Aligning Sales and Marketing

I found my passion. Aligning Sales and Marketing may be the single most important strategic initiative I have been involved in. Although not a new concept, it is one that I initiated and one that helped me understand that this is my passion. It's the culmination of my core strength. IDEATION. The first step was to FOCUS. Focus meant we had to separate the roles of marketing and sales. We promoted one of the Account Executives to VP of Sales and I became the VP of Marketing.

First Base was the sales organization, roles andresponsibilities. We went from having Hybrid Account Managers (who handled both new and existing business) to a focused sales model. We developed an SDR position for prospecting/qualifying, an Account Executive position for targeting and new business, and kept the roles of Account Manager and Pre-Sales Solutions Architect.

Now that I had solved or help solve the issues in sales (i.e., sales cycle, forecasting, compensation, incentives) as well as product development, pricing, legal, compliance, corporate re-brand, product re-brand, and the supporting cast of characters, it was time for someone to focus on marketing...and that's when I found a company to help me make that happen.

Having implemented many CRM's in the past 20 years, I'm a believer in Hubspot as a product and a company.

Inbound is the new LeadGen...

Even though we already had an enterprise implementation of Salesforce.com for CRM, what we were missing is the Top of Funnel touches for acquisition.

Hubspot helped me formalize the marketing assault.

Leadership

So now that you've heard me tell my story, you may be wondering if I have the right stuff for your leadership team. We may not find that out until we've worked together for a while, but the following assessment should give you some insight.

center for creative leadership

This assessment of me was completed in August of 2016. Three years into my career at LightBound.

Since its introduction by the Center for Creative Leadership in 1987, Benchmarks has been used by over 16,000 organizations and 200,000 leaders. Benchmarks for Managers is a comprehensive 360-degree assessment for middle to upper-level managers that measures 16 competencies critical for success, as well as five possible career derailers. This in-depth analysis of observable behaviors provides managers with a solid assessment of their leadership competencies.

Key Strengths

Strategic Perspective
- Does Homework
- Links responsibilities with the mission of the whole organization
- Understands higher management values, and how management operates
- Has solid working relationships with higher management
Being a Quick Study
- Quickly masters new technical knowledge
- Quickly masters new vocabulary
- Learns new skills quickly
Decisiveness
- Does not hesitate when making decisions
- Does note become paralyzed or overwhelmed when facing action
Change Management
- Leads change by example
- Accepts change as positive
- Adapts to the changing external pressure facing the organization
Leading Employees
- Is willing to delegate important tasks
- Actively promotes direct reports to senior management
- Rewards hard work and dedication to excellence
Confronting Problem Employees
- Is able to fire or deal firmly with loyal or incompetent people w/o Procrastination
- Appropriately documents employee performance problems
Participative Management
- Is open to the input of others
- Encourages direct reports to share
- Listens to individuals at all levels in the organization
Building Collaborative Relationships
- When working with a group he doesn't manage, finds common ground
- When working with peers, gains their cooperation
Compassion and Sensitivity
- Is willing to help an employee with personal problems
- Is calm and patient with direct reports who need to miss work
- Conveys compassion toward employees when they experience loss
Putting People at Ease
- Has a pleasant disposition
- Has a good sense of humor
- Has personal warmth
Respect for Differences
- Respects cultural, religious, gender, and racial differences
- Treats people of all backgrounds fairly
- Values working with a diverse group of people
- Is comfortable managing people with diverse backgrounds
Taking Initiative
- Is prepared to seize opportunities when they arise
- Responds to boss who provides autonomy by working hard to develop skills
- Is creative and innovative
Composure
- Does not become hostile or moody when things are not going his way
- Contributes more to solving organization problems than complaining
- Remains calm during crisis
Balance Between Personal and Work Life
- Has activities and interests outside of career
Self-Awareness
- Admits personal mistakes
- Does an honest Self-Assessment
- Seeks corrective feedback to improve himself
- Sorts out his strengths and weaknesses fairly and accurately
Career Management
- Responds to feedback from direct reports
- Actively cultivates a good relationship with superior
- Actively seeks opportunities to develop professional relationships with others

...and now you're wondering about my shortcomings?

Yes, Dane can be dictatorial at times in his approach (as perceived by direct reports)
Yes, Dane can be reluctant to share decision making with others (but his peers don't think that's the case)
Yes, Dane does not resolve conflict at times
Yes, Dane does not encourage and involve all team members (only the doers, achievers, and those committed)

...and here are some of the things my direct reports say about my strengths as their manager. These are verbatim based on 360 degree feedback.

Ability to adapt to ever changing situations
Dedication to job and company
Can-do spirit
Academic knowledge of how to sell
Verbalizing ideas, sharing a concept, carrying it to execution
Good Speaker
Dane is a great salesman. Great knowledge of the business and products. Works well with management to make the best changes for the future of the company
Great at sharing ideas from his experience to help his team with account planning, organization, cold calling, networking
Dane is overall a great boss, he's not a micro-manager and let's those with the ability to manage their workload.
He listens and values your input
His naturally pleasant and has a good sense of humor
Dane is very good at the analytical side of sales.
He is good at taking a step back from what looks like a simple solution, looking at the big picture, and then tailoring a solution around that big picture
Dane's interpersonal skills draw people in and creates a comfortable surrounding.
He draws on past experiences to assist with decision making and development strategies, but is also tuned into the current status of the industry, and where necessary changes need to take place to remain competitive
Persistence
Leadership
Self-awareness
Collaboration
Very technical and very well spoken

...and here are some of the ares my direct reports think I need to improve as a manager

Teaching vs. doing sales (yes, I can be known to go on auto-pilot)
Being a servant leader
A better listener
Needs to be more direct in approach

Executive Coaching and Leadership

Having been involved in formal executive coaching sessions with Chris Bittenger from Open Pivot has helped me raise my game to new levels. More on this in the last section.

It's difficult to assess whether your executive team has the experience to get the job done unless they've "been there, done that". You want to know if they have the chops for the difficult conversations and a commitment to excellence by having been through a formal executive management training process. Essentially, a long-term MBA program in a living, breathing, and ever changing environment within a company. Otherwise, how are you going to know whether the success of that company was attributed to their efforts - or just a pretender and a promise. Granted, much of my experience comes from being involved with relatively small companies but my impact was real. What I see in many tech startups is people that are simply along for the ride. Once they leave or the company is sold, they have difficulty navigating the waters of what once seemed so easy and successful.

So let me share a little about Open Pivot and how Chris Bittenger helped me and the management team at LightBound rraise our game.

Leading, Building and Managing Teams

No matter what business you're in, people are the business. People within our companies as well as people who represent our customers. Buyers and sellers. It's no more complicated than that Oh, and influencers :)

In my mind, you either have a people problem or a people opportunity. Having spent my entire career in sales & marketing, I've never seen a spreadsheet solve a problem or create an opportunity. I've seen leadership problems and opportunities, product management problems and opportunities, and cultural problems and opportunities. You get the drift. If we aren't in agreement on this, then my contribution will only have minimal impact.

Pre-sales engineer/architect

Having been in the position of Pre-Sales Technical Architect helped me mentor and develop the position we have now at LightBound. Make no mistake, this is a sales job...and for companies that get this right, sales and sales cycles become more predictable, and ultimately generate more revenue. It allows you to supercharge sales if your service needs to pass the litmus test with engineers and technical personnel.

job descriptions

In the last two companies I've worked for, they were small enough that we didn't have an HR department and we were growing the sales department from scratch. So, over the year that development of job descriptions fell to me.

Here's an example of one I wrote

Sales Operations

technical Account management

Hiring a Technical Account Manager (at two different companies) has been instrumental in increasing client retention and achieving sustainable revenue growth. In the monthly recurring revenue (MRR) infrastructure business, this is critical. The reason is that growing year over year revenue, you need to maintain your base of business. The long-term nature of the agreements you sell helps smooth out the revenue and builds the base, but if you lose a client, then we all know it costs 10 times more to get a new client.

legal liaison

In working for the last two companies and having responsibility for negotiating the terms of each sale, the responsibility for negotiating the legal terms fell to me. At LightBound, I spent the better part of a year rewriting the MSA's, SLA's, and paperwork required to book sales. Generally speaking, I handled the business terms and I worked with outside counsel, Barnes and Thornburg, for clarification and changes in the areas of indemnification and...

Suffice it to say that I have a significant amount of experience in reading and modifying legal documents. Even though I am not a lawyer, the task always seemed to default to me because it came naturally to me (and because I wanted to get the sales closed).

Tools

I've alwasy been a firm believer in providing the right tools to do the job. In itself, the tool cannot solve the problem, but when you combine the right tool with the right person for the role - and then train them to use the tool with specific goals and metrics, then you really have something measurable.

LinkedIn has become one of the key tools for connecting with potential suspects and prospects. We all know how it works and the potential benefits, but in the BTB world, there's no better place to so better research about your Persona. I'll cover more of the persona in the Hubspot overview.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is the next evolution of LinkedIn. Sales Navigator allows you to target the companies that are most like your ideal customers from a demographic aspect. While these are basic demographics primarily, it's a great place to start. It allos you to search for the companies, verticals, and the people with the titles you are hoping to engage with. This allows you to effectively gather your list of people you are targeting.

marginators and calculators

Do your salespeople have the ability to propose, quote, and negotiate, knowing the discounts and terms available to them when they are engaged in the final stages of acquiring clients? My experience is that this is not always the case. Worse yet, many times the managers wonder why the sales people can't close the deal when they haven't given the salesperson the ability to discount to the same levels as the VP of Sales. Accountability without authority does not make for a happy and healthy culture.

Product Development and Bringing Products to Market

n|Frame

I was lucky enough to be involved in the genesis of what we now call "Cloud".

Back in 2002, I worked for a small consulting company, Data Communications Consulting. DCC was subsequently acquired by One Call Internet. Shortly thereafter, we re-branded to n|Frame. One Call Internet was a co-location provider and one of Indiana's first ISP's. Our claim to fame was our largest client, monster.com. Back in the day, monster.com garnered the distinction of flowing more bandwidth to the Internet than anyone previously after their first Super Bowl ad.

Like many other companies back then, we realized that the co-location and ISP business were profitable long-term, but we needed to pursue other complimentary businesses to increase revenue and profitably. That's when we started offering managed hosting, which became know known as Infrastructure as a Service (now known as simply "Cloud"). We quickly brought on 2-3 large clients who offered SaaS and Web retail services. Revenue increased from $75/sq.ft. to $500/sq.ft., nearly a 700% increase. But what we did that nobody else was doing at the time was two realizations. We knew why those companies we're buying from us (our market) and we knew what the value was (our price vs. their cost to DIY). We also knew that the other consulting companies in the market would keep their stale business model of time and materials & project-based pricing. Today, that model still proves to be unscalable, which is why you see so many SaaS companies. Everyone wants predictable, recurring revenue, but few companies are organized to go after the business.

The fact is that it took the consulting companies many years to catch on to what we were doing (and many still haven't). Our base services (co-location and ISP) were both "sticky" and based on long-term contracts of 36 months on average. As we layered on additional managed services, those services also became "sticky" by default - and contractually.

To be clear, it wasn't our product development that made us great. It was our ability to market and sell our value proposition, which was outsourcing of the 24x7 labor component as well as the experience we had developed for backing our uptime with an SLA. Combine that with the fact that most technology guys were building their own wheel for the first time (i.e., they had never "been there, done that", and you have some serious traction for a sustainable business model.

Having read this, you'll notice that I didn't say anything about how to develop better products, new products, or how to innovate with the product being the focus. Ultimately, the sale is not made because of the product. It's about solving someones problem, and with their personal and professional objectives in mind.