Marketing

Emma Sprague

January 25, 2021 by

Emma Sprague is a partner at KNP Communcations, a private firm that helps its clients become great communicators by providing in-person and virtual training and coaching for organizations and individuals globally. Before KNP, she founded Upswing Strategies, a media and communications firm.

Why are you passionate about helping entrepreneurs?

It takes guts (and time, and heart, and so much resilience) to launch an idea out into the world and fight for it to thrive. A lot of that has to come from the entrepreneur, but there are places where guidance and investment from others are essential. I’m grateful to be in a position to help entrepreneurs, both with my first-hand experience launching a business and because that business is focused on helping good people with good ideas deliver their message, tell their story, and make their pitch with the impact they desire. I am animated by the process of helping people shape their most authentic and compelling way to communicate and to lead, and to feel confident in both.

You’ve done a lot of social science research into why people listen to and follow some leaders more than others. How can founders hone their speaking and presentation skills to be a more inspirational leader?

Leading is a lot easier and more effective when people want to follow, when they are inspired, when they admire you and feel you’re headed somewhere together. That feeling is informed by the emotional character judgements we innately make about one another. Is she my kind of person? Does she have the ability to influence my world? One of the best ways to inform that judgement and inspire is by communicating your vision, your values and your story well and authentically. Becoming a magnetic speaker demands deliberate attention to how you prepare, how you show up, and how you deliver. That approach requires harnessing your individual strengths and personality, honing strategies that align your words, body language and voice with your message, and building a routine that ensures you approach each engagement with energy and poise.

During the pandemic companies had to shift quickly from in-person to virtual events. What can we learn from the companies who’ve been successful in this new format? How do they keep engagement high?

The first thing to do is acknowledge that virtual engagements – while powerful in a lot of important ways – are a really difficult mechanism for holding people’s attention and making true connections. That means the bar is much higher and you have to be all the more intentional in building a plan that meets your goals and captivates your participants. And that’s exactly where you start – what is your team hoping to get out of this and what do you want others to get out of this? If those answers aren’t crystal clear, you will flop and be lost in the sea of virtual panels rattling on behind someone’s email screen. Once your goals are set, some good things to consider: shorter presentations and shorter events; super engaging speakers only; incorporate multiple formats; get people on their feet; find ways to break through the screen; and build individual follow up into the plan.

You are a mentor and coach for Bates’ Bobcat Ventures entrepreneurship competition, and are deliberate about reaching leaders early in their careers. What advice would you give to founders on how to help and source future leaders?

I love working with students and young people. Confidence in public speaking, and so many other skills that make better leaders, better entrepreneurs, are ultimately a matter of routine and practice. The sooner you introduce and build those habits, the more they become second nature, muscle memory and mindset. I like to introduce students to a more holistic way of communicating – not just the words, but your energy, your movement, how you feel about what you’re saying – tactics for welcoming and handling nerves, and telling stories as a tool for persuasion. My advice to founders: think about what skill you wish you’d mastered earlier in your career and pass it on. Where to start: connect with schools you attended, incubators in your region, and by word of mouth. Coach one person and more will come. The long view goal is to create better prepared leaders for our teams and our world.

Megan Adler

January 23, 2021 by

Megan is a branding and marketing pro with deep expertise building brands from the ground up. In 2002 she founded Sublime Designs Media, a branding and creative marketing firm that takes a fresh approach to solving a wide range of marketing challenges. Whether it’s helping cloud services companies stand out, helping a 20-year old medical physics company modernize their brand, or helping a space camp transition into business services, Megan thrives on thinking outside the box.

What do you love about helping entrepreneurs and founders?

I love helping to make change happen. When you work directly with a founder, you can effect change across an organization — or even an entire industry. It’s exciting to watch that unfold as the founder meets goals and scales the business.

You’ve helped dozens of product and services companies create brands that stand out and stand for something. What is the secret to creating a memorable and impactful brand?

The secret to creating an effective brand is connecting with customers. Your customers are filled with important insights about what your messaging and design should look and sound like. Rather than guessing as to what they want or need, you should ask them. They’ll tell you why they hired you, how they see you as different from competitors, and what sold them on your services. You’ll be surprised to learn that it’s often vastly different from how you perceive yourself and your brand. These insights are invaluable input for your brand strategy. When you use them as the foundation for your brand, you’ll connect with customers emotionally and engender brand loyalty.

What are the elements of an effective brand strategy?

An effective brand really rests on three things:

Knowing what drives you. This is your mission, values and brand promise. These three powerful elements should act as your north star for decision making and everything around your brand.
Having a simple, consistent, and differentiated story. People have limited attention spans. Nothing captures their attention more than a compelling brand story, especially when it’s told in a unique voice.
Crafting a visual identity. This is what makes your brand look and feel different – your logo, fonts, colors, icons, graphics, and photos. It will set you apart and create an emotional connection to your brand.

Gary Rinedollar

January 23, 2021 by

Gary started his career in computer science coding weapon systems, but quickly discovered his passion lay outside a lab. For 30+ years, Gary ping ponged between sales and building alliances because he loves working on different sides of the same coin. He’s led sales, business development and M&A at companies from HP, Oracle, and Sun to Amberpoint and Appirio, and is now an advisor to organizations looking to scale their businesses, and build effective partner and go-to-market strategies.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

The most promising technology in the world can’t be brought to life without smart people behind it. They are the ones who create the real value, and that’s what excites me. I also love being more closely aligned with the customer’s business objectives. I’ve worked for hardware, software and services companies over the years, and the conversations in services companies are completely different. In hardware, conversations revolve around how fast are your chips, when will you ship it, install it, get it up and running. In software, they revolve around features and functions. In services, the conversations steer more towards “why are we doing this and how can we make customers happier?” They compete on the value they provide, not the bits and bytes.

You’ve helped guide more than a dozen technology and services companies on their business development, alliances, and channel strategy. Why are these elements such a critical part of any company’s growth strategy?

Partnerships and alliances are the fuel that drives company growth. Partnerships and alliances can help in so many areas, whether that’s growing revenue by attracting new customers or broadening a company’s offerings, or expanding brand awareness and market presence, or rounding out areas of perceived weakness. Partnering is also a good way to speed your time to market if you choose to go that path rather than build on your own. Your channel strategy should consider each of these areas, and depending on what stage you’re in or your end goal, you turn the dials in different areas.

What is the biggest mistake companies make when building their channel strategy?

Going for quantity, not quality, when forming alliances. Too many organizations use partnerships to look larger or more established, or to convey a sense of momentum, when in fact they are typically lightweight with no strategic value. This is dangerous because it creates disillusion with employees about the value of partners, and confusion about which partners should be prioritized or invested in. When it comes to alliances, aim for quality over quantity, and take the time to understand and communicate how they integrate into the business, whether that’s with the sales team, product teams or shared marketing.

When is the right time in a company’s journey to hire an alliance lead?

It depends on what your go-to-market strategy is. For example, do you want to broaden distribution? Do you want to acquire capabilities or expand internationally, or even get acquired yourself? If your strategy is to say OEM your technology through channel partners, you’ll likely want to hire an alliance executive early. If you’re going to market tightly aligned with your partners’ sales channel, you’ll want a senior person to manage those relationships. However, if it’s more about expanding your brand presence or handling partner events and requests, someone more junior might be able to handle those things.

Edwin Abl

January 18, 2021 by

For more than 15 years, Ed has been helping high growth products and services companies build effective sales and marketing programs. Most recently, he was the CMO for Modulr, an award-winning FinTech company that raised over £100M in funding and consistently doubled revenue and pipeline YoY. Prior to this he led EMEA marketing for Appirio. His background in sales then into marketing GTM, along with his experience as an entrepreneur building his own companies, has made him a sought after advisor and GTM coach for VC-backed startups.

Why are you so passionate about helping entrepreneurs?

I love the build phase, and helping companies and people get to the next level. It’s incredibly exciting to help form the strategies, processes and teams that help a company achieve their vision, change a market, and make an impact on their industry. A number of years ago I started a weekly newsletter for CEOs, investors and revenue leaders who needed to understand more about the B2B go-to-market space.

You’ve spent 15+ years leading marketing and sales programs at services companies like Appirio to one of the hottest product companies in fintech. What advice would you give to first-time founders looking to build out their sales and marketing operations?

Marketing is often perceived as the poorer relation in a company’s go-to-market strategy, but with changes in the sales funnel and the expanded impact of marketing to revenue, the function needs to be taken seriously. Most CEOs and founders do not have a background in marketing and the first thing they do is hire a sales team. But without marketing as the enabling function, those sales people may struggle. The key is to align marketing across the whole customer journey, including marketing, sales and customer success. Marketing is not just events, it’s so much more.

You do a lot of work with investors and founders to evaluate and improve sales and marketing alignment. What are the most common blindspots companies have in this area?

Far too many companies don’t spend enough time refining their value proposition, ideal audience profiles, positioning and messaging. Without that as a foundation, sales and marketing alignment will suffer, and sales capabilities will be much lower than they need be. The other blind spot is a general lack of understanding and willingness to invest in marketing to drive sales. Marketing is too often seen as a cost centre rather than a revenue driver.

Jeff Kaplan

January 12, 2021 by

Jeff is a professional services veteran with more than three decades in strategic marketing and research. After working as a research and benchmarking lead at firms like IDC, Dataquest and META group, Jeff joined INS as head of strategic marketing, which was then acquired by Lucent. He founded THINKstrategies in 2001 to focus on the business implications of on-demand services before the cloud was even formed. Since then he has become a go-to expert for companies on sourcing, for vendors on go-to-market strategies, and for venture capital on investment decisions. He thrives on helping professional services firms capitalize on new market opportunities by clearly communicating their differentiators.

What do you love about helping and guiding people-based businesses?

Services businesses play a critical role in helping customers get the most out of their technology investments and innovations, and it’s rewarding to empower and enable those businesses. I’ve worked with a number of consultancies that were originally formed to simply help clients deploy “off-the-shelf” software solutions, and helped them achieve greater growth and sustainability by more fully integrating those solutions into their clients’ organizational processes. When they see the impact they can have on their clients’ business operations and quality of life, it gives them a huge sense of pride.

What has changed the most in the services space in the last few years?

What’s changed is the recognition that cloud and subscription-based services are not only a viable alternative to traditional on-premise products, but that they are strategic solutions that are essential to meeting today’s escalating business challenges. As a result, the most successful professional services firms are those that are not only proficient in deploying cloud-based solutions, but are also skilled at using them to improve how they operate and interact with clients.

Why do you think the Third Wave of cloud computing is an even bigger opportunity for services businesses than the first two waves?

The Third Wave of cloud computing applies the technological innovations and new operating models that evolved from departmental (first-wave) and enterprise-centric (second-wave) applications to inter-enterprise business processes (e.g. multimodal e-commerce, real-time supply chain). And as the pandemic has dramatically shown, the next wave of cloud deployment must be at a global scale while reaching all of us remotely, no matter where we live and work. Putting these processes together requires a combination of specialized, technical skills and support to manage cloud solutions from multiple independent software vendors and cloud providers — skills and support that customers will need from trusted partners with proven capabilities. Because of the strategic nature of these business processes, the third wave of cloud consultancies will also require a higher level of expertise in areas such as cybersecurity, AI and automation to help their clients achieve greater efficiency, security and competitive advantage.