SBI Podcast

Joining us for today’s show is Walt Megura, Vice President of Emerging Industry Segments and Channels for Ericcson.  Walt is here to share his experience in creating new beachheads in verticals that provide future long-term growth to Ericsson. 

Today we are going to demonstrate how to ensure you have the right sales strategy and talent to enter new markets. 

Why is this an important topic? To grow revenue, companies are moving into adjacent spaces.  Assumptions made during the planning process make or break the success of the entry into new markets.  The selling motion that has worked so beautifully for you in other markets may or may not work in new markets. 

In this first segment we discuss how to ensure you have the right sales strategy and talent to enter new markets. To begin, Walt shares an overview of the business challenges faced as Ericcson sought to enter new markets.  For each new market, Walt describes how you determine the value of your solution to the market.  In other words, how did you validate that the ambition to enter the new market is supported by the capabilities of your solution? 

Walt then describes the strategies to enter new markets and outlines the different types of strategies.  Did you have an effectiveness (focus on penetration of the market with land & expand), or an efficiency strategy (profitable business)?

In the second segment we discuss how to assess sales talent and what is required for success in each of the markets you want to enter. How were the sales hiring profiles different that the proven profile of the core business? How do you evaluate existing sales talent, who has been successful in other markets for the new markets?

We wrap up the show by describing the points of differentiation to look for in each new market and how these factors impact the sales strategy.  The variance in sales cycles and buying dynamics will influence how you structure your sales force and the strategy you deploy.

In summary, Walt's interview provides a valuable context to help you avoid the trap of simply applying a proven approach from your core markets. Increase your probability of success by matching your sales strategy and talent to the new market. 

To evaluate your sales strategy for the new market, consider leveraging an interactive calculator that will help you understand if you have a chance at success. Take the Revenue Growth Diagnostic test and rate your Sales Strategy against SBI’s emerging best practices.

https://salesbenchmarkindex.com/revenue-growth-diagnostic

Our guest today is Tiffany Nels, the Chief Marketing Officer for Lifesize.  With 20 years of Tech B2B marketing experience, Tiffany is one of the top B2B revenue growth marketers. Tiffany played a major role in the successful demand generation efforts at Solar Winds and has the right blend of strategy and execution that B2B companies need for success. 

Many B2B marketers have over-rotated to demand generation tactics without enough emphasis on brand. Tiffany is going to make the case for why branding and demand generation are not parallel paths, but rather should be intertwined to give you the highest probability of making your number. 

Tiffany is going to demonstrate how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story through Brand Strategy and Planning. 

Why this topic? Your competitors are making the same claims and promises as you. They are even using the same words. Brands that are built on “who you are” and “what you do” do not result in above average revenue growth. Your brand impacts revenue growth when it gets activated by the sales force and becomes uniquely relevant to your customer and prospects. 

Most buyers are researching and building a consideration set without speaking with the sellers.

Watch as Tiffany describes her company's brand approach. Listen closely as she articulates a brand that has a crisp emotional connection to the audience. Tiffany describes the process and steps to develop the brand story. 

Tiffany shares, "The art of storytelling is what enables brands to grow and win by setting themselves apart. When you develop that discipline and integrate all the way through the funnel to the customer experience, then you have an incredibly sticky experience." 

Did you set the quotas right to drive revenue growth?  The purpose of today's show is to demonstrate how to link the company objectives to sales targets through quota setting.  Leverage this use-case to evaluate how you set your quotas. John has a proven record of accomplishment of increasing profitable recurring revenues faster than his industry and his competitors in a crowded SaaS market. 

Our guest today is John Young, the SVP of Global Sales at NetFortris. vJohn is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic with proven experience in quota setting to guide his sales team’s revenue attainment. Watch as John demonstrates how to link the company objectives to sales rep targets through quota setting.

Why this topic?  A company’s revenue goal needs to be intelligently allocated to divisions, regions, districts, territories, and sales reps. Unfortunately, it rarely is. Quota attainment, a metric tracked by most sales teams, often lies to executives. Reps who make quota do so because their quota expectation was based on the potential of a sales territory. Reps who miss quota do so because their quota expectation was not based on the potential of the assigned sales territory.

In the first segment of the program John shares the process for quota setting, and how to link the company objectives to the individual sale rep revenue goals.  The peanut butter spread approach is replaced with an intelligently allocated goal setting to achieve the company’s revenue goals across the sales team.

Listen as John describes (10:53) the qualitative and quantitative inputs required to accurately assign quotas.  John explains how to intelligently prioritize based on spend potential and a propensity to buy formulas play into your quota setting. 

We wrap up the show (18:32) by discussing how to gain buy-in internally with the sales reps and at the executive level for the quota plan.  This involves also having a clear workload capacity model built indicating how many live deals, accounts, and prospects a sales rep can handle. [p]