SBI, The Growth Advisory

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.

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.

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. 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 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.

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.

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.

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, listen to the podcast now for Bill’s insights. His experience will help set sales enablement leaders 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.