B2B Revenue Acceleration

What you need to remember in today’s world is that having a unique product is only a ticket to play the game.     It’s not going to help you win the differentiation battle.”   That’s what Chris Orlob, the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Gong.io, believes about differentiating yourself in the marketplace.  He understands that it is not your technology that will set you apart from your competitors.     It’s all about setting your company up as a strategic partner immediately in sales conversations that will lead to you dominating the marketplace.

When’s the last time your marketing and sales teams sat in the same room? Do they know each other’s objectives?  Are they contributing directly to the other side’s success? Tom Grubb is the Chief Strategy Officer at Digital Pi where his role centers helping companies do great things with marketing technologies. He specializes in getting decision makers to think about the outcomes and objectives of their marketing investments. Executives can often get distracted with shiny pieces of new marketing technology, and Tom has seen countless examples of companies focused on the “best” technology rather than the actual end goals they are looking to accomplish. While working with clients, Tom asks a lot of questions.  His background makes him well suited for his job because he has a long history of working in the technology, marketing leadership, and product marketing spaces.  He can see the big picture, the little details and he understands the overall technology landscape. As a veteran marketer, Tom understands just how important it is to have aligned metrics for sales and marketing.  It’s more important than the metrics themselves! In this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration, we spoke to Tom about how to align key metrics, viewing marketing in a different light, and choosing the right tech stack.

Account Based Marketing helps you narrow your focus on your ideal clients. But it will absolutely fail if you don’t align your sales & marketing efforts. Tina Bean and her team at KickFire have recently found success with an Account Based Marketing approach supplemented with utilizing their own platform to identify key accounts. An Account Based Marketing approach starts with the strategy of identifying key accounts. This effort needs to be collaborative from the very beginning. Sales needs to define what a worthy account looks like so that marketing can begin their engagement campaigns. It’s up to your marketing to create different messaging for prospects at various stages, and it’s up to your sales team to take that prospect through to a closed deal. It’s a tandem process. A truly joint effort of sales and marketing to come up with an initial list of key accounts, bring that buyer through the journey, and then keep them as a customer. Engagement is simply the key indicator of success with ABM. If a company can get their finger on the pulse of engagement in a prospect’s journey, they are well on their way to connecting with that that potential customer and closing a deal. Click the link in the first comment below for the full interview with Tina.

The data you collect should be speeding you up, not slowing you down. The only way to make sure this is happening is to leverage the power of the cloud, but how do you keep up with all of the recent trends in this space? Tom Mack is the RVP of Sales, EMEA at Qubole where he joined four years ago to build out a sales team in the Western United States.  Qubole provides big data as a service, so they understand this landscape well. They focus on allowing automation to handle the life cycle of data clusters so organizations can get insights and yield out of their data as opposed to managing the infrastructure associated with big data technology. In the time since he joined the team, Tom and his family have moved to London and opened up Qubole’s European sales operation where the team is on track to keep expanding throughout Europe. Tom’s job is to drive sales and create new business opportunities. Tom joined us for this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about the Big Data landscape, different verticals and industries that are benefiting the most from this technology, and differences between the North American and European markets.

Can one sector of a business drive change in an entire channel? Though the IT channel is has been around for many years, it is changing rapidly to a integrated solution based model.  One of the most significant change agents is the urgent need to integrate information security and cybersecurity into all IT products and services. Bruce Johnson heads up Global Channels at BlueVoyant, a next generation cybersecurity provider built on a threat intelligence platform. BlueVoyant has leaders from diverse backgrounds, from executives at Morgan Stanley to members of the NSA and FBI. Bruce and his team at BlueVoyant have seen first hand the widespread impact that information security and cybersecurity concerns have had on sales channels.  If a company is in the technology space, they need to have measures in place to protect their own information as well as the information of their clients. BlueVoyant helps neutralize those threats. Bruce has experience working all over the globe, so we sat down with him to learn more about the state of the sales channel in North America, the differences between the North American Market and the European Market, and where he sees rooms for improvement in these channels.

Are you happy with your B2B marketing? Are your emails and digital ads getting ignored as quickly as you can get them out? Tish Millsap is CEO and S. Strategist at Revenate Marketing, and she’s spent a lot of time thinking about the world of B2B Marketing. Tish helps companies who are looking to elevate their B2B marketing by cutting through the clutter and getting the right messages in front of the right people.  She’s focused on companies in the hyper growth stages of marketing, and she loves building ways to bring processes and revenue together. Tish is constantly being asked the question, “If I spend a dollar on marketing, where and how exactly does that translate into revenue?” She’s spent the last several years developing an answer to that question. We sat down with Tish in this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about the five practical tips she’s developed for bringing a company’s B2B marketing to the next level.

What’s the point of all of the content companies are releasing every day? Blogs, YouTube Videos, Podcasts, webinars, and more. They all exist because content is fuel for your marketing engine.  If you release high quality content, this engine keeps you at the forefront of your customers’ minds and allows your salespeople to start conversations with prospects who are already very familiar with your work. Dagmar Moreside is the head of partnerships at Payoneer, a FinTech organization that specializes in innovative cross-border payments.  Dagmar has been operating within the business development and marketing worlds for over 15 years. She specializes in content marketing and go-to-market strategies within the healthcare, marketing, and tech spaces for enterprise-level and small businesses alike. Dagmar joined us for this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about the importance of aligning marketing and sales, and how content can fuel your marketing engine.

It’s tempting to think that just because you’ve had success in one market… You’ll automatically be successful wherever you decide to expand your business. Patrick Conte is the Senior Vice President & General Manager of International Business at HyTrust, and he understands the challenge in taking your product and moving it to another market like Europe. HyTrust is a cyber-security company that specializes in cloud security.  They protect the cloud workload for their clients (which is becoming increasingly important in this era of data protection we live in). They also focus on locking down the virtual infrastructure (cloud servers and admins) for their clients. Patrick and his team were able to expand their technology into the European market through careful strategy and execution.  Patrick joined us for this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about the European expansion journey and the lessons learned along the way.

Do you practice what you preach? What about your team? Do they practice what your company preaches? John Rougeux is the VP of Marketing at Skyfii where he has two main priorities: 1) Build his company’s presence in North America and 2) Rebuild Skyfii’s brand with a clear position in the marketplace. John knows that he can’t accomplish his second priority by only marketing his company externally.  He has to be walking the walk and getting his team excited internally as well. It’s crucial to their success. John joined us for this episode of B2B Revenue Acceleration to talk about internal evangelism as part of a branding strategy.

Startups often underestimate moving to new markets. This is especially true in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region. Matthew Smith is a Principal Consultant at Acumin Consulting where he just recently celebrated his 5 year anniversary. Matt has been in the cyber-security recruitment  space for 8 years, and he has seen the industry change and evolve during that time. Acumin is celebrating their 20th anniversary, and they work within the consulting world to help offer a full range of cybersecurity consulting solutions, from system integrators all the way down to penetration testing companies. Matt is on the vendor team and he specializes mostly in director level searches. We sat down with Matt to talk about how market timing and cultural differences affect internationally expanding startups, the importance of your first sales hire in the EMEA region, and the roadmap to success.