SBI, The Growth Advisory

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Paul Rosen, who is the senior vice president of sales for OnDeck Capital. Paul joined OnDeck Capital in 2012 when the company was doing $13 million in sales. Today, only three years later, the company is doing $160 million in sales and recently had a successful IPO with a market cap of $1.5 billion. On today’s podcast we will discuss how Paul was able to build a corporate strategy that helped scale business sales growth from $13 million to $160 million in three years. In our first segment, Paul talks about the sales strategy a sales leader follows to invest in capital both short-term and long-term, and how brokers helped the company’s corporate strategy in a big way when making these moves. Next, Paul shares with us how to incorporate a direct sales channel to compliment an indirect sales channel to your sales strategy, how to gain mindshare with channel partners without surpassing your corporate strategy budget, all while expanding into new geographic markets and successfully launching new products. In our last segment, Paul wraps up our conversation by sharing advice he would have given himself at the beginning of his journey of being a sales leader in a fast-growth company.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Mike Ellis of ForgeRock about how to successfully drive strategy execution through functional leadership alignment. In our first segment, Mike shares how the CTO drives successful execution of corporate strategy while staying in strategic alignment with the CEO. We discuss how to know when numbers are missed because of poor execution in sales and marketing or if it is because there's a product problem. Next, we talk with Mike about what it takes to keep the marketing strategy in strategic alignment with the overall corporate strategy and bringing that strategy to market. We then touch on the cadence in face-to-face communication and Mike offers advice to ensure the product, marketing and sales teams continuously test and adjust the assumptions in the strategy. In this segment, we also take a look at how to keep strategic alignment when you want to make a corporate strategy shift that could potentially disrupt other teams’ strategy development. In our last segment, we conclude our conversation, and Mike sends us off with three immediate actions to take if you’re a CEO who finds his teams struggling to execute corporate strategy.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Marjara, the CMO of McGraw-Hill Education. McGraw-Hill Education has been publishing print textbooks for 125 years. Today, the company provides e-learning digital technology solutions to educators. Chris, who has spent 20 years marketing software solutions, was hired by McGraw-Hill to lead the marketing team through this business model transformation. With 5,000 employees in 44 countries, this is no easy task. In our first segment, we dive straight into one of the bigger challenges of the task Chris faced: the overall marketing budget and how budget planning works with a job this big. Chris outlines how to secure budget for new marketing initiatives from skeptical executives and, in turn, how to generate a return on the marketing initiatives quickly. Next, Chris discusses how to leverage analytics to accurately measure the effectiveness of the marketing budget and show the value your CMO needs to see to continue funding your marketing initiatives. We also take a look at how to detect poor performing tactics to reallocate the budget toward stronger performing tactics. In our last segment, we recap our discussion and send our listeners off with immediate tactics they can apply to their company’s marketing budget strategy.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Giglio, CEO of Aderant, about how to hire the right sales executive who the CEO can develop a trusting business relationship with in order to make his or her number. In our first segment, Chris shares with us the evaluation process he and his team structured in choosing the right sales executive, how to build a trusting relationship that is transparent between the CEO and sales leader, as well as understanding what is actually happening in the market in order to understand the relationship between your sales and product teams. Next, Chris discusses how he manages to spot a good sales executive in the early stages of hiring when a sales leader is selling a product he himself knows well. Chris also delves into their company’s new design principle and how it shifted their approach to hiring the right person for the job. We also discuss how to assess the reasoning behind why a company isn’t growing. Chris shares his organization’s 360 reviews that give everyone a good look at what’s happening in the overall picture and where the real pain points exist. In our last segment, we summarize our conversation and offer a set of immediate actions you can take to implement into your executive recruiting design in order to find the right sales executive for your organization.

Between competition, emerging technologies and changing consumer behaviors, it’s hard to stay on-point as a marketer. There is no easy way to hit your marketing objectives in today’s world but, as we learn this week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, you can increase your odds of hitting your number by simplifying your processes with a marketing strategy that aligns with the strengths of your marketing team. Today we’re joined by Jane Gasdaska, general manager of U.S. products supply and distribution at Philips 66, to discuss how to do just that. We start our conversation with a broad discussion of marketing objectives, outsourcing vs. training staff and content strategy, where Jane shares her experiences with crafting a marketing strategy from the ground up, as well as switching a company from a non-digital marketing strategy to a digital one. She also discusses when to implement a new marketing strategy, rather than try to mend what’s already in place. We continue our conversation by discussing the idea of matching strategy to skills, whether by connecting your in-house teams to tasks that suite them, rounding them out specialized talent or by enterprising with boutique agencies for specialized tasks. She also provides tips on identifying the types of content that most lend themselves to outsourcing, such as social media management or content strategy & creation. We end by leaving you with some actionable advice on identifying skill gaps and filling them, so that you can get started today on hitting your number tomorrow.

You want to hit your numbers and still have a life outside of the office? This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing Podcast, we’re joined by Phil Aaronson, the director of sales enablement at Oracle, to discuss how he maintains a healthy work/life balance while still hitting his numbers year after year. We start our conversation by looking at how a sales enablement leader can set healthy boundaries within his or her organization, and we share tips on managing and maintaining reasonable expectations. We go on to identify project management roles and responsibilities that are often misaligned between the sales leadership and sales enablement teams, which leads to repetition and grind. We also talk through strategy development and the controversy around writing a sales enablement charter into your sales enablement strategy and discuss if there’s merit to the approach. Next, we discuss something that’s very hot right now: the idea of writing a sales playbook to prove your worth. We conclude by talking with Phil about his opinions on watermarks, certification and gamification as tools to keep your team honed-in on their goals.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, Mike Balow, the executive vice president of sales at Cypress Semiconductor, joins us to discuss job security, something that may seem like a myth for a sales executive. However, with 29 years of employment across only four companies, the three-year sales executive lifespan is a trend Mike’s managed to buck, and today he’s here to help you do the same. We begin our conversation by discussing how to establish yourself with a new company, a process that starts with evaluating a potential employer’s hiring practices, culture and values and ends with bringing in the right people to round out your team. We also discuss spotting which sales planning and hiring practices to bring with you to a new organization and which ones to leave in your back pocket. Mike also discusses how he applies the skills he developed as an engineer to his role as a sales executive, such as applying pre-thinking and in-depth planning to functions such as designing a sales plan or product launch. We also discuss how to negotiate common challenges, such as resource management, sales planning and growth expectations, and look at how to build a strong tenure by developing strong partnerships with your business units. We also look at the key elements of a product launch that lends itself to sales. The conversation was wrapped up by talking about the first things you can do, right now, to cement your position and push your company towards its goals.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Steve Byars, the CHRO of the AMX division of Harman International, about how to help a CEO understand if he or she has the right sales and marketing leadership team. In our first segment, Steve discusses understanding what a great sales and marketing executive talent looks like and the list to double check when seeking the right sales leader for your team. Next, we evaluate how to know if the person leading the sales and marketing strategy teams has the particular skill set to manage the goals needed at a specific point in time, as well as, how to manage competency learning curves. In our last segment, Steve shares ways to design a compensation program for a best-in-class marketing and sales leaders that your CEO will love and approve of.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Mark Turner, SVP and GM of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region for Genesys, about how to set up a sales strategy to avoid going from hero to goat overnight due to poor sales forecasting and pipeline management. In our first segment, Mark discusses what his experience has been like being a part of and witnessing 120 end-of-quarter cycles in the software business, and we touch on the three different flavors of surprise that come at every end of quarter. Next, Mark shares with us his team’s best practices in running effective quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and the role the sales operations team must play in order to achieve end-of-quarter sales strategy success. In our last segment, we recap our sales forecasting and pipeline management processing discussion with Mark and share a few takeaways that can be implemented into action and your sales strategy immediately.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Greg Head, the chief marketing officer at InfusionSoft about how to quantify the value a marketing campaign can have on business. In our first segment, Brian shares how to assess if marketing is generating enough demand to fill the top of the funnel and how to draw the line between what project marketing will do and how much sales is responsible for in filling their sales funnel by leads and prospects. Next, we examine the sales and marketing departments a little closer and discuss how much outbound versus inbound should be responsible for lead generation in order to stay profitable in sales revenue growth. We also look at the impact content marketing has on your overall brand marketing strategy. In our last segment, we discuss how, from a small business standpoint, to choose an external service provider and how to make sure that your selection is generating enough benefit to warrant your expense.