SBI, The Growth Advisory

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.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Terry Hicks, the chief product officer at Infusionsoft, about integrating his product strategy with his go to market strategy. We start the discussion with how Terry develops his product strategy. He’ll explain how determines what markets to compete in and what problems to solve. He’ll also discuss how to determine how your products can uniquely win against the competition, and how to determine how they should be marketed and sold. Terry will continue the discussion by next explaining how he develops his go to market strategy. He’ll explain how to develop the product positioning and pricing strategy for your products. And how to ensure the entire organization, product, sales and marketing, is ready for the new product launch. We conclude our talk by looking at the first three actions product leaders can take right now to immediately make an impact with their product strategy. Terry will explain in detail how you can successfully integrate your product and go to market strategies.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast we speak with Todd Doolittle, the recently appointed head of sales operations at Concentra, about the challenges and opportunities faced by new sales ops leaders. We start the discussion with Todd’s biggest struggles experienced in the first 100 days of becoming the sales ops leader. He’ll explain how and why he prioritized his sales ops team’s efforts immediately. And he’ll go on to describe how his team gets a lot done with minimal headcount and budget. Todd will continue the discussion by describing how he deals with unrealistic expectations and timelines, and how he says no without receiving any political blow back. Todd will describe how his sales ops department is a key piece to Concentra’s overall sales strategy, and how he partners with the sales leader to accelerate the organization's rate of revenue growth. We conclude our talk by looking at the first three actions newly appointed sales operations leaders can take right now to immediately make an impact, and to be seen as a strategic part of sales and operations planning.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we discuss how to implement a sales organizational structure with Todd Skiiles, senior vice president of sales and solutions at Ryder. In our first segment, Greg and Todd discuss how to implement a hunter farmer sales organizational design. Todd shares how he decided to implement this model, and what the results of this shift in org models have been. He also explains how to assess your current sales team against new profiles in the org chart, and how to make adjustments if needed. In our second segment, Greg and Todd discuss whether or not it is necessary to make adjustments to the sales compensation plan to accommodate the new sales org design. He’ll also explain how this change effected Ryder’s overall sales strategy, specifically how it changed his team’s interactions with Ryder’s customers. In our final segment, Todd summarizes all the above information into an action plan you can apply to your sales organizational structure implementation.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we discuss how to conduct a successful product launch with Andrew Wright, vice president of design at Cypress Semiconductor. In our first segment, Greg and Andrew discuss launch planning. Andrew shares how to determine the goal of launching a new product, such as revenue expectations and how to decide on the initial set of target customers. He also explores how to set up organizational readiness, specifically with the sales team, to make sure they are ready for this product launch. He then briefly touches on who is responsible for the launch, how to figure the launch budget, what risks to take into account and how to measure the success or failure of the new product introduction. In our second segment, Greg and Andrew discuss how to execute the product launch. Andrew shares time objectives, sales enablement, reference customers and testimonials. Then he elaborates on how he measures success during and after the launch. In our final segment, Andrew summarizes all the above information into an action plan you can apply to your own product launch.

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.