Market positioning

Jeff Smith

March 30, 2022 by

Jeff has worked in sales for more than 20 years, with the last 12+ years in technology consulting services. He has worked within fast-paced startup environments and large publicly traded firms to build sales teams, start new territories and verticals, develop GTM strategies, implement sales methodologies and channel sales programs. He now leads sales for the Salesforce consulting practice within Huron, a $900M+ global consultancy. Under his leadership, the practice has grown more than 30%. Prior to this, Jeff held leadership roles at Persado and Appirio/Wipro, where he was GM and RVP of Sales for the company’s Manufacturing Business Unit. He believes the best sales people are naturally curious, life long learners – if they are truly interested in their customers’ business and have an eye to helping solve big problems for them, they will be successful.

Why are you passionate about professional services businesses?

Much of my career prior to services was spent selling technology products, and oftentimes product companies fall victim to the old adage “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” With professional services, you are starting from a blank sheet of paper to help clients solve a problem, so you’re able to bring more creativity to real business problems and collaborate on the options with the client.

You’ve spent more than a decade selling into the Salesforce ecosystem, and mastering the art of channel-focused sales. How have things changed in the last few years selling into this particular channel, and how do you see it evolving?

In 2010, another sales person and I were charged with developing the Southeast territory for Appirio. At the time, we could write the name of almost every AE at Salesforce on one side of an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper. We drew a line down the middle and said “I get these, you get those”, and off we went. It was also enough to say “we implement Salesforce”. Today, the Salesforce ecosystem is massive with more than 1800 consulting partners! It’s vital to know exactly what your strengths are (e.g. a certain cloud or a specific vertical) and how you can add value to their sales efforts. You have to know your strengths, your right to win and how you can help Salesforce make their own message more compelling. The hardest part of this is instilling the discipline to say “no” to projects that aren’t in your sweet spot.

Effective market positioning happens when sales and marketing are working together closely. How can CROs and CMOs become more tightly aligned to make a bigger market impact?

This really starts with communication between those two groups – does marketing understand how sales goes to market, and does sales understand what marketing’s objectives are? Both groups need to have a seat at the table when identifying what markets to go after, what problems they solve and who they help solve that problem for. When they start from the same ground rules, and have an appreciation for each other’s KPIs, they have opened the conduit of communication between those two groups. However, to keep that conduit open requires work, which is not in either group’s daily work flow.

One thing I’ve seen to be very successful is to include someone from marketing in sales’ weekly stand-up team calls and push each of the reps to come to the table with trends, insights and feedback they’re seeing and hearing in the marketplace. I want marketing to hear directly from the front line reps what our customers and prospects are saying, allowing us to pivot more quickly and get the support from marketing to emphasize a new message or approach.

Companies looking for that next phase of growth often decide to “go up market”, but it’s not always easy. What are the biggest challenges sales teams face when trying to break into and win business in the enterprise?

Many organizations struggle making the leap from mid-market to enterprise because they expect the same sales process to apply. Though many of the same steps do apply – qualification, understanding business challenges, budgeting, procurement, process, etc. – enterprise buying processes typically involve far more stakeholders, more intensive business case due diligence and a much more formal procurement process. Additionally, the sheer number of projects you’re competing against for budget dollars is huge.

The organizations that I’ve seen be successful in making the leap invest in an enterprise-caliber sales rep to prove out the model and identify their particular differences so they are prepared to scale an altered approach.

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.