SBI, The Growth Advisory

Today’s topic is understanding how to determine which markets to compete in and which markets to avoid. Why this topic? Many executive teams tend to focus most of their attention on gaining share in their existing markets. While it is necessary to maintain, and sometimes increase market share, changing your company’s exposure to growing and shrinking market segments should be a major focus. Joining us is Jim Briles, the Chief Operating Officer of American Global Logistics. AGL manages the supply chain for customers who primarily import ocean freight from Asia into the United States. During the interview, Jim will demonstrate selecting the right markets by using AGL as an example.

Today’s topic is how to execute Account Based Marketing. While B2B account marketing has been around for years, we discuss the modern techniques and tools for success. To follow along, download our 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to the marketing strategy section and flip to the ABM phase on pages 214 – 217 of the PDF. Demand generation and lead management does not work for companies with business models dependent on a small number of accounts but who spend a lot. Waiting for dream accounts to come to you will result in you missing your revenue targets. If you live and die by the big deal, growing revenues faster than your industry and your competitors requires a shift to Account Based Marketing. Joining us from Motorola Solutions is Massimo Sangiovanni, Vice President of Americas for Marketing and Inside Sales. Motorola Solutions provides mission-critical communications products and services to public safety and commercial customers around the world. This is done by providing them with real-time information, and by arming them with intuitive, nearly indestructible handheld devices. Listen as Massimo describes how the evolution into modern account based marketing has positively impacted sales.

Today’s topic is how to launch new products successfully. Product launches fail to generate revenue when sales people and channel partners are not involved in messaging development during pre-launch preparations. When messaging is developed in isolation it is not compelling enough to get your customers to act. Stories told directly to customers by well-trained sales channels enable customers and prospects to answer “Why change?” and this stimulates latent demand while leading to exceptional revenue growth. Joining us is Toby Williams, SVP, Chief Product and Strategy Officer for Ellucian. Ellucian is the world’s leading provider of software and services for higher education institution, serving more than 2,400 institutions and 18 million students worldwide. Listen as Toby discusses how to create messaging to defeat the status quo. This starts with market problems that the solution is solving and to capture it through the customer lens.

Today’s topic is understanding how executives make purchase decisions. Failure to understand, exactly, how the executive decision makers inside your target accounts buy will result in poor win rates, long sales cycles, and you missing your number. To follow along, download our 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. Turn to the buyer segmentation phase on pages 274 – 276 of the PDF. Joining us is Gary Ackerman, the SVP Head of Global Sales at Pepperjam. Pepperjam is a performance marketing company focused on helping global advertisers drive e-commerce sales. During the interview, Gary will demonstrate how executives make purchase decisions by using Pepperjam as an example. Executives are changing the way they make purchase decisions. Some are altering their evaluation criteria. Others are involving more people in the decision-making process. Some are changing their preferences for how they want to engage with your sales team. Decentralized decision-making is becoming centralized, and centralized decisions are now being made regionally. And on and on. Failure to exactly understand how executives are buying will prevent you from growing revenue.

Today’s topic is how to deploy a sales process. The purpose of a sales process is to win more deals, win bigger deals and to do it faster. Standard one-size-fits-all sales methodologies no longer work. The competitors can license the same sales methodologies from the same vendors you can, so there is no competitive advantage to be had by adopting the latest sales methodology from the sales training industry. To increase deal sizes, improve win rates and shorten sales cycles, you need to adopt a custom, proprietary sales process/methodology. Joining us is Lori Chmura, Vice President of US Sales for Cordis. Lori has over 28 years of business experience, and has deployed a version of a customized sales process during her tenure. During the interview, Lori will demonstrate how she has deployed a new sales process.

: Today’s topic is forecasting accuracy. How to install a thorough forecasting and pipeline management process. Joining us is Evan Randall the Vice President of Sales Operations at Tableau Software. Evan is doing ground-breaking work in forecasting accuracy. Listen as Evan breaks down the approach to drive forecasting accuracy. The first segment of the show is focused on individual deal level forecasting. Evan describes how he uses predictive analytics to determine what is likely to happen. He describes the importance of having a sales process with a level of simplicity to achieve adoption. A well adopted and easy to use sales process enables you to collect good data.

Today’s topic is how to build a high-performance sales culture where sales talent thrives. Joining us today is Vicky Oxley, Regional Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Comcast NBC Universal. Vicky leads the West Region for Comcast, the nation’s largest TV, high speed internet and voice provider for residential and business customers. Peter Drucker famously said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and nowhere else is this truer than in sales organizations. Yet, unfortunately, many sales leaders neglect investing in the culture of the sales department and this results to poor performance. This episode hopes to help prevent this from happening to you. Vicky describes the sales culture she has created to help talent thrive. The program begins with an overview of the Comcast corporate and the specific sales culture. Listen as Vicky explains how a customer experience culture strives to passionately driven to make every customer interaction the best possible.

Today’s topic is how to evolve your strategy to stay ahead of the market. Joining us today is Jeff Ray, the Chief Executive Officer for Ellucian. A worldwide leader, Ellucian provides software and services to the higher education market. 18 million students around the world are touched by the software tools. Why this topic? Strategic time horizons are changing. 5 year strategies are getting compressed to 3 year strategies and 3 year strategies are getting converted to 1 year operating plans with quarterly agile iterations. This time compression requires the CEO, and his executive leadership team, to build the capabilities associated with strategy evolution. Listen as Jeff and Greg discuss how revenue growth, return on invested capital, and cash flow linked. Jeff describes Ellucian's advantage of a vertical market focus and the benefits to allocating resources.

Today’s topic is new product launch. Joining us is Andy Wright, Executive Vice President of New Product Development at Cypress Semiconductor. Cypress Semiconductor is the number one manufacturer of memory used in electronics. Chances are that the device you are using to read this article right now is powered by Cypress. Andy is responsible for corporate wide design and driving P&L for all design activity worldwide. Andy and Greg discuss how to conduct a successful product launch. A product launch hinges on being able to tell stories that compel your customers to act by answering the key question, “Why change?”. Product launches fail to generate revenue when sales people and channel partners are not involved in messaging development during pre-launch preparations. When messaging is developed in isolation it is not compelling enough to get your customers to act. Stories told directly to customers by well-trained sales channels enable customers and prospects to answer “Why change?,” and this stimulates latent demand while leading to exceptional revenue growth. Listen to Andy explains how his team works to identify launch risks early on. He controls launch risk by rapidly sequential phase gating. As each phase gate he evaluates whether he goes through the rest of the R&D phases. During the interview, Andrew will answer these questions: - How should you determine your new product launch goals? - How do you ready the entire organization for the launch? - Where does sales enablement live, and who should own it? - How should you measure success or failure of a new product launch?

Today’s topic is transitioning from sales training to sales enablement. Sale enablement is about driving revenue per sales head up and time to productivity for new sales hires down. Joining us today is Brad Kerst, Senior Director of Global Sales Enablement for Intuitive Surgical, a medical device company. Intuitive Surgical is the leader in surgical robotics, manufacturing and selling the da Vinci® Surgical System. Brad and Greg discuss the difference between sales training and sales enablement. Sales training is the focus on three core areas of technical product knowledge, industry knowledge, and sales skills and execution. By comparison, sales enablement is a focus on the process and analytics to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales force. Listen to Brad explain how both are interlocked, with training as the background and context and the enablement side is the execution. Brad goes into detail explaining how sales training and sales enablement are symbiotic. Sales training develops the skills and sales enablement defines the behaviors and skills and generate the insights necessary to drive and maximize results. In the final segment of the program listen to Brad describe his training certification process and blended learning approach.