SBI, The Growth Advisory

As a marketing leader, you must drive revenue growth by connecting corporate marketing with the field. SBI recently spoke with Tracy Hansen, the chief marketing officer at Renaissance Learning, the world leader in cloud-based assessment, teaching and learning solutions. Listen as Tracy discusses how she executes field marketing inside of Renaissance Learning. During the show, Tracy will answer question such as: - What business outcomes should the field marketing team deliver? - What should the strategic focus of the field marketing team be? - What percentage of the overall marketing budget should be dedicated to field marketing? - What role should field marketing play between corporate marketing and sales? - What types of campaigns should field marketing run? - How can field marketing best partner with sales? Ultimately, field marketing is the connective tissue between corporate and the field. Without it, marketing teams will fail to produce revenue. Listen as Tracy describes how she has successfully implemented field marketing at Renaissance learning.

Content strategy and planning is a critical piece to your marketing strategy. As a marketing leader, you must earn brand preference by satisfying the information needs of your target customers. We recently spoke with Steve Keifer, the vice president of marketing at LeaseAccelerator. Listen as Steve explains how he develops and executes his content marketing strategy. Steve has over ten years’ experience and is responsible for driving the demand for LeaseAccelerator’s SaaS solutions. During the show, he will answer questions such as: - Which customers and prospects have you prioritized and why? - What information needs do these prioritized customers and prospects have? - What content have you developed and how does it help your business? - How do you develop your content marketing team in order to successfully execute strategy? - How can you measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy? For content marketing to generate revenue, you must understand what your customers need, where they need it, how often they need it and in what form. Without this information, your content marketing efforts will fails to contribute to revenue growth in a meaningful way. Listen as Steven shares his insights on how to successfully implement a content marketing strategy.

Traditional demand generation and lead management does not work for companies that are dependent on a small number of accounts that spend a lot. Instead marketing teams must replace leads with opportunities for the sales team. SBI recently spoke with Gahan Richardson, the vice president of corporate marketing at Cypress Semiconductors. Listen as Gahan explains his approach to account based marketing and how he uses it to set his sales team up for success. During the interview, Gahan will answer questions such as: - Why is it critical for your sales team to go wide and deep inside of their accounts, building many relationships? - What is the lifetime value of a key account, and why is it so much more than a typical account? - If marketing dedicates budget to a list of dream accounts, does this improve the relationship between sales and marketing? - Should you deploy multi-channel approach when launching an account based marketing program?? - Why should marketing leaders build a list of accounts, ranked best to worst, on revenue potential and propensity to buy? - What are the best ways to develop personalized content and get it in front of the right buyers and influencers? If your sales team lives and dies by the big deal, growing revenues faster than your competitors and industry will require a shift in behavior. Listen here as Gahan explains how account based marketing will help you make your number.

Getting an increase in sales head count is difficult. Additionally, when new sales people are hired, there is an expectation to generate revenue growth as quickly as possible. Essentially, sales enablement’s responsibility is to onboard new reps and drive revenue per sales head and time to productivity. SBI recently spoke with Kent Cissell, the senior vice president of sales operations at Heartland Payment Systems on this topic. Listen as Kent discusses sales enablement and why it’s key to the success of your overall sales strategy. Kent oversees a varied sales operations team which includes the traditional sales enablement function at Heartland, one of the largest payment processors in the US. During the interview, he will answer questions such as: - What are the business outcomes that the sales enablement team needs to deliver? - What is the strategic focus of the sales enablement team? - How are new sales reps onboarded, and what kind of sales readinesss program should be in place? - How is sales enablement content developed and used? Sales enablement is a key piece to your sales strategy. Neglect it and forgo adding sales head count in the future. Listen as Kent describes to how develop and execute a successful sales enablement strategy. And if after listening, you want to learn more, you can download our workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. It’s your step by step guide to a complete sales strategy, which includes a strong sales enablement program.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Dave Longaker, the Chief Revenue Officer at Rovi Corporation about how to determine the best sales organizational structure. We start the discussion by determining which of the 7 B2B sales org models is best to achieve revenue growth. Dave will discuss how to determine the types of roles, and the sales headcount need for each. Furthermore, he will explain how sales leaders should deploy their sales capacity against the market opportunity. Dave will continue by discussing how to determine which sales channels buyers want to buy from, and what level of sales specialization they are willing to pay for. And he will walk our audience through how to effectively transition from one sales organizational structure to another in order to best achieve revenue growth.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Kay Kienast, a seasoned marketing executive, about how to develop your brand positioning and messaging in order to increase revenue growth. We start the discussion by determining how to define your customer’s market problems and their pain. And she will explain how to articulate the opportunity provided to customer and prospects when solving their issues. Kay will continue the conversation by explaining how to calculate the cost of doing nothing for customers. She’ll wrap up the show by giving the audience immediate take-aways on how to best determine your brand positioning and benefits.

Not all revenue growth is equal. As an executive leader, your primary objective is to increase shareholder value. To do this, you must realize certain types of revenue growth are better than others. We recently spoke with Charles DeLacey, vice president of corporate development at Kenan Advantage Group. Listen as Charles discusses the different types of revenue growth and their impact on company valuation. At Kenan Advantage Group, Charles is responsible for leading corporate strategy and planning, and strategic growth initiatives. During the interview, he will answer questions such as: Do the different types of revenue growth earn different returns on capital, and if so, why? Is organic growth better than growth through acquisitions? How should you determine whether to invest in organic growth vs. growth through acquisitions? Give the available capital, are the number of acquisitions increasing? What happens to the executive management team when a company gets taken over? Ultimately, in order to keep your job, prevent a takeover by increasing your rate of high quality revenue growth. Selling your company at full price happens only when you are healthy. Listen as Charles explains the different types of revenue growth, and how they impact the way your company is viewed. If after listening, you want to learn more about emerging best practices that top leaders are deploying, download our workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017. It will help you determine if your corporate strategy is on track to increase revenue growth the right way.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with John Suh, the chief executive officer at LegalZoom about how to connect your corporate strategy with your sales strategy. We start the discussion by determining how to define your organization’s mission, vision, and brand. We’ll also explain how to determine your sales plan to hit your revenue growth objectives. And how to select the best sales organizational structure to make your number. Mark will continue the conversation by discussing how to ensure the sales team is articulating the corporate strategy. John will also explain how to tie sales objectives back to the corporate strategy and how to ensure the sales team is living your brand in every interaction.

People buy from people. Ultimately, there is no substitute for face time. This means organizations need a world class field marketing program. SBI recently interviewed Kim Salem-Jackson, the senior vice president of worldwide field marketing at Informatica about this topic. Listen as Kim shares her experience and insights on the subject of field marketing. Informatica is the number one provider of data integration software, with over 5,000 customers. And Kim has over 15 years’ experience in the discipline of field marketing. During the interview, she will answer key questions such as: - What role should field marketing play when it sits between corporate marketing and field sales? - How should you determine the goals of the field marketing team? - Who should drive the initiatives of the field marketing team? - How should you build an annual plan for the field marketing department? - How should field marketing partner with the sales team? At the end of the day enterprise organizations need to have a great field marketing program. It will allow your reps to increase face time with customers and prospects. Listen to hear how Kim has properly developed, and executed her field marketing strategy. Help your marketing plan get field level execution to maximize lead flow.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Mark Roberts, the chief marketing officer at ShorTel about how to develop your marketing strategy as a new marketing leader. We start the discussion with how and why new CMOs should consider a new brand strategy. Mark will also discuss whether or not you need a new marketing campaign process, and how to select the right organizational design. Mark will continue the conversation by explaining how to extend your marketing capabilities by engaging and managing the right agency partners. He’ll wrap up the show by giving new marketing leaders 3 actions they can take immediately in order to effectively develop and execute their new marketing strategy.