and through the interview process she learns a great deal about the company and team.  She dove deep into learning about Avecto, a cybersecurity software company that provides privileged management and application control solutions.   Robin states, "I think the interview process is actually sort of like that pre-first day. It's not really counted in the first 90 days, but the interview process I think is a core part of preparing for those first 90 days. So, I like to say that I was interviewing the company as much as they were interviewing me, and it wasn't just to make the decision to join, but also, to help answer ... to get answers to questions that I had that would make my first day and the first month go well. So I insisted on meeting with a lot of people in this process, because it was a big decision for me, and it was a big decision for them." 

Once Robin accepted the role as CMO, she prepared for her first day and how she planned out her first 90-days before the start date. Listen as Robin describes her preparation steps. 

Matt summarizes Robin's first 90 days, "she articulates how she broke down short-term first 90-day initiatives to put points on the board along with more longer-term initiatives that needed to get done. Robin articulate how she broke down short-term first 90-day initiatives, kind of putting points on the board as we like to say, with more longer-term initiatives that needed to get done. Building that content strategy. Knowing it was both people and resources. Recognizing that, but willing to live with not just doing something haphazard out of the first 90 days to check a box, being thoughtful." 

Robin describes how to assess the marketing team and shares: 

"So whenever a CMO or any new leader joins a company, I think there's probably a healthy amount of skepticism, nervousness and excitement. It's like all of that. So, kind of have to like knock down the nervousness and skepticism. And so, I firmly believe it's important to understand the individual career objectives and the job satisfaction of each team member. So that's sort of like the first set of questions that I tried to hit on with my team, and I met with all of them individually. And then I also tried to understand ... I collected feedback from their peers, from folks inside marketing, folks outside of marketing." 

"I also assess their work output, their responsiveness, and then to the extent, metrics were available. I would look at metrics. Then the other thing that we use that we're testing, we haven't adopted it broadly at Avecto, but I used at my previous company is the Predictive Index for behavioral assessments. I said, "Hey, I'd love to pilot it with the marketing organization," and they were very cooperative with that. So everybody's taken the PI. We have an understanding of who's got a strong process orientation, who's got a high sense of urgency, who's very dominant, and that I think will help the whole organization function better." 

Our guest on SBI TV is Dan Levinschi, the Head of Marketing for PandaDoc. Dan is a revenue generating marketer who knows how to quickly transition from marketing strategy to execution.

Dan and I discuss how to move from marketing strategy to execution. Dan describes his process for developing a marketing strategy, and how he interlocks the company’s corporate strategy, product strategy, and sales strategy with his own. Dan also shares his rollout strategy and how he presents it to the marketing team to ensure that each person understands the overall strategy, their role, and how their execution fits into the overall strategy.

To follow along, leverage SBI’s How to Make Your Number in 2018 PDF Workbook and turn to the Marketing Strategy section starting on pages 236. To download the full transcript in a word document, click here. 

In today’s captivating show, Dan shares his method for transitioning from the planning phase to the execution phase of the marketing strategy, specifically how to ensure that the right KPI’s closed loop reporting is built into each new activity. Turn to the 13-minute mark of the video to watch Dan discuss how a marketing leader validates that progress is being made on major initiatives without micromanaging the team.

Matt and Dan discuss how precisely Dan makes this happen at PandaDoc: 

“It is very important for me personally knowing what everyone on the team is doing without being too invasive. The number one thing that you need to have is  a playbook for how your department functions. If people don’t understand how your department functions, it doesn’t matter whether they’re on your team or on a separate department, you’ll always run into the problem of people not knowing what you do essentially. You also have to build an internal Wiki page with all things marketing, just for internal for the company. Then you need to have a project management system in place. If you’re a startup on a budget, you can use something like Trello. Another thing you have to focus on are the core problems and helping your team to understand the impact of their work. Some people just go to work for a paycheck and do the minimum necessary. If they understand very well what the impact on the work is, they’ll be more motivated to work diligently. I find that when people are motivated they don’t need strict management, you can give them a lot of responsibilities and freedom and they’ll spend their time on the right things. 

Dan Levinschi shares his advice on encouraging the marketing team while also instilling the team with a sense of accountability.  

“The way we normally work is to hold open forums. I think that the best ideas are born when you have a number of viewpoints in the same room. What we do is, whenever there’s an argument about whether we should continue a project or not, the results are not there, the real question I’m asking is: “What is the immediate impact on business short term and long term?” If the impact is minimal, which you can generally quantify through specific metrics, it all comes down to revenue. Then it’s a simple argument for me to win. For example, if the impact is short term but in long term this doesn’t make any sense, maybe we should kill the project and reiterate. To summarize, I’m a performance marketer, so I believe in numbers. If you cannot prove it to me in numbers, then the argument generally ends.” 

Having a solid strategy in place sets a company and a department up for success. Understanding and utilizing marketing metrics in your strategic process can make the difference between success and failure. Skip to the 20-minute mark of the video to watch Dan describes how he establishes accountability with his marketing team, how he manages individual contributors, how he reports progress to the CEO, and how he measures the success of his team’s strategy. 

Our guest today is Tiffany Nels, the Chief Marketing Officer for Lifesize.  With 20 years of Tech B2B marketing experience, Tiffany is one of the top B2B revenue growth marketers. Tiffany played a major role in the successful demand generation efforts at Solar Winds and has the right blend of strategy and execution that B2B companies need for success. 

Many B2B marketers have over-rotated to demand generation tactics without enough emphasis on brand. Tiffany is going to make the case for why branding and demand generation are not parallel paths, but rather should be intertwined to give you the highest probability of making your number. 

Tiffany is going to demonstrate how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story through Brand Strategy and Planning. 

Why this topic? Your competitors are making the same claims and promises as you. They are even using the same words. Brands that are built on “who you are” and “what you do” do not result in above average revenue growth. Your brand impacts revenue growth when it gets activated by the sales force and becomes uniquely relevant to your customer and prospects. 

Most buyers are researching and building a consideration set without speaking with the sellers.

Watch as Tiffany describes her company's brand approach. Listen closely as she articulates a brand that has a crisp emotional connection to the audience. Tiffany describes the process and steps to develop the brand story. 

Tiffany shares, "The art of storytelling is what enables brands to grow and win by setting themselves apart. When you develop that discipline and integrate all the way through the funnel to the customer experience, then you have an incredibly sticky experience." 

Joining us for today’s show is Mike Volpe, the Chief Marketing Officer for Cybereason.

Today we are going to demonstrate how to replace leads with real opportunities for the sales team through Account Based Marketing. 

Why is this an important topic? 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. 

The first segment will seek to answer the question: When does ABM make sense for your company?  Mike provides an overview to validate that ABM is the right strategy for your company.   

Mike outlines in the second segment what a successful ABM program should look like. How should marketing implement ABM to support the sales reach to new buyers and influencers in targeted account.  The types of roles are required for success are described for sales and marketing.  Mike covers the key metrics to track and the time horizon to expect for results. 

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 David Ciccarelli, the CEO of Voices.com, who specializes in content marketing. This is an area David has developed deep expertise in, so his business is fueled with great content. David answers questions from the How to Make Your Number in 2018 Workbook, to access emerging best practices for content marketing. Turn to the Marketing Strategy section and flip to the Content Strategy and Planning phase on page 270. Today we're going to be discussing how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers and prospects. 

Why this topic? Producing and distributing content for everyone means you're really doing it for no one. For content marketing to generate revenue, you have to know exactly what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it, and in what form they need to consume it. Miss any of these items and others like them, and your content marketing efforts will fail to contribute to revenue growth in any meaningful way. 

David is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic as a CEO who understands the power of content marketing to drive his corporate growth strategy. Listen as David illustrates how to manage your content marketing team to maximize your business’s productivity and increase its profit. 

If you'd prefer to watch a full video of the interview, click here. 

In your business, what reasons do you have for creating content and how does it help your business?

Well I think one of the first things every executive needs to consider is really the buying cycle that a prospect will go through. We've all probably heard the times where a customer would say to us after they've made a purchase, “I wish I knew about you five years ago!” So, really the disconnect there is that there is no awareness. They may not have even known that your company existed. The first phase of that buying cycle is generating awareness, and content feeds right into that. From there, you're moving to the acquisition of a lead and the conversion of that lead into a customer. 

Joining us for today’s show is Emily Rakowski, a marketing leader who knows how to create brand preference that attracts more deals into the funnel at a higher win rate. Today’s topic is Content Marketing and how to use content marketing to build brand preference that gives you a competitive advantage. Emily and I review emerging best practices from the How to Make Your Number in 2018 Workbook. Turn to the Marketing Strategy section and flip to the Content Strategy and Planning phase on page 270. 

Our guest today is Emily Rakowski, the Vice President of Solution Marketing from 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 each day.  

Our guest today is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of B2B content marketing. Emily is a B2B marketing leader who helped build the Ariba brand and later SAP’s marketing efforts as the global head of solution marketing. 

Listen as Emily demonstrates how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers and prospects. This show illustrates that content marketing does more than drive leads into the funnel. Content marketing can satisfy the information needs of prospects and customers with the result of increasing brand preference.  This is a must hear interview for any executive with an organic growth strategy. 

Why this topic?  Producing and distributing content for everyone means doing it for no one. For content marketing to generate revenue you have to know exactly what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it, and in what form they need to consume it. Miss any of these items (and others like them) and your content marketing efforts will fail to contribute to revenue growth in any meaningful way. 

In the first segment of the program is focused on assessing the audience needs of your audience.  What questions should your team ask to understand how your prospects researches solutions today, and where you must find them to cultivate latent demand.  

Segment two establishes the objectives and business reasons for why content is created.  What business objectives does content accomplish?  Listen as Emily explains her approach and you will understand that content marketing goes well beyond simply purchasing the latest analyst reports that support your business case.  

A unique discussion occurs by answering the question, what would you do with an extra $1M in marketing budget? Would you spend it on content marketing? This question unpacks the greater opportunity that eludes most companies.  

Emily describes the content marketing staff allocated to develop content.  Listen to think through how your company has allocated staff to execute your content marketing strategy. This is typically where marketing teams lack the manpower to execute the strategy. 

Listen as we discuss the tools and process required to successfully execute content marketing.  Is your team writing content without the proven tools that best in class content creation teams are leveraging?   

Have expectations gone up and left you wondering if you have the right marketing strategy to support the new revenue growth goals? Here is an interactive tool that will help you understand if you have a chance at success. Take the Revenue Growth Diagnostic test and rate your Marketing Strategy against SBI’s emerging best practices to find out if: 

• Your revenue goal is realistic
• You will earn your bonus
• You will keep your job [p]

Today we demonstrate how to design marketing campaigns that generate revenue. It is hard to execute a Marketing Strategy to grow revenue faster than your competitors. The Revenue Growth Diagnostic tool will help you assess your marketing strategy to pinpoint keys to your success.  

Joining me in the studio today is the executive marketing team from Polycom, an agile B2B marketing team. With 400,000 customers and 25 years of success, Polycom is the leader in the collaboration space. Our guests include Amy Barzdukas, Polycom’s head of marketing, Maurizio Capuzzo the VP of Americas Marketing, Charles Dunlap the Director of Lead Generation, and Jim Kruger. 

To facilitate the conversation, we will leverage SBI’s campaign planning tool. I am going to walk this team through the steps and get them to share with you how Polycom plans campaigns from their own version of SBI’s planning process. Prefer video?  Watch the interview video that displays the visual flowchart of an emerging best practice campaign planning process. 

Why this topic? Campaign budgets are limited and these campaigns need to generate revenue. In B2B, marketing campaigns generate revenue when they are hyper-targeted, and do not when they are spray and pray. Today, we will demonstrate how to generate revenue and achieve a return on the campaign dollar.

The show begins by addressing the key question of how marketing leaders make the go/no do decision on campaigns. Listen as the process for decision making is described in detail. 

Listen as Maurizio Capuzzo, the VP of Americas Marketing shares with the audience how to pick a target audience, and how do you select the correct media for a campaign.  Maurizio stated; “The target audience will consume the different type of information according to their stage in the buyer journey. Therefore, we need to look at and learn what they like to consume, when they like to consume it and the type of information that they use. Therefore, as part of the process of understanding who they are and what they do, we try to work with the sales team in understanding and interview the customer as well.”

We discussed how to build campaigns based on the buyer persona’s emotional drivers. This is easier said than done. Amy Barzukas, the head of marketing, provides an insightful answer into the approach. Amy states, “It requires a lot of research into really understanding buyer personas; and you need to understand what they value, what they worry about, what they care about – and then build your messaging for them so that you know that what drives them. Then talk to them about the ease of use – about the ways that it’s going to make their life easier.”

The final segment of the show is focused on demonstrating how to pick the activities to use for each campaign, how to develop compelling offers, and lastly how do you measure the effectiveness of a campaign.

To go deeper with Campaign Strategy and Planning, assess your marketing strategy by investing a few minutes with SBI’s new Revenue Growth Diagnostic interactive tool.  This tool will help you pinpoint gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Today we are going to demonstrate how to capture the attention of customers and prospects with great marketing campaigns. Campaign budgets are limited and these campaigns need to generate revenue. The emerging best practice for planning campaigns requires a scientific approach to dial in the results. Today’s show provides the definitive guide to campaign planning from the first step through the entire campaign planning process. To assess your overall Marketing Strategy, spend a few minutes leveraging SBI's new Revenue Growth Diagnostic tool to pinpoint keys to your success. 

Our guest is Michael Callahan the Chief Marketing Officer for Firemon, one of the hottest cyber security firms performing enterprise security management. Firemon helps organizations with complex IT environments keep the bad guys out by providing a single view of what's going on in someone's infrastructure. Today we are going to demonstrate how to capture the attention of customers and prospects.

Why this topic? Every market has a “sweet spot.” Campaigns (and their 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.

To facilitate the conversation, we will display SBI’s campaign planning tool on the screen to provide structure to the conversation.  

In the first segment of the program, Michael will describe how to develop campaign objectives, timelines, budget and expected results for each campaign. The conversation extends to the approach for defining the addressable markets and how do you allocate campaign resources (i.e., people, money, and time) against the “sweet spot” in the addressable markets. 

Michael demonstrates how to ensure that marketing campaigns have clear value proposition and the process for reviewing creative. 

There are multiple program types that a marketing team can run in a campaign, and Michael breaks down the approach to the different types of campaigns including:  Awareness, Cross sell, New logo, Competitive replacement, Renewals, Migration, and Nurture. The best practice is to focus on one.  Michael outlines the mix of activities and how to sequence them correctly, as well as how to create compelling offers to drive response. 

Michael describes how to assign enough content assets and map the assets to the buyers’ journey. The importance is described in this quote: 

“People simply don't have time to figure things out. You may have rock-solid proof, logic-built message – and there's no way that anybody could ever dispute any part of it. But it's so complicated that no one knows what you're talking about and they just move on, because they have a million things to do – furthermore, there's other people in your space that are saying it more clearly. People have choices, you must give them a reason to choose you, and you can't expect them to figure it out. You've got to be really clear.”

Finally, Michael describes how to create provocative campaigns that are differentiated and drive your campaign message.  This is a can’t miss video for every marketing leader to review and share with your team. 

Joining us for today’s show is Kathy Juve, a marketing leader who knows how to create brand preference that attracts more deals into the funnel at a higher win rate. Today’s topic is Content Marketing and how to use content marketing to build brand preference that gives you a competitive advantage. Kathy and I leveraged the SBI annual workbook to guide our conversation, turn to the Content Strategy and Planning phase starting on page 190 of the PDF. 

Our guest today is Kathy Juve, the Chief Marketing Officer for Convergys. The world leader in contact center outsourcing, Convergys is a $3 billion company who has fueled growth through robust marketing and sales. What differentiates the contact center outsourcing is their ability to provide analytics, technology, and automation solutions to help large enterprises execute their customer contact strategies. 

Kathy is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of B2B content marketing. This is a rare show for B2B marketing leaders to learn from a CMO peer who is also a top expert on customer engagement.  Seth Godin’s research has revealed that becoming a superstar takes 10,000 hours of hard work.  I have a rare B2B marketing leader for you today who has 20+ years of experience.  That’s 40,000 hours of marketing leadership experience marketing the omni channel customer experience. 

Listen as Kathy demonstrates how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers and prospects. This show illustrates that content marketing does more than drive leads into the funnel. Content marketing can satisfy the information needs of prospects and customers with the result of increasing brand preference.  This is a must hear interview for any executive with an organic growth strategy. 

Why this topic?  Old activities-centric marketing organizational charts create ineffective silos and prevent revenue growth. Modern outcomes-centric marketing organizational charts eliminate silos, provide seamless integration with the product and sales teams, and unlock trapped revenue potential. 

In the first segment of the program Kathy and I set-up the use case for Convergys to give you context for how to apply this demonstration to your unique business.  We begin by outlining the audiences that Kathy prioritizes and we identify the information needs of the customers and prospects.  Kathy has a strong understanding of the audience expectations and while listening to the podcast you should be asking yourself if your team has a similar grasp of your target audience.  Finally, we discuss where the audience goes to fulfill their information needs so that we can understand the challenge involved in driving the audience to an alternate source of information. 

Segment two establishes the objectives and business reason why content is created.  What business objectives does content accomplish?  Listen as Kathy explains her approach and you will understand that content marketing goes well beyond simply purchasing the latest analyst reports that support your business case.  

A unique discussion occurs by answering the question, what would you do with an extra $1M in marketing budget? Would you spend it on content marketing? This question unpacks the greater opportunity that eludes most companies.  

Kathy describes the content marketing staff allocated to develop content.  Listen to think through how your company has allocated staff to execute your content marketing strategy. This is typically where marketing teams lack the manpower to execute the strategy. 

Listen as we discuss the tools and process required to successfully execute content marketing.  Is your team writing content without the proven tools that best in class content creation teams are leveraging?  

We summarize the final segment by discussing the budget required for content marketing, and how the content marketing line item fits within the budget.  Most companies profess to be performing content marketing, but the budget doesn’t match the objectives. Finally, Kathy outlines how to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing program. 

Joining us for today’s show is Michael Speranza, a marketing leader who knows how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story. Today’s topic is Brand Strategy and Planning for the purpose of building brand preference. You can follow along by downloading SBI's annual workbook and flip to the Brand Strategy and Planning phase on pages 174 – 179 of the PDF. 

As the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Marketing for IPC, Michael Speranza has guided the brand strategy of his company through a major acquisition. IPC is a global B2B provider of technology solutions for the financial service markets. IPC provides communication, networking, and information governance solutions in the FinTech space. After IPC acquired their top competitor, Michael navigated his company through the brand evolution to help make this M&A investment pay off.

Michael is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of B2B brand strategy. Listen as Michael demonstrates how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story. This show illustrates brand stewardship responsibilities, and is a must hear interview for anyone acquiring companies as part of their growth strategy.

Why this topic today? Your competitors are making the same claims and promises as you. They are even using the same words. Brands that are built on “who you are” and “what you do” do not result in above average revenue growth. Your brand impacts revenue growth when it gets activated by the sales force and becomes uniquely relevant to your customer and prospects.

We begin today's show by outlining a 360-degree view of your customers and prospects. This involves understanding where your brand lives and how your audience might engage with your brand. Michael describes the brand audit process, that helped inform the new brand strategy, with primary research.  IPC conducted in-depth interviews with customers, employees, and stakeholders, plus discovery workshops with many constituents, to identify key brand attributes of IPC and the acquired company.

The brand audit step in the planning process was essential to understand the current assets and momentum.  An ideal brand audit should cover all aspects of your customer and prospect engagement including: visual identity, brand, logo, content, web, print, and advertising, as an end to end program that touched every campaign. For IPC, from start to finish, this was a three month long process.

Listen as Michael describes how the B2B brand is lived by 1,400 IPC employees to convey a single, compelling story that inspires customers and prospects. Michael recognizes how important it is to support the sales force and overall employee base when you relaunch a brand. 

Would you like to sit down with me and my hand-picked team of B2B brand strategy experts?  Come see me in Dallas at The Studio, SBI’s multimillion dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center. To grow revenue faster than your industry and competitors every month, quarter and year is hard to do. A visit to The Studio increases the probability of making your number because the sessions are built on the proven strength and stability of SBI, the industry leader in B2B sales and marketing. 

Today’s topic is how to make marketing scientific through a marketing operations department. Shift from art to science to prove marketing’s contribution to revenue with scientific fact. If you would like help with making marketing scientific, visit The Studio, SBI’s multimillion dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center. A visit to The Studio increases the probability of making your number because the sessions are built on the proven strength and stability of SBI, the industry leader in B2B sales and marketing. 

Joining us today is Arnaud Kraajvanger, the Vice President of Marketing Insights and Operations for Genesys. Genesys provides customer experience contact center solutions.  More than 10,000 companies in over 100 countries trust the industry’s #1 customer experience platform to orchestrate seamless omnichannel customer journeys. Listen as Arnaud describes how marketing operations is in a unique position with more data than ever to have a significant impact on the business. 

Listen as Arnaud describes how to measure the effectiveness of the marketing team. Arnaud’s team works with all functions within marketing and develop specific KPI's for each and track the KPI’s throughout the buying cycle. To follow along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017.  Turn to the marketing operations phase on pages 248 – 251 of the PDF. 

Why this topic? Well, data is everywhere, channels are exploding, technology is changing, executives require more detailed reporting and marketing can no longer rely in intuition, and experience is no longer enough. 

During the show, Arnaud provides a brief overview of how each key area of marketing is tracked.  For brand awareness, share of voice is tracked. From a public relations standpoint, social shares are the KPI.  For analyst relations, the degree of analyst coverage and ranking compared to the position of the competition.  

For DemandGen KPI's there is a focus on opportunities pipeline and wins, with an emphasis for us on driving new logo pipeline.  Arnaud describes how the marketing operations team is transitioning more to a revenue marketing model where it's less about just the numbers of opportunities, numbers of leads, but having everybody focused on the revenue outcome. What is the dollar value that you're generating in pipeline, open pipeline, and wins? The other DemandGen metric that is more sophisticated is influence of deals.  How does marketing influence the win rate through marketing engagement? 

Joining us for today’s show is Michael Speranza, a marketing leader who knows how to build brand preference with a strong B2B brand. Today’s topic is Brand Strategy and Planning. On Friday, IPC Systems launched a new brand identity following its acquisition of Etrali Trading Solutions earlier this year. Our guest today shares the use case for the brand strategy that 1400 IPC employees will use to convey a single, compelling story that inspires customers and prospects.

Michael and I leveraged the SBI annual workbook to guide our conversation. To follow along, flip to the Brand Strategy and Planning phase on pages 174 – 179 of the workbook. 

Michael is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of B2B brand strategy. As the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Marketing for IPC, Michael has guided the brand strategy of his company through a major acquisition. IPC is a global B2B provider of technology solutions for the financial service markets. IPC provides communication, networking and information governance solutions in the FinTech space. After IPC acquired their top competitor, Michael navigated his company through the brand evolution to help make this M&A investment pay off.

Listen as Michael demonstrates how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story. This show is valuable for every marketing executive with brand stewardship responsibilities, and a must watch episode for anyone acquiring companies as part of their growth strategy.  

Why this topic today? Your competitors are making the same claims and promises as you. They are even using the same words. Brands that are built on “who you are” and “what you do” do not result in above average revenue growth. Your brand impacts revenue growth when it gets activated by the sales force and becomes uniquely relevant to your customer and prospects. 

This brand strategy use case starts with understanding the 360-degree view of your customers and prospects. This involves understanding where your brand lives and how your audience might engage with your brand. Michael describes the brand audit process that helped inform the new brand strategy with primary research.  IPC conducted in-depth interviews with customers, employees, and stakeholders, plus discovery workshops with many constituents to identify key brand attributes of IPC and the acquired company.

Michael states that; “We identified what we thought were the aspiration elements of the brand, and we made sure that we incorporated that cultural component to embody and create a brand that was going to be embraced by not only the joint set of employees but the joint set of customers that we're bringing together.”   The brand audit covered all aspects that you would expect: visual identity, brand, logo, content, web, print, advertising as an end to end program that touched every campaign. From start to finish, this process was three months’ duration. 

Listen as Michael describes how the B2B brand is lived by the sales force.  Michael recognizes how important it is to support the sales force when you relaunch a brand, and how the sales force conveys the brand in every interaction.

Joining us for today’s show is Jennifer Arnold, a marketing executive who knows a thing or two about generating revenue. Today’s topic is customer marketing and how to grow revenues from existing customers. We leveraged the SBI annual workbook to guide our conversation.  To follow along, flip to the Customer Marketing phase on pages 227 – 233 of the PDF workbook.  

Our guest today is Jennifer Arnold, the Vice President of Marketing responsible for Australia and New Zealand for software powerhouse SAP. Jennifer is going to demonstrate how to grow revenues from existing customers. 

Jennifer is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of customer marketing. SAP depends heavily on growing revenue from current customers to hit their revenue target. Customer accounts in Australia and New Zealand contribute approximately 4x the revenue of net new SAP customer base. Jennifer and her team are at the heart of helping the sales team make that happen. 

Why is this topic important? When a customer says, “I did not know you did that.” You are in big trouble. If your business depends on increasing the revenue generated from current customers, you must educate these customers in everything that you can do for them. The customer life-cycle does not stop once a prospect becomes a customer. The life-cycle continues as your customers become repeat customers. 

Every executive’s nightmare is hearing one of your top customers mutter the words “Oh, I didn’t know you did that.”  SAP has a solution for just about every front-office or back-office system that a company could run.  An additional level of complexity comes into play with acquisition of new capabilities.  Customers who love your company are the most difficult to re-frame your expanded capabilities.  Watch as Jennifer outlines a disciplined approach to Customer Marketing to retrain loyal customers how to think of your company in new expanded ways.   

Increasing revenues from current customers requires an excellent account-based marketing program that goes beyond the hype of ABM technology solutions.  Jennifer describes the marketing and sales steps and building blocks to implement account-based marketing to generate robust customer revenue.  In addition, Jennifer outlines the three key pieces of data that you need to have to effectively generate revenue from current customers. This show is a must-watch episode for every B2B Marketer. 

Watch as Jennifer describes the selling motion for SAP’s sales efforts that she supports.  SAP executes a classic land and expand strategy. SAP assigns an account executive to large customers to act as a conductor of an orchestra. The AE makes sure that all those specialists, salespeople, and delivery-people work together and are bringing the right solutions to the customer.  

Marketing supports the land and expand strategy through several ways.  For very large accounts, SAP marketing executes account-based marketing programs that are highly customized and tailored to those individual customers. Watch as Jennifer provides an example of targeting the very large banks in Australia, in some cases some of SAP’s largest global customers. Marketing works together with the account team and start with an initial account plan that maps out the year.  Marketing contributes insights about what’s happening in the market, what’s happening globally in the banking industry, what’s happening in other industries that might be applicable to the banking industry.  During this ABM planning process an immediate one-year plan is developed as well as a 3-5 year vision for what the sales team wants the account to accomplish.

Jennifer describes how customer marketing includes the development of Industry-focused marketing programs to produce highly relevant marketing materials and programs. This includes tailoring the discussions that we’re having with our customers to the issues and the growth areas and the very specific requirements of target industry groups. Without this level of relevance, customer marketing efforts are hard pressed to produce meaningful results. 

Persona-based messaging is a foundation of customer marketing.  Watch as Jennifer describes the transition from product-focused discussion to more of an audience-focused discussion. Jennifer’s teams run programs that are focused on different audiences including IT and CIO audience, HR audience, finance audience, etc.  This involves creating marketing programs that speak more about the business needs and the business problems than we are talking about the specific solutions.

In recent years SAP has acquired expanded capabilities.  This includes Ariba for procurement, Concur for travel and expense, SuccessFactors for HR, Hybris for sales and marketing, and and more.  These acquired companies come with strong customer bases, brand names, and SAP is working to integrate their services and solutions and their brands into the larger SAP brand.  Jennifer outlines the challenge communicating with customers to share the breadth of solutions to solve a broad array of business problems.

Customer marketing is not as simple as blasting a portfolio message.  For each solution, there are very specific customer bases. It might be in HR; it might be procurement; it might be head of sales. So, it’s making sure that you are orchestrating discussion about the right solutions to solve their very specific problems.

Would you like help developing your customer marketing campaign strategy?  Bring your marketing leadership team to see me and a hand-picked team of marketing experts in Dallas at The Studio.  The Studio is SBI’s multimillion dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center. A visit to The Studio typically results in getting three months of work done in three days. The immersive sessions accelerate everything, dramatically reducing the time it takes to diagnose a problem, develop a solution, and create an implementation plan.

Joining us for today’s show is Mary Clark, a Chief Marketing Officer who knows a thing or two about building brand preference. Today’s topic is focused on content marketing. Mary and I leveraged the SBI annual workbook to guide our conversation. To follow along, flip to the Content Strategy and Planning phase starting on page 190 of the workbook.  

Our guest today is Mary Clark, and she is the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief of Staff of wireless technology enabler, Syniverse. The leading global transaction processor, Syniverse enable seamless mobile communications across disparate networks, devices and applications. Mary will demonstrate how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers and prospects. 

So why this topic on this day? Producing and distributing content for everyone means doing it for no one. For content marketing to generate revenue you must know exactly what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it, and in what form they need to consume it. Miss any of these items (and others like them) and your content marketing efforts will fail to contribute to revenue growth in any meaningful way. 

B2B content marketing is complex when trying to speak to different audiences and tie the right content across multiple different buyers with different needs and different requirements. To make matters more complex, most B2B marketers need to communicate with different sectors within the segments served. Mary describes how she tailors the Syniverse message to bring it home to the varying buyers. 

Mary describes how to prioritize the content resources that are going to provide a hook with unique insight, that's going to be able to elevate the conversation with a buyer. The ultimate goal is to help the buyer recognize the unique position, a unique perspective on the challenge that they're facing. And that the solution that we're bringing to bare is going to be relevant to their requirements, and relieve their pain points.

Listen as Mary and I discuss staffing the marketing team for content marketing. The demand for content is going up and the different types of content and the different ways that content is distributed is changing rapidly. It's difficult to do everything required for great content marketing with internal staff alone. It's a combination of people that have great domain expertise like product marketers inside of your company and finding niche specialty agencies.

We discuss the topic of earned vs. paid media.  Determining where to place media is an evolving process.  Buyer’s content consumption habits change. One day they're reading a newspaper, the next day they're watching broadcast television, and the next day they're streaming, they're paying attention to Facebook Live, and so on. B2B marketers must constantly be paying attention to that and making sure that you're going to be where your buyers are.

At the heart of great content marketing is understanding where somebody is in the buying process, and using content to move that buyer along that buying process. The Buyer's Journey Map is the most important tool for content marketing.  By understanding where your buyer is in their journey, you can understand which content to distribute to them, through which channel. If it's late stage, you probably want a sales person engaging with sales enablement content. If it's early stage, you might be using some digital marketing channels with education content.  Mary describes how to tie marketing efforts directly from the marketing engagement from the demand gen point of view in the early stages all the way through to whether the sale the happened.  The transition from a marketing qualified lead into a sales lead, and the ability to track someone through the buying journey based on initial marketing engagement that occurred is the key.

Today we are going to demonstrate how to capture the attention of customers and prospects with great marketing campaigns. Campaign budgets are limited and these campaigns need to generate revenue. To follow-along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017 and turn to pages 184 to 189.

Joining us today is Andrea Brody the Chief Marketing Officer of BravoSolution. BravoSolution delivers strategic procurement solutions for global organizations. The solution helps procurement organizations go beyond cost savings to include risk management, corporate social responsibility and driving innovation as part of developing new products. Listen as Andrea demonstrates how great marketing campaigns capture attention of your target audience.

Every market has a “sweet spot.” Campaigns (and their budgets) generate revenues when focused directly at this “sweet spot.” Campaigns that are not hyper-targeted do not. Listen as Andrea describes how to generate a return on marketing campaign dollars with a clear objective, timeline, budget, accurate lists, correct media mix and compelling calls to action.

Performing well in the monthly operating review and quarterly business review requires campaign-driven marketing contribution.  Campaign offers capture attention and deliver pipeline influence.  

Why this topic? Campaign budgets are limited and these campaigns need to generate revenue. In B2B, marketing campaigns generate revenue when they are hyper-targeted, and do not when they are spray and pray. Today, we will demonstrate how to generate a return on the campaign dollar.

Capturing the attention of customers and prospects requires a focus on the ideal customer profile and personas.  Make sure you have marketing and sales alignment on your ideal customer profile. What is your ideal customer profile? Is it a $1 billion+ company in certain vertical industries? Then you look at the specific buyers and influencers to select the Personas. Ask yourself, "What are those messages that resonate?"

Listen as Andrea and I discuss the concept idea of ‘laddering’ up the message. This involves a steadily increasing level of engagement, leading ultimately a call to action to engage the sales team. Pay attention to digital body language such as a download of a whitepaper.  From there, let's say somebody watches a video. That might be a 30-minute time investment versus reading a blog post which might be a five-minute time investment. This is an emerging best practice and Andrea describes using technology, persona targeting and content to engage.

Today’s show will demonstrate how to make marketing scientific through the use of a marketing operations department. To follow along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017.  Turn to the marketing operations phase on pages 248 – 251 of the PDF.  You’ll find a worksheet approach where you can start to analyze your team. 

Joining us today is Arnaud Kraajvanger, the Vice President of Marketing Insights and Operations for Genesys. Genesys provides customer experience contact center solutions.  More than 10,000 companies in over 100 countries trust the industry’s #1 customer experience platform to orchestrate seamless omnichannel customer journeys. Listen as Arnaud describes how marketing operations is in a unique position with more data than ever to have a significant impact on the business. 

Listen as Arnaud describes how to measure the effectiveness of the marketing team. Arnaud’s team works with all functions within marketing and develop specific KPI's for each and track the KPI’s throughout the buying cycle. 

Why this topic? Well, data is everywhere, channels are exploding, technology is changing, executives require more detailed reporting and marketing can no longer rely in intuition, and experience is no longer enough. 

During the show, Arnaud provides a brief overview of how each key area of marketing is tracked.  For brand awareness, share of voice is tracked. From a public relations standpoint, social shares are the KPI.  For analyst relations, the degree of analyst coverage and ranking compared to the position of the competition.  

Today’s show will demonstrate how to generate enough leads for the sales team to exceed their revenue objectives. To follow along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to pages 218 - 226 of the PDF to review the Lead Generation phase of the workbook. 

Joining us today is Chief Marketing Officer Katherine Calvert. Katherine provided leads to the sales team at Advent Software, a B2B technology company based in financial services. Advent was acquired at a premium of five times revenue, and Katherine’s role as CMO was instrumental in this success story. Katherine is the perfect CMO to demonstrate how to generate enough leads for the sales team to exceed their revenue objectives. 

Listen as Katherine level sets with B2B executive leaders on whether marketing is a cost center or a revenue generator? CMO’s are striving to prove marketing’s contribution to revenue is primary goal and Katherine has the right formula. Traditionally marketing has been viewed as a cost center. Shifting to a revenue generator starts with tracking the sourcing, support, and generation of company revenue.  

Establishing marketing as a revenue generator required Katherine to elevate the value marketing delivered to the sales organization and ultimately the company. She describes looking more deliberately at the funnel from top to bottom and where our contributions touched. Everything from total number of engagements, all the way down to the percentage of revenue that closed that was attributed to opportunities discovered by marketing. This approach established credibility with sales and made possible a partnership with sales, every quarter.

Why this topic? Businesses that generate a lot of revenue from a lot of accounts need a constant stream of new leads entering the funnel. If Sales is generating leads, they are not closing deals. Marketing needs to feed the sales teams with qualified leads and get them focused on running effective sales campaigns. Failure to fill the sales team’s funnel will result in below average revenue growth.

Listen as Katherine demonstrates how to generate enough leads for the sales team to exceed their revenue objectives by answering the following questions:

• Rule of thumb- what % of leads a company needs to make its number should come from marketing?
• What percentage of a marketing budget should be dedicated to lead gen?
• How can a marketer learn the trigger events their buyer experience that put them in the market for a solution?
• How can a marketer understand the information needs of a target audience?
• Should there be a service level agreement in place between marketing and sales and if so what should it contain?
• Please describe an optimal lead hand off process?
• In your view, what is the most accurate way to measure revenue attribution?

Establishing marketing as a revenue generator requires blending the right strategies with effective tactics. Let us know if you need a hand. We can set up a workshop at The Studio, SBI’s multimillion dollar, one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art executive briefing center located in Dallas, Texas. A visit to The Studio increases the probability of making your number because the sessions are built on the proven strength and stability of SBI, the industry leader in B2B sales and marketing.

Today’s show will demonstrate how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target prospects. To follow along, download our 10^th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to page 190 of the PDF to review the Content Strategy and Planning phase of the workbook. 

Joining us today is Rick Medina, the Director of Sales Channel Marketing at Intuit. Rick leads B2B sales channel marketing efforts to drive growth and strategic disruption in Intuit’s inside sales, retail, and VAR channels. Listen as Rick demonstrates how to earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target prospects. 

Listen as Rick describes how Intuit creates content for B2B prospects based on the prospect's shopping journey. The messaging within the content is built to speak to the buyer persona early in the process. The types of content provided to the prospect is determined by way the buyer acts in their journey. Rick describes how is marketing team strives to walk alongside the prospects, by providing the right information at the right moment. 

Why this topic? Producing and distributing content for everyone means really doing it for no one. For content marketing to generate revenue, you have to know exactly what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it, and in what form they need to consume it. Miss any of these items and your content marketing efforts will fail to contribute to revenue growth in any meaningful way. 

Rick wraps up the podcast with three action steps for every b2b marketer to leverage to walk alongside prospects. 

• The first is to have a clear strategy articulating what you want to do, why you want to do it. This helps create a shared consciousness with marketers and sales teams, and make sure that the teams work on the highest priority.
• Second is to get to know your target prospects, their attitudes, their behaviors, their triggers, etc., really striving for empathy.
• The third, produce a map content to the buyer's journey. Last is to measure success, and always remember to walk alongside your prospect. When they thrive, we all do. 

And if after listening you would like help with your content strategy, download our workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to pages 190 - 193 of the PDF to review the Content Strategy and Planning phase of the workbook.

Today we are going to demonstrate how to capture the attention of customers and prospects with great marketing campaigns. Campaign budgets are limited and these campaigns need to generate revenue. We will demonstrate how to generate a return on the campaign dollar. 

Joining us today is Andrea Brody the Chief Marketing Officer of BravoSolution. BravoSolution delivers strategic procurement solutions for global organizations. The solution helps procurement organizations go beyond cost savings to include risk management, corporate social responsibility and driving innovation as part of developing new products. Listen as Andrea demonstrates how great marketing campaigns capture attention of your target audience.

Performing well in the monthly operating review and quarterly business review requires campaign-driven marketing contribution.  Campaign offers capture attention and deliver pipeline influence.  Listen as Andrea and I discuss marketing campaign that position your product in the painkiller business, not the vitamin business. 

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Want more weekly insights like this to help you make your number? 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 Laura Goldberg, chief marketing officer at LegalZoom, to discuss how CMOs can set their businesses up for success with a comprehensive marketing plan designed with your customers’ and company’s needs in mind.

In our first segment, we go step-by-step through the research Laura conducts to determine her market segmentation and which trigger events her demographic responds to best.

Next, Laura walks us through aligning her company’s product strategy and sales plan to her marketing campaign and then through dispersing her comprehensive plan across a large media mix.

In our last segment, we discuss the challenges of creating useful content and how to navigate selling to your B2B clients versus B2C clients.

Understanding your company’s marketing campaign 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 Elissa Fink, the chief marketing officer at Tableau, to discuss how she develops a comprehensive content marketing strategy.

In our first segment, Elissa takes us step-by-step through developing a marketing plan for each aspect of your team, while using examples from her own company to guide the process. We examine the market research needed to make a successful marketing strategy, including content audits, trigger events and distribution practices.

We then discuss how to develop a calendar and an organizational system for the marketing strategy, to ensure all aspects of it are covered by the correct team members. Finally, we take you through turning your strategy into an executable marketing plan, and how to include your research into your planning process.

Understanding content marketing 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.

We’re on the verge of a new fiscal year, which means it’s time to get that sales enablement strategy ironed-out. To help, we’ve invited Lisa Redekop to the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast to discuss how she develops her sales enablement strategies for Gartner Group, where she acts as a CIO specialist.

Using SBI’s sales enablement framework to guide our conversation, we start with looking at the first step of strategy development: determining your department’s goals and getting them into strategic alignment with the rest of your organization. Next, we look at developing a sales training program designed specific to your goals. From there, we discuss sales coaching tactics for keeping your team focused on their goals and the value of having a sales playbook to lead your sales enablement strategy. We also look at piecing together a sales enablement technology toolkit to drive efficiencies and add value. We also look at sales coaching tactics for ensuring your team continues to learn, practice and deploy new skills. We wrap up by looking at metrics for putting together a sales enablement scorecard so you can stay on track of your year-to-year goals.

Understanding sales enablement is just one small part of hitting your number year after year. Want more weekly sales and marketing insights like this to help you make your number? 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.

Today on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we’re joined by Cory Jones, the Vice President of Frontier Communications, to discuss lead generation strategy. With 11 billion in annual sales under his belt, Cory is a bit of an expert when it comes to lead generation and today he shares some of his secrets.

We start by discussing the first step to any successful marketing campaign: buyer segmentation. We go through how to disseminate the buyer’s journey so you can see how their purchasing decisions are made. From there, we move on to planning a marketing campaign, designing programs, selecting activities and developing offers designed to hit your specific audience in the sweet spot. We also dive into evaluating channels for lead generation and creating content to nurture leads into opportunities. On the sales process side, we look at sales rep prospecting, matching the right talent to the right leads and the idea of looking at sales reps as individual marketing channels. We conclude by looking at measurement, from understanding acceptable customer acquisition costs to following the numbers to the right sales channels.

Understanding lead generation strategy is just one small part of hitting your number year after year. Want more weekly sales and marketing insights like this to help you make your number? 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.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Claudine Bianchi, CMO of Percussion Software and someone who has been leading marketing teams inside of technology companies for 28 years, about how to generate a return on an R&D budget in agile marketing.

In our first segment, Claudine explains why and how moving from a waterfall, traditional-based marketing strategy to an agile, progressive-based marketing strategy increased the clock speed of the marketing team, the benefits of running an agile shop and the pros and cons of product development management reporting.

Next, Claudine delves into what her communication to the customer program is like and how she listens to customer. Claudia also discusses her approach to leveraging her networks to receive feedback and how much of your budget should be dedicated to marketing strategy and why.

In our last segment, Claudia shares with us her strategy in measuring the effectiveness of agile marketing applied to content and how quickly she and her team are able to adjust the editorial schedules to reflect performance.

Understanding agile marketing is just one small part of hitting your number year after year. Want more weekly sales and marketing insights like this to help you make your number? 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.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Marjara, the CMO of McGraw-Hill Education.  McGraw-Hill Education has been publishing print textbooks for 125 years.  Today, the company provides e-learning digital technology solutions to educators. Chris, who has spent 20 years marketing software solutions, was hired by McGraw-Hill to lead the marketing team through this business model transformation. With 5,000 employees in 44 countries, this is no easy task.

In our first segment, we dive straight into one of the bigger challenges of the task Chris faced: the overall marketing budget and how budget planning works with a job this big. Chris outlines how to secure budget for new marketing initiatives from skeptical executives and, in turn, how to generate a return on the marketing initiatives quickly.

Next, Chris discusses how to leverage analytics to accurately measure the effectiveness of the marketing budget and show the value your CMO needs to see to continue funding your marketing initiatives. We also take a look at how to detect poor performing tactics to reallocate the budget toward stronger performing tactics.

In our last segment, we recap our discussion and send our listeners off with immediate tactics they can apply to their company’s marketing budget strategy.

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Between competition, emerging technologies and changing consumer behaviors, it’s hard to stay on-point as a marketer. There is no easy way to hit your marketing objectives in today’s world but, as we learn this week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, you can increase your odds of hitting your number by simplifying your processes with a marketing strategy that aligns with the strengths of your marketing team. Today we’re joined by Jane Gasdaska, general manager of U.S. products supply and distribution at Philips 66, to discuss how to do just that.

We start our conversation with a broad discussion of marketing objectives, outsourcing vs. training staff and content strategy, where Jane shares her experiences with crafting a marketing strategy from the ground up, as well as switching a company from a non-digital marketing strategy to a digital one. She also discusses when to implement a new marketing strategy, rather than try to mend what’s already in place. We continue our conversation by discussing the idea of matching strategy to skills, whether by connecting your in-house teams to tasks that suite them, rounding them out specialized talent or by enterprising with boutique agencies for specialized tasks. She also provides tips on identifying the types of content that most lend themselves to outsourcing, such as social media management or content strategy & creation. We end by leaving you with some actionable advice on identifying skill gaps and filling them, so that you can get started today on hitting your number tomorrow.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Greg Head, the chief marketing officer at InfusionSoft about how to quantify the value a marketing campaign can have on business.

In our first segment, Brian shares how to assess if marketing is generating enough demand to fill the top of the funnel and how to draw the line between what project marketing will do and how much sales is responsible for in filling their sales funnel by leads and prospects.

Next, we examine the sales and marketing departments a little closer and discuss how much outbound versus inbound should be responsible for lead generation in order to stay profitable in sales revenue growth. We also look at the impact content marketing has on your overall brand marketing strategy.

In our last segment, we discuss how, from a small business standpoint, to choose an external service provider and how to make sure that your selection is generating enough benefit to warrant your expense.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jack Whalen, VP of Marketing at Phillips 66, about marketing strategy development.

In our first segment, Jack identifies the difference between B2B and B2C marketing objectives, why investing in a lead generation program will support your marketing strategy and how compelling content can catapult your strategy to the next level.

Next, Jack shares his experience in experimenting with a lead development team and what the first phase of results looked like. Jack then delves into data tracking and how trends in numbers help tell a story about your current and potential consumers’ behavior.

In our last segment, Jack covers how to continue building an innovative marketing strategy in the face of a business acquisition.

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