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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast Episode Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During this interview, he will answer questions such as:

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

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

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

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

During this podcast, John will discuss:

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

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

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

During the interview, Clint will tackle topics such as:

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

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

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

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

During this interview, Todd will answer questions such as:

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

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

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

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

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

During this interview, Inna discusses:

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

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

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

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

During this podcast, Charles answers questions like:

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

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

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

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

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

During this interview, John discusses:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by special guest, Dave Howard, Senior Vice President of Sales Operations at FIS, a global leader in banking and payment solutions, to discuss sales operations.

In our first segment, Dave draws on his 15 years of experience in sales and operations planning to discuss how sales operations leaders can set their companies up for success by developing a great sales ops strategy.

Next, Dave talks about the three sales and operations planning objectives he sets for his sales ops team and his rock-solid sales operations processes.

In our last segment, Dave discusses his company’s approach to data architecture, sales analytics, dashboards and technology tools. He then shares insights on how his sales ops team interfaces with the rest of FIS’s 40,000+ employees.

Understanding sales operations 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 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 Lori Chmura, the Vice President of US Sales for Cordis, to discuss how to deploy a custom sales process.

In our first segment, we discuss how modern purchasing methods have outgrown the traditional sales process and how Lori has tailored her sales process to meet her customers’ changing purchase behaviors.

Next, we look at the pain points in following the consumers along their buying journey, exit criteria, rep adoption and tracking metrics

In our last segment, Lori shares her usage of modern tech to ramp up inventory tracking, her approach to sales training and the first three steps to building out a modern, bespoke sales process.

Understanding sales process 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 Perry Offer, the CEO of The Dialogue Group to discuss how to determine a corporate strategy that sets your organization up for success.

In our first segment, Greg Alexander and Perry Offer discuss how Perry determines what objectives his company should meet and how to utilize these objectives in strategic planning.

Next, we discuss what to do once corporate objectives are in place. Perry guides his team through setting marketing strategies and product goals. Adding these objectives to your business strategy ensures your corporate strategy remains forefront in leaders’ minds.

In our last segment, we cover how to ensure your corporate strategy is being implemented through weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings. Perry discusses what to focus on in each meeting and how to use each meeting to track your progress.

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by Chris Lonnett, the Vice President of Sales Operations at Motorola to discuss how to use data to drive sales operations.

In our first segment, Chris shares how to determine what data you have vs. what data you need and how to identify where the gaps lie. Chris says using this information as a chief resource, can help take your sales strategy to the next level.

Next, technology support is explored and Chris explains how an IT partnership has changed the culture of how data is stored, shared and implemented within a sales operation sales strategy.

In our last segment, Chris wraps up our conversation by offering three immediate tactics you can apply to your sales operations to start making your number.

Understanding sales operations 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 Rick Haviland the President of MarketSource, to discuss the importance of a corporate strategy for choosing the right market.

In our first segment, CEO of SBI, Greg Alexander, by way of interviewing the president of Market Source, Rick Haviland, breaks down a corporate strategy for selecting appropriate markets for your business. Greg prompts Rick to assist other presidents in their strategic direction by defining his approach to market selection and maintenance at Market Source.  Specifically, Rick explains what aspects are important in choosing the right market, characteristics of those markets and ways to keep your team focusing on the desired markets.

Next, after defining the appropriate market, team members must maintain the strategic direction and effectively target the decision makers. A critical aspect in any successful corporate strategy is defining what buyers want in any market, which is another important step in the process.

In our last segment, Rick offers two tips for immediate creation of a corporate strategy when choosing markets. Success can only be achieved once the president provides obtainable numbers, otherwise numbers will be missed.

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by 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.

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by Omar Choucair, CFO of MultiView, who has successfully integrated multiple sales forces, each with a unique sales strategy. One of the biggest problems companies encounter is employee turnover and customer defection post-acquisition. In order to combat this, Omar lays down his step-by-step process for examining the current strategy for both companies, then leveraging your knowledge to prevent sales upheaval. In our first segment,

Next, we discuss the transition of sales operations from the former companies into a single cohesive strategy. Restructuring your sales team to accommodate both old and new teams and developing new best practices is a vital part of retaining the best employees and customers.

In our last segment, we discuss product strategy and what products you should keep versus cut. Despite potential losses, it is important to determine which products will aid your organization and which will hinder it. Any that are not vital should be removed.

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. We're joined by Jim Wetekamp, the CEO of BravoSolution, to discuss how he developed a corporate strategy that made strategic alignment a breeze and revenue growth the norm.

In our first segment, we discuss how Jim was able to steer his company through 14 straight years of revenue growth, despite market obstacles such as the dot.com crash and the one of the most severe recessions in the history of the U.S., by staying adaptive to market needs with a creative product strategy. Jim also talks about how his background in product strategy and development helps inform his decisions as a CEO, which leads to a look at the DNA makeup of the average Fortune 100 CEO.

Next, we delve into how to get CEOs and sales leaders on the same page so your company can enjoy the benefits of strategic alignment by involving them in 3-year-long range planning and product strategy, so that all eyes see where the annual sales strategy and numbers fit in.

In our last segment, we look at the importance of having an adaptable marketing strategy when facing market changes and conclude by outlining the first three steps a CEO can take today to get started on making a new annual plan.

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. Today, we're joined by Scott Cook to discuss how the right hiring practices can help ease the way to your team hitting its mark, year after year. After all, sometimes it’s not about finding the right tool for the job but, rather, the right team.

During this interview, we’ll discuss how to:

• Define your hiring profiles
• Assess current talent and select new talent
• Design the compensation program to attract and retain the right employees
• How to get the most out of your interview process

We’ll use SBI’s workbook titled “How to Make Your Number in 2016” to guide this conversation.  Specifically, pages 197-213 which detail SBI’s 7 Step Talent Strategy Methodology.

We walk Scott through this model, and he explains how he uses his version of it at his company to streamline their hiring strategies. The benefit to you all is you get to see a “demo”, if you will, on how to use this tool. At the end of this show, if you want to use the SBI Workbook yourself, I let you know how to get it.

If you want to develop a best-in-class hiring process, listen to this podcast to hear how one of your peers built theirs.

Of course, having rock solid hiring practices 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. Today, we're joined by Spencer Hodson to discuss developing a cohesive sales strategy using the SBI 5 Step Sales Strategy Methodology.

During this interview, we discuss how to:

• Set sales quotas using market segmentation, customer type, product category, and sales team.
• Drive adoption of your sales methodology.
• Design the org chart and determine the head count number.
• Staff the sales operations and sales enablement team.

We use SBI’s workbook “How to Make Your Number in 2016” to guide our conversation.  Specifically, pages 155-192 which gives the details of SBI’s 5 Step Sales Strategy Methodology.

We look at how Spencer uses his version of it at his company.  The benefit to you all is you get to see a “demo”, if you will, on how to use this tool. At the end of this show, if you want to use the SBI Workbook yourself, we show you how to get it.

If you want to develop a best-in-class sales strategy, this episode is a can’t miss.

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

Welcome to the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast. Today, we're joined by Vincent Gatti to compare our perspectives on putting together a cohesive sales strategy.

During this interview, Vincent walks us through SBI’s 5 Step Sales Strategy Methodology, demonstrating for us how he has applied his version of this to his sales process to:

• Collect the needs of the market, accounts, and buyers.
• Connect the CEO’s corporate strategy to his sales strategy.
• Work with the product team to understand which products should be sold to what customers at what price point.
• Partner with the sales and marketing departments to cover leads into revenue.
• Get the HR department to help him put a team of A players on the field to win the game.

If you are building your sales strategy for next year, listen to hear from one of your peers how to use the 5 Step Sales Strategy Methodology.

Of course, building a sales strategies 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. Today, we're joined by Amy Slater to discuss a new way to look at your annual strategic planning process.

During this interview, we discuss with Amy how to translate high level corporate goals, such as revenue and EBITDA targets, into sales operations oriented goals, such as quota, sales forecasting, head count numbers, territories, sales planning, and comp plans. 

We use SBI’s recently released workbook titled “How to Make Your Number in 2016” to guide our conversation. Specifically, pages 217-220 which deals with the annual strategic planning process.  This Q3 to Q2 “meeting rhythm” lays out how to integrate weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meeting cadence to execute strategic planning as a sales ops professional. As a sales ops leader implements this process a wonderful thing happens - you get your life back. Gone are the days of frantically responding to urgent requests from random executives looking for data.

We walk Amy through the model, and she explains how she uses her version of it at her company.  The benefit to you all is you get to see a “demo”, if you will, on how to use this tool. At the end of this show, if you want to use the SBI Workbook yourself, we let you know how to get it.

If you want to flawlessly execute the annual strategic planning process, listen and hear how one of your peers has done so.

Of course, understanding the annual strategic planning process 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. Today, we're joined by Bal Dail to discuss how achieving strategic alignment between your corporate strategy and sales strategy can lead to you hitting your number with little internal friction.

Bal Dail is the Chairman and CEO of JDA Software, the provider of the broadest portfolio of supply chain solutions. During this interview, we discuss:

• His opinion why very few CEOs have come up through sales and the problem this can cause when trying to make your number with an effective sales strategy.
• A definition of the term “strategic alignment” and why it is critical to your success.
• Ways upon which a CEO can:
• • Drive market research output into sales strategy
  • Educate the sales team on the markets to compete in, the accounts to sell to, the buyers to meet with, the products to position, and the competitors to beat.
  • Make sure the leaders of product, marketing, sales, and HR are working with strategic alignment.

We use SBI’s recently released workbook titled “How to Make Your Number in 2016” to guide our conversation. Specifically, pages 51-70 which details SBI’s 8 Step Corporate Strategy Methodology.

We walk through the model while Bal explains how he uses a version of it at his company.  The benefit to you all is you get to see a “demo”, if you will, on how to use this tool. At the end of this show, if you want to use the SBI Workbook yourself, we let you know how to get it.

If you want to make sure your sales strategy is in tune with your corporate strategy, listen to this podcast and hear how one of your peers has done so.

Understanding strategic alignment 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. Today, we're joined by Kim Mitchell to discuss how understanding the employee life cycle can unlock the secrets to employee retention and maintaining employee engagement.

Kim Mitchell is the Chief People Officer at Renaissance Learning, the world leader in cloud-based assessment, teaching, and learning solutions. If anybody knows how to keep a sales and marketing team happy, engaged and open to new things, it’s her.

Kim explains how the relationship a member of the sales team has with the company changes over time, or even across a business cycle. The relationship starts during the recruiting stage, which is a very different relationship from when a sales person is in on boarding, at year 1, during a promotion, and at key milestones, such as the 10 year anniversary.

Employee engagement goes up, or down, based on whether the employee has an emotional connection with the mission of the sales force, and the company.

And the adoption of a new sales team initiative is tightly correlated with employee engagement.

So, how do you drive employee engagement in the sales force? What are the secrets to employee life cycle management? Tune in and find out.

Understanding the employee life cycle 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.

Today on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast we take a fun approach to a series topic: how to make the most of your honeymoon period as a new VP of sales. To guide us through these treacherous waters, we’re joined by Eric Vermillion, a Senior VP of sales who also happens to be in the thick of his honeymoon period with his company, Blue Cat.

To frame today’s conversation, we’ll walk through a hypothetical use case starring Vic, a made-up persona who just finished his first six months at new company as VP of sales and is now ready to launch a set of initiatives. We look at why Vic should throw out his old sales playbook in favor of a sales strategy tailored to his new products, customers, competitors and channels. We talk about how Vic can ensure his initiatives have strategic alignment with his new company’s missions and values. We also look at hiring practices and how Vic can avoid the common pitfall of trying to fix problems by throwing fresh bodies at them. Other topics we cover: knowing when to ask for help, not passing the buck, getting too wrapped up with hitting big numbers, overbuying software, sales management, avoiding unnecessary consulting and how to handle the compensation plan. Tune in, and take notes as we walk Vic (and you!) through your honeymoon period and we’ll see you on the other side!

Understanding how to excel as a new VP of Sales 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 getting into the nitty-gritty of sales management, specifically, sizing your sales force for success. We’re not tackling this topic alone though, Lee Kirkpatrick joins us today to help us through the weeds. Through his experience as CFO working for Twilio and a variety of other fast growing tech companies, Lee has become an expert in sales forecasting and sales management.

In our conversation, we tackle the key topics such as measuring the return on investment from a sales team, diagnosing when misses are due to a lack sales force, stacking the size of your sales team against the distance of your goals, auditing customer acquisition cost, dividing a sales territory without losing talent and the three most urgent things you can do right now to start sizing your sales force up to the new fiscal year.

Understanding sales management 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.

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 Brandon Tolany, the chief sales officer & CMO at Freescale Semiconductor, about how they hit their sales quota year after year. In this podcast, we explore how to ramp your revenue growth strategy by using market research to seize opportunities as they appear.

In our first segment, we start by looking at market segmentation, the first pillar of market research. We talk about size vs. revenue growth potential and relative market per share.

Next, we discuss the second activity of market research, account segmentation, from ideal customer profiles and scoring accounts to determining revenue potential across segments and allocating resources.

In our last segment, we discuss the last activity of market research: segmenting the decision makers within an account. We look at the big questions: Who do you have to convince to keep your company headed toward healthy revenue growth and how does their influence ripple through one’s growth strategy?

Understanding revenue growth 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 Tim Robertson, US Vice President of Sales and Marketing at DHL, about territory management and, more specifically, designing sales territories.

In our first segment, Tim starts us off by sharing what he believe is the most fundamental part of territory management in terms of territory design, which is analyzing the performance of sales territories at DHL. This beginning stage sets us up to plan both the sales strategy and market segmentation process of designing your plan.  By looking at these two channels you understand their performance metrics and can ultimately drill down to the territory level.

Next, Tim discusses how he predicts the available spend of each market segment, how to acquire a specific type of customer to and how to reach a point where you can calculate how much it would cost to acquire that said customer. Tim then shares what his primary design principle is when designing sales territories.

In our last segment, we wrap our territory management discussion with Tim by talking about how to balance your newfound sales territories and Tim gives us a breakdown of his team’s monthly management system that they run, and also how they rebalance and spot-check the goals and quotas for each of the sales territories at DHL.

Understanding territory management 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 Bill Sexton, director of sales ops at Zebra Technologies about how to design compensation plan for the upcoming year.

In our first segment, Bill discusses how he performs an annual benchmark of his company’s compensation plan and how he hits them in order to make his sales quota. Bill then delves into how to find an accurate peer group to compare against and how to benchmark against those competitors.

Next, Bill illustrates how he and his sales operations team establish the many types of roles in their organizational chart and how they build it into the five global plans they need.  Bill also shares how his team handles the financial modeling as it relates to the managing incentive budget.

In our last segment, Bill sets us up with three concrete tactics that one can use as they enter and complete the annual sales compensation plan process.

Understanding the compensation plan process 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.

Today on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we’re joined by Doug Landis to tackle the topic of sales coaching. Doug’s a VP of sales productivity at Box, a software collaboration company that generates an annual revenue of 250 million, in large part due to Doug’s sales training and management training.

In today’s show, Doug gives us his sales equations, as well as tips on how to have a structured sales conversation between sales management and a rep. Afterwards, we shift gears and talk about timing: specifically, when should sales training and management training occur? We also discuss time allocation across your talent. How much time should you spend with your A-Players vs. your B-Players? What about your C-Players, are they a black hole? We conclude today’s show by looking at the two to three things you can do today to start giving your team the keys they need to succeed and hit their numbers.

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Today on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we’re joined by Tom Kane. Tom’s the VP of worldwide and service operations for OpenText, the 40th largest software company in the world, and today he joins us to discuss one of the most often-requested topics we receive from listeners: sales analytics.

Tom talks us through the four progressive steps of sales analytics: descriptive analytics (sales analytics that describe what has already happened), diagnostic analytics (sales analytics that tell us why things are occurring), predictive analytics (sales analytics that look at what might happen) and prescriptive analytics (sales analytics that tell an organization what to do). Through these four steps, you’ll see not only why big data is king, but more importantly, how it holds court.

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Today on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, we’re joined by an outstanding guest to discuss a topic that’s a little out of our normal purview: Designing a compensation plan for a sales department. Our guest, David Loeser, is a heavy weight in the HR field with 30 years of experience helping companies like Pepsi, Continental Airlines, Quaker State, Hostess Brands and Unisys Corporation, where he’s currently the senior VP of world wide human resources. We get into the nuts and bolts of keeping your team incentivized so they can hit their numbers.

We start today’s talk by discussing how to get your sales leader onboard with your compensation plan, looking at how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs stacks up to today’s world of instant gratification and endless information. We go on to talk about how to define a forward-looking, free market-based compensation strategy. We also discuss how to elevate your sales strategy by putting customer satisfaction at the heart of your compensation plan. David further explains the difference between reporting the number and making the number, a differentiation that’ll help you really understand the relationship between your sales strategy and compensation strategy, as well as how to systematize your feedback delivery. We conclude our talk by discussing the current thoughts around timing a compensation strategy and exploring the advantage of imagination vs. knowledge.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Paul Rosen, who is the senior vice president of sales for OnDeck Capital.  Paul joined OnDeck Capital in 2012 when the company was doing $13 million in sales. Today, only three years later, the company is doing $160 million in sales and recently had a successful IPO with a market cap of $1.5 billion. On today’s podcast we will discuss how Paul was able to build a corporate strategy that helped scale business sales growth from $13 million to $160 million in three years.

In our first segment, Paul talks about the sales strategy a sales leader follows to invest in capital both short-term and long-term, and how brokers helped the company’s corporate strategy in a big way when making these moves.

Next, Paul shares with us how to incorporate a direct sales channel to compliment an indirect sales channel to your sales strategy, how to gain mindshare with channel partners without surpassing your corporate strategy budget, all while expanding into new geographic markets and successfully launching new products.

In our last segment, Paul wraps up our conversation by sharing advice he would have given himself at the beginning of his journey of being a sales leader in a fast-growth company.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Mike Ellis of ForgeRock about how to successfully drive strategy execution through functional leadership alignment.

In our first segment, Mike shares how the CTO drives successful execution of corporate strategy while staying in strategic alignment with the CEO. We discuss how to know when numbers are missed because of poor execution in sales and marketing or if it is because there's a product problem.

Next, we talk with Mike about what it takes to keep the marketing strategy in strategic alignment with the overall corporate strategy and bringing that strategy to market. We then touch on the cadence in face-to-face communication and Mike offers advice to ensure the product, marketing and sales teams continuously test and adjust the assumptions in the strategy. In this segment, we also take a look at how to keep strategic alignment when you want to make a corporate strategy shift that could potentially disrupt other teams’ strategy development. 

In our last segment, we conclude our conversation, and Mike sends us off with three immediate actions to take if you’re a CEO who finds his teams struggling to execute corporate 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. 

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.

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. 

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Giglio, CEO of Aderant, about how to hire the right sales executive who the CEO can develop a trusting business relationship with in order to make his or her number.

In our first segment, Chris shares with us the evaluation process he and his team structured in choosing the right sales executive, how to build a trusting relationship that is transparent between the CEO and sales leader, as well as understanding what is actually happening in the market in order to understand the relationship between your sales and product teams.

Next, Chris discusses how he manages to spot a good sales executive in the early stages of hiring when a sales leader is selling a product he himself knows well. Chris also delves into their company’s new design principle and how it shifted their approach to hiring the right person for the job. We also discuss how to assess the reasoning behind why a company isn’t growing. Chris shares his organization’s 360 reviews that give everyone a good look at what’s happening in the overall picture and where the real pain points exist.

In our last segment, we summarize our conversation and offer a set of immediate actions you can take to implement into your executive recruiting design in order to find the right sales executive for your organization.

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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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You want to hit your numbers and still have a life outside of the office? This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, we’re joined by Phil Aaronson, the director of sales enablement at Oracle, to discuss how he maintains a healthy work/life balance while still hitting his numbers year after year.

We start our conversation by looking at how a sales enablement leader can set healthy boundaries within his or her organization, and we share tips on managing and maintaining reasonable expectations. We go on to identify project management roles and responsibilities that are often misaligned between the sales leadership and sales enablement teams, which leads to repetition and grind. We also talk through strategy development and the controversy around writing a sales enablement charter into your sales enablement strategy and discuss if there’s merit to the approach. Next, we discuss something that’s very hot right now: the idea of writing a sales playbook to prove your worth. We conclude by talking with Phil about his opinions on watermarks, certification and gamification as tools to keep your team honed-in on their goals.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, Mike Balow, the executive vice president of sales at Cypress Semiconductor, joins us to discuss job security, something that may seem like a myth for a sales executive. However, with 29 years of employment across only four companies, the three-year sales executive lifespan is a trend Mike’s managed to buck, and today he’s here to help you do the same.

We begin our conversation by discussing how to establish yourself with a new company, a process that starts with evaluating a potential employer’s hiring practices, culture and values and ends with bringing in the right people to round out your team. We also discuss spotting which sales planning and hiring practices to bring with you to a new organization and which ones to leave in your back pocket. Mike also discusses how he applies the skills he developed as an engineer to his role as a sales executive, such as applying pre-thinking and in-depth planning to functions such as designing a sales plan or product launch. We also discuss how to negotiate common challenges, such as resource management, sales planning and growth expectations, and look at how to build a strong tenure by developing strong partnerships with your business units. We also look at the key elements of a product launch that lends itself to sales. We then wrap up our conversation by talking about the first things you can do, right now, to cement your position and push your company towards its goals.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Steve Byars, the CHRO of the AMX division of Harman International, about how to help a CEO understand if he or she has the right sales and marketing leadership team.

In our first segment, Steve discusses understanding what a great sales and marketing executive talent looks like and the list to double check when seeking the right sales leader for your team.

Next, we evaluate how to know if the person leading the sales and marketing strategy teams has the particular skill set to manage the goals needed at a specific point in time, as well as, how to manage competency learning curves.

In our last segment, Steve shares ways to design a compensation program for a best-in-class marketing and sales leaders that your CEO will love and approve of.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Mark Turner, SVP and GM of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region for Genesys, about how to set up a sales strategy to avoid going from hero to goat overnight due to poor sales forecasting and pipeline management.

In our first segment, Mark discusses what his experience has been like being a part of and witnessing 120 end-of-quarter cycles in the software business, and we touch on the three different flavors of surprise that come at every end of quarter.

Next, Mark shares with us his team’s best practices in running effective quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and the role the sales operations team must play in order to achieve end-of-quarter sales strategy success.

In our last segment, we recap our sales forecasting and pipeline management processing discussion with Mark and share a few takeaways that can be implemented into action and your sales strategy immediately.

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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 Brian Walker, CEO of Herman Miller about finding and sustaining strategic alignment from the CEO’s chair all the way to the customer.

In our first segment, Brian discusses some steps he’s taken to drive sales strategy from his role as CEO. The beginning of the processes includes annually narrowing down a set of four to five business strategies presented to the company to see all the way through. From there, each will be outlined in a detailed one-page document in order to understand the situational analysis of the project you’ve decided to take on in order to achieve overall business alignment.

Next, Brian shares what has helped him run a strategy where strategic alignment exists along the product and sales team, and the role the CEO plays in keeping the product team, the marketing department and the operations group aligned.

In our last segment, we ask Brian to send us off with some advice from his approach to leading a sales team as a CEO.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Paula Shannon, the chief sales officer and executive vice president of Lionbridge Technologies, about how to keep your team invested in a sales strategy as the year progresses.

In our first segment, Paula shares what she feels is the right level of detail that a sales leaders should be requesting from their direct reports to gauge execution. A part of Paula’s company sales strategy consists of a weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence of strategic reporting on sales strategy and a lot of focus on the details of day-to-day sales pipeline management.

Next, Paula discusses how she keeps her CEO, CFO and the whole team on board throughout the year by executing a strategic sales strategy. Paula explains how she believes proof lies in the data and how she and her team focus on studying the historic data available to them to identify trends that later translate to a sales forecasting strategy. 

In our final segment, Paula helps us understand the delicate balance that lies in being both customer focused and company focused when change arises.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with, Stuart Kerst, vice president of sales operations at Hewlett Packard (HP), about how to increase the available selling time of a sales team to move the needle in an optimized sales process. 

In our first segment, we look at the industry standard of how much time a sales person should spend selling versus non-selling, and then we ask Stuart to share his point of view on how he believes sales reps should spend the 2000 hours available to them. Stuart walks us through technology’s role and how automation helps achieve the ideal balance. Stuart also touches on the role CPQ takes in the strategy development to support these strategic opportunities.

Next, we focus on the root of the sales cycle productivity issue and how Stuart was able to increase the customer face time. Stuart shares with us how it begins with their annual process that includes a customer satisfaction review with their salespeople to find out where the pain points lie.

In our last segment, we discuss how to reduce misalignment between the sales and marketing by aligning metrics of tracked data and how sales ops can say no to the field and not lose political capital.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Rick Balkind, the head lead of the sales enablement department for Pegasystems, about the intricacies of building and managing a sales enablement team. We discuss everything from the lead-generation process, RFP response team, new sales rep onboarding program, the design of a sales process, implementation of a sales methodology, and enablement of the sales management team. 

In our first segment, Rick shares with us how to ensure new programs and initiatives are being adopted in Q2-Q4, which numbers should be tracked to make sure sales enablement is impacting the business quarter-to-quarter and why it’s important to grow a sales pipeline in order to support growth.

Next, Rick discusses how the sales management role of sales enablement developed over time and how a cross-functional evolvement team became of it. Rick then walks us through the content of their quarterly meetings.

In our last segment, Rick breaks down his strategy development behind measuring an account workflow in assuring the pipeline development takes place as planned. Every quarter, each sales representative must create an account plan, which will later be scored. We end our segment by hearing Rick’s vision of the future of sales enablement.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Tim Huffmyer, the CFO of BlackBox Network Services, about reallocating a sales and marketing budget as the year unfolds.

In our first segment, Tim discusses how to establish expectations for your stakeholders at the beginning of the year. He then details how he and his team reallocate the budget as the year progresses and things change.

Next, Tim walks us through a hypothetical corporate strategy case study focused on head count planning, how that aligns with a P&L statement and the obstacles that come with it.

In our final segment, Tim shares with us how he measures the market and the return on his sales and marketing strategy. 

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If you are a sales leader wanting to work better with the CFO, listen to this podcast.  If you are a CFO wanting to partner better with sales, listen to this podcast.  I think you both will learn from it.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Fred Florjancic, Chairman of the Board at Ramsey Industries, and member of the board of directors at the Elkay Manufacturing Company and Liberty Tire Recycling, about sales and marketing effectiveness from the board’s perspective as it relates to accelerating revenue growth.

In our first segment, Fred helps us understand how a board member should analyze a company during a sales and marketing strategy execution, by walking us through the five Ps of success: the people, the products, the plants, its processes, its prices. We also discuss how often board meetings should take place and how to best prepare for them.

Next, Fred fills us in on the impact the CEO can have in leading the marketing and sales strategy to help meet the company’s revenue goals. We also dig a little deeper into what makes a great sales and marketing leader and how to hire the right talent as a board member.

In our last segment, Fred shares with us how he strategically aligns his teams, from product to marketing to sales, for the most effective sales strategy.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with John Pierce, the Senior Director of Human Resources for the Americas Region and Global Sales & Marketing team at Motorola, about recruiting strategies he has implemented to attract the best talent in the market.

In our first segment, John dives into recruitment and selection strategies with defining how to find the talent pools you need, where they're needed and the numbers that are required. We also learn about a single-page document that helps summarize the talent acquired and further analyze them in three categories: competencies, behaviors and A-player leadership elements.   

Next, John discusses how to approach the hiring process by sharing qualities to look for in applicants and how to strategically interview potential employees. We then hear John’s perspective on ways to handle an A-player walking out the door, including how to react and what you learn from that process.

In our last segment, John shares how to pave transitionary paths for employees looking to move up in their departments and how to prepare them for success once they get there.

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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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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Cole, CEO of Intelligrated, about the role the CEO plays in the development of the sales strategy.

In our first segment, Chris shares how he managed to gain success and revenue with his company during a difficult economic cycle by listening to customers and crafting products and services that helped his customers succeed. He also discusses how strategically aligning your sales strategy to your customer needs is essential to your overall strategy development.

Next, Chris shares with us how he and his company differentiate themselves from others by offering more to their customer than just the product itself. In many ways, his team acts as strategic business consultants to their clients and, in return, they witness a very high percentage of repeat customers.

In our last segment, Chris discusses why developing a successful sales strategy requires the perspective of internal and external resources.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jeff White, chief revenue officer of Extreme Networks, about designing a new sales strategy within the first 90 days of a new job.

In our first segment, Jeff describes how to become intimately knowledgeable of your business and how to properly analyze an organization in order to pinpoint where the transformative work needs to happen for a new sales plan.

Next, Lee walks us through Extreme Network’s corporate strategy, which focuses on being a product innovator. He also discusses the importance of arming your company with subject matter experts in order to gain a deep understanding of your customer and then being able to align your selling strategy accordingly.

In our last segment, Lee sends us off with tips on how to manage day-to-day sales and marketing deliverables while executing a 90-day sales strategy transformation.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Samir Joglekar, EVP of sales at Renaissance Learning, about how to lay out a new organizational structure for a company.

In our first segment, Samir shares the first things you should evaluate when looking at your organizational design in order to reconstruct the way your departments are currently set up.  

Next, Samir offers guidance on how to incorporate a new channel to a long standing enterprise in order to gain a deeper connection and build better relationships with customers.

In our last segment, Samir sends us off with some tips on how to ensure you’ve supplied your team with the right resources for them to execute and maintain a newly implemented organization structure.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Joel Trammell, CEO of Khorus, about his corporate strategy approach detailed in his book, “The CEO Tightrope,” which describes how to keep your product, marketing and sales teams aligned.

In our first segment, Joel discusses what inspired him to write his book and lays out the five core responsibilities of a CEO required to build a corporate level strategy, including owning the vision, providing proper resources, building culture, making decisions and recruiting the right talent.

Next, Joel talks with us about his perspective as a board member after serving as a CEO and how to hire the right CEO for the job.  

In our last segment, Joel walks us through the SCARF theory and how it relates to business strategy. He finishes by telling us how his company’s software product helps organizations maintain their strategic alignment from the top to bottom of a company.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Dave Rennyson, EVP and GM of the Cloud division at Genesys, about how to scale a SaaS company using corporate strategy.

In our first segment, Dave discusses how he and his team successfully moved their average deal size from $10,000 to $80,000 with sales management, product focus and strong network security.

In our second segment, we talk with Dave about how strategic alignment across all departments is necessary to help grow your company from a small- or mid-sized business to an enterprise, something many SaaS companies want to do but are unable to.

In our final segment, Dave shares with us how he was able to move from sales leader to president of his company as well as make the shift from functional management to general management.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Lee Wood, SVP of sales operations, planning and strategy at Thomson Reuters, about building a successful sales operations strategy.

In our first segment, Lee covers the basic structure of a sales operations department, the number of people needed, what roles they perform and how they are structured.

Next, we walk through how to identify, design and create a set of reports that consistently satisfy the needs of the executive leadership team and how to continue running your quarterly and annual strategic planning process. This includes sales training and why Thomson Reuters chooses to keep a sales enablement function as a part of their sales operations strategy.

In our last segment, Lee shares with us the reasoning behind his personal decision to make the leap from sales management to sales operations.

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This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Jim Tedesco, SVP of North American sales at Veeam Software, about strategic planning for sales in the enterprise software industry.

In our first segment, we discuss the planning process Jim and his team use to define a revenue goal for the upcoming year and the unpredictability that comes with introducing new software to companies.

In our second segment, Jim shares what data is required to drive a revenue growth strategy and your best resource to acquire it from.

In our final segment, we look at determining a budget to make your projected quota, how to allocate it and how to secure it from your company.

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We recently caught up with Ed Puisis, who is the CFO of Intelligrated.  Intelligrated is a $700 million industrial automation company growing 20% per year and is forecasted to hit $1 billion in just a few short years. 

We asked Ed to share with us his views on Sales and Marketing, from the perspective of the CFO.  The Chief Financial Officer is a key player in the development of the sales and marketing strategy but is one that is often overlooked in its development. This podcast is meant to offer insight into how finance, sales, and marketing can work together. 

You can listen to the podcast here. 

By listening to this interview you will learn how to: 

• Build KPIs correctly
• Connect sales/marketing KPIs to corporate KPIs
• Measure process effectiveness
• Move beyond activity metrics and get to causation 

If you are a Sales or Marketing Leader and need a better relationship with the CFO, you might find this helpful.

Original article at http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/a-cfos-perspective-on-sales-and-marketing

Mark Synek of SBI talks to Rich Doggett, a twenty-year marketing veteran, and the VP of Field Marketing at Sysco Corporation. They discuss direct marketing, and how to apply corporate marketing strategies to field marketing. Also discussed is the importance of balancing internal and external customer needs. Follow along with Mark and Rich to find out how important buyer potential is, and why you should be getting away from product marketing and getting involved with customer marketing.

We recently interviewed Rich Doggett, Vice President of Product and Field Marketing at Sysco.

Sysco is the largest food distributor, does $45 billion in annual revenues, has 50,000 employees, and over 400,000 customers. 

By listening to this podcast, you will learn: 

• How product marketing can partner with the field sales team.
• An approach to think through which products should be sold through which channel.
• Examples of how to grow wallet share from key accounts.

Original article at http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/how-to-migrate-from-product-marketing-to-customer-marketing

We caught up with two bright Sales Ops Leaders from the software industry. Evan Randall is the Vice President of Sales Ops at software company Tableau Software. The work that Evan is doing contributed to amazing sales results during the last quarter. Check these numbers out: 

Revenue growth of 71% and on run rate of $420 million.

License growth of 66%.

Added 2,500 new customers.

Big deals (>$100k) up 68%. 

Jerad Lally is the Director of Sales Ops at Paylease.  The work that Jerad is doing contributed to the company tripling in size and getting acquired by top tier private equity firm Francisco Partners. 

By listening to this podcast, you will: 

1.  Hear why staffing sales enablement with former sales reps produces great results.

2.  Understand the difference between a strategic and tactical Sales Ops Leader.

3.  How to ramp new sales reps to revenue quickly through certification. 

If you are a CEO, or Head of Sales, at a software company, ask yourself: “Are you getting maximum value from the Sales Ops function?” 

Hopefully, Evan and Jerad are two calibration points to help you answer this question. Highlights are from the blog post: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/best-in-class-sales-operations-leadership-in-the-software-industry

Matt Sharrers interviews Heartland's Chief Sales Officer about sales growth, how to acquire quality members, how to keep a good atmosphere in the workplace, and some key goals and struggles he faces planning for 2015.  More highlights can be read in this blog post: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/the-1-ranked-sales-team-of-2014

Here is what you will learn by listening to this podcast: 

1. How Tony, 34 years of age, became the youngest Chief Sales Officer in the Fortune 1000.

2. Why they have not changed the sales comp plan since 1994.

3. What the “Sales Rep Bill of Rights" is.

4. The difference between the goose and the eggs. 

Greg Alexander, the CEO of SBI is joined by George Norton, the head of the chief sales officer practice at Heidrick & Struggles.  If you are not familiar with Heidrick & Struggles, they are the world’s top executive search firm.  As a Partner in the firm, George gets hired by CEOs to fill the role of head of sales.  If you are a CEO, and are wondering if you need a new sales leader, listen to this.  It might help you think through this. If you are a head of sales, and are looking for the next adventure, listen to this.  It might help you increase your marketability. More blog highlights at http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/heidrick-struggles-outlines-what-ceos-look-for-when-hiring-a-head-of-sales

A New Approach to Time Management for Sales Managers. Josh Horstmann, Principal at SBI, is joined by Mike Walz to discuss sales management cadence.  Mike is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Ramsey Industries with over 25 years of experience in the Industrial Sales Marketplace.  Josh and Mike discuss how buyer behavior is changing, and how sales managers must adapt their strategies.  Hear how Mike manages his team, and aligns their reps and buyers resulting in increased sales.  More highlights can be read at the blog post here: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/a-new-approach-to-time-management-for-sales-managers

How Agility Logistics Transformed Their Sales Force. Andrew Urteaga, a Principal at SBI, is joined by Paul Mullins, the SVP of Business Development for Agility Logistics. Agility Logistics is one of the worlds’ leading providers of integrated logistics with five hundred companies across 100 countries. These two discuss sales adoption, and how to get sales initiatives to stick inside an organization. They talk about what signs denote a need for change, why a company should push for a change, and items of note to help with adoption. When trying to push new sales strategies, a key item to focus on is making sure key stake holders are on board from the beginning. More highlights in this blog post: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/how-agility-logistics-transformed-their-sales-force

How Guidance Software Uses Data to Drive Their Marketing Efforts. John Staples, a Partner at SBI, is joined by Alex Andrianopoulos, the Head of Marketing at Guidance Software. Alex has an engineering background, which gives him a different perspective on marketing. His technical expertise has helped him understand the needs of his customers and how to help them most effectively. They discuss the many priorities marketing executives should be considering, including instilling a data driven culture.  They discuss relying on objective data and benchmarking to determine where to focus marketing’s efforts and resources.  More highlights in the blog post at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/how-guidance-software-uses-data-to-drive-their-marketing-efforts

The UPS Capital Story: Sales Training’s Contribution to Making the Number. George de los Reyes, a Principal at SBI, is joined by Curt Redden, Director of Sales Training for UPS Capital. Curt is a certified professional in learning and performance and has 20 years of experience in sales training and coaching. They discuss how learning development is becoming a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Listen to this podcast to gain insight on talent development to learn how to get the right people on board and invest in your people to maximize output. More highlights in the blog post at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/the-ups-capital-story-sales-training%E2%80%99s-contribution-to-making-the-number

A Sales Reorg with 99% Customer Retention & 5% Rep Turnover. Dan Perry, of SBI, is joined by Matt Boice, VP of Sales Operations for The Enthusiast Network. Matt’s organization was recently restructured and he is here to share his best practices. He will discuss the reasons for restructuring, the difficulties associated with it, and most importantly the benefits. Listen to this podcast to gain insight from your peer who was able to thrive during his company’s reorganization. More podcast highlights are at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/podcast-a-sales-reorg-with-99-customer-retention-5-rep-turnover

Mitel CMO Martyn Etherington Discusses Leveraging Buyer Personas. Martyn Etherington joins Mark Synek with SBI for the SBI podcast. Martyn is the CMO and Chief of Staff at Mitel, a global leader in business communication that easily connects employees, partners and customers. The two professionals discuss the topic of buyer personas, and all the ways personas can be leveraged throughout your sales and marketing organization. More podcast highlights at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/new-podcast-mitel-cmo-martyn-etherington-discusses-leveraging-buyer-personas

Hear How LegalZoom and Infusionsoft Manage Sales. Ryan Tognazzini, Principal at SBI, sits down with two thought leaders in the business community. Joining him are Aaron Stead and Ed Arcinue. Aaron is the senior vice president of sales at Infusionsoft and a fifteen-year veteran in the field. Ed is the vice president of sales at Legalzoom. They debate a huge struggle sales leader’s face today: the difficulties of balancing time, focusing on achieving short-term results, and planning for long term strategic initiatives. More podcast highlights at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/new-podcast-hear-how-legalzoom-and-infusionsoft-manage-sales

Sales Ops Inside Big Companies. Matt Sharrers, Partner at SBI, talks to Kimberly Appleton from On Semiconductor, and Chris Fris from Ryder Logistics about the role of sales operations; specifically the transformations that the role is undergoing and how the demands of the role are changing. They also discuss some of the challenges that go along with this role. The information that they have to share is revolutionary in this field of work. More podcast highlights at: http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/sales-ops-inside-big-companies

Pfizer and Jive Software Share Sales Enablement Philosophies. Greg Alexander with SBI interviews two Sales Enablement Professionals to gain insight on the topic. The first Sales Enablement professional's name is Andy Garrity and he runs Sales enablement at Pfizer. Joining him is Patrick Merritt who runs Sales Enablement at Jive Software. They discuss what Sales Enablement is, and the challenges concerning Sales Enablement. More Podcast highlights can be found at http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/blog/podcast-pfizer-and-jive-software-share-sales-enablement-philosophies

By listening to this podcast you will learn:

• How to centralize sales enablement without creating a political turf war.
• Jive Software’s approach to on boarding sales reps.
• Pfizer’s approach to gamifying sales training.
• How mobility can enable the sales team without taking anyone out of the field.