SBI, The Growth Advisory

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Fred Florjancic, Chairman of the Board at Ramsey Industries, and member of the board of directors at the Elkay Manufacturing Company and Liberty Tire Recycling, about sales and marketing effectiveness from the board’s perspective as it relates to accelerating revenue growth. In our first segment, Fred helps us understand how a board member should analyze a company during a sales and marketing strategy execution, by walking us through the five Ps of success: the people, the products, the plants, its processes, its prices. We also discuss how often board meetings should take place and how to best prepare for them. Next, Fred fills us in on the impact the CEO can have in leading the marketing and sales strategy to help meet the company’s revenue goals. We also dig a little deeper into what makes a great sales and marketing leader and how to hire the right talent as a board member. In our last segment, Fred shares with us how he strategically aligns his teams, from product to marketing to sales, for the most effective sales strategy.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with John Pierce, the Senior Director of Human Resources for the Americas Region and Global Sales & Marketing team at Motorola, about recruiting strategies he has implemented to attract the best talent in the market. In our first segment, John dives into recruitment and selection strategies with defining how to find the talent pools you need, where they're needed and the numbers that are required. We also learn about a single-page document that helps summarize the talent acquired and further analyze them in three categories: competencies, behaviors and A-player leadership elements. Next, John discusses how to approach the hiring process by sharing qualities to look for in applicants and how to strategically interview potential employees. We then hear John’s perspective on ways to handle an A-player walking out the door, including how to react and what you learn from that process. In our last segment, John shares how to pave transitionary paths for employees looking to move up in their departments and how to prepare them for success once they get there.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jack Whalen, VP of Marketing at Phillips 66, about marketing strategy development. In our first segment, Jack identifies the difference between B2B and B2C marketing objectives, why investing in a lead generation program will support your marketing strategy and how compelling content can catapult your strategy to the next level. Next, Jack shares his experience in experimenting with a lead development team and what the first phase of results looked like. Jack then delves into data tracking and how trends in numbers help tell a story about your current and potential consumers’ behavior. In our last segment, Jack covers how to continue building an innovative marketing strategy in the face of a business acquisition.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Cole, CEO of Intelligrated, about the role the CEO plays in the development of the sales strategy. In our first segment, Chris shares how he managed to gain success and revenue with his company during a difficult economic cycle by listening to customers and crafting products and services that helped his customers succeed. He also discusses how strategically aligning your sales strategy to your customer needs is essential to your overall strategy development. Next, Chris shares with us how he and his company differentiate themselves from others by offering more to their customer than just the product itself. In many ways, his team acts as strategic business consultants to their clients and, in return, they witness a very high percentage of repeat customers. In our last segment, Chris discusses why developing a successful sales strategy requires the perspective of internal and external resources.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jeff White, chief revenue officer of Extreme Networks, about designing a new sales strategy within the first 90 days of a new job. In our first segment, Jeff describes how to become intimately knowledgeable of your business and how to properly analyze an organization in order to pinpoint where the transformative work needs to happen for a new sales plan. Next, Lee walks us through Extreme Network’s corporate strategy, which focuses on being a product innovator. He also discusses the importance of arming your company with subject matter experts in order to gain a deep understanding of your customer and then being able to align your selling strategy accordingly. In our last segment, Lee sends us off with tips on how to manage day-to-day sales and marketing deliverables while executing a 90-day sales strategy transformation.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Samir Joglekar, EVP of sales at Renaissance Learning, about how to lay out a new organizational structure for a company. In our first segment, Samir shares the first things you should evaluate when looking at your organizational design in order to reconstruct the way your departments are currently set up. Next, Samir offers guidance on how to incorporate a new channel to a long standing enterprise in order to gain a deeper connection and build better relationships with customers. In our last segment, Samir sends us off with some tips on how to ensure you’ve supplied your team with the right resources for them to execute and maintain a newly implemented organization structure.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Joel Trammell, CEO of Khorus, about his corporate strategy approach detailed in his book, “The CEO Tightrope,” which describes how to keep your product, marketing and sales teams aligned. In our first segment, Joel discusses what inspired him to write his book and lays out the five core responsibilities of a CEO required to build a corporate level strategy, including owning the vision, providing proper resources, building culture, making decisions and recruiting the right talent. Next, Joel talks with us about his perspective as a board member after serving as a CEO and how to hire the right CEO for the job. In our last segment, Joel walks us through the SCARF theory and how it relates to business strategy. He finishes by telling us how his company’s software product helps organizations maintain their strategic alignment from the top to bottom of a company.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Dave Rennyson, EVP and GM of the Cloud division at Genesys, about how to scale a SaaS company using corporate strategy. In our first segment, Dave discusses how he and his team successfully moved their average deal size from $10,000 to $80,000 with sales management, product focus and strong network security. In our second segment, we talk with Dave about how strategic alignment across all departments is necessary to help grow your company from a small- or mid-sized business to an enterprise, something many SaaS companies want to do but are unable to. In our final segment, Dave shares with us how he was able to move from sales leader to president of his company as well as make the shift from functional management to general management.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Lee Wood, SVP of sales operations, planning and strategy at Thomson Reuters, about building a successful sales operations strategy. In our first segment, Lee covers the basic structure of a sales operations department, the number of people needed, what roles they perform and how they are structured. Next, we walk through how to identify, design and create a set of reports that consistently satisfy the needs of the executive leadership team and how to continue running your quarterly and annual strategic planning process. This includes sales training and why Thomson Reuters chooses to keep a sales enablement function as a part of their sales operations strategy. In our last segment, Lee shares with us the reasoning behind his personal decision to make the leap from sales management to sales operations.

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we speak with Jim Tedesco, SVP of North American sales at Veeam Software, about strategic planning for sales in the enterprise software industry. In our first segment, we discuss the planning process Jim and his team use to define a revenue goal for the upcoming year and the unpredictability that comes with introducing new software to companies. In our second segment, Jim shares what data is required to drive a revenue growth strategy and your best resource to acquire it from. In our final segment, we look at determining a budget to make your projected quota, how to allocate it and how to secure it from your company.