Leadership

Marketing Operations Best Practices-- Webinar July 16th

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Join us for a Webinar on July 16th at 8am PT/11am ET. We'll have terrific guests speakers - Judy Ash, Director of Strategic Marketing, NetApp, and Jennifer Pockell-Wilson, Director, Global Marketing Operations, Polycom. Learn how to gain executive management approval and drive fast results.

• Discover how to implement Marketing Operations best practices in your organization


• Learn how to gain executive management approval and cooperation while circumventing internal roadblocks


• Hear best practice success stories and advice from leading experts in Marketing Operations

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now by clicking here.

Posted June 23, 2008 | Permalink

Managed Services Provider (MSP) Benchmark Study

by Sridhar Ramanathan

We are conducting research in conjunction with Untangle, an open source network gateway company and partner to MSPs nationwide, and welcome you to join in on the survey we're fielding. We're conducting this independent market research study to help new and existing MSPs learn from their peers.

Subject: Learn how Managed Services Providers (MSPs) stack up on services and pricing

Purpose: Helping new and existing MSPs learn from their peers

Topics:

• Comparison of MSP service offerings


• Benchmark on how these services are priced


• Insight into the next big offering in managed services

To find out more or to begin the survey, click here to get started:

Respondents who complete the entire survey by May 23, 2008, will receive a detailed report of the study results – valuable and strategic data to help guide and keep your MSP business on track!

About Us:
Pacifica Group, founded in 2001, is an independent consulting firm that provides a range of business strategy and marketing services including market research, market assessments, product planning and launch, channel development, and interim executive/management roles.

Posted April 24, 2008 | Permalink

Turning Anxiety Into Advantage

by Sridhar Ramanathan

My fellow consulting firm owners and corporate exec buddies often ask me, “Aren’t you nervous about being self-employed and supporting a family of six on an unpredictable salary?” The answer is “yes.”

In the early days of my practice, I found myself very worried about the up and down nature of consulting after I’d grown so accustomed to the steady paychecks over my twelve year tenure at HP. Now after being in business for seven years, I actually find anxiety to be a very useful leadership tool.

This isn’t entirely an original insight. Andy Grove warned us long ago with his book Only The Paranoid Survive. My point is that it doesn’t have to be scary and painful if you embrace anxiety as another useful emotion like anger, frustration, etc and put it to good work such as in driving change in an organization. Here are just a few thoughts on how anxiety has worked for me and how it could work for you as well.

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Posted March 23, 2008 | Permalink

Corporate Integrity and the Role of Marketing

by Sridhar Ramanathan

One of the bright spots in IT spending today is enterprise software and services that support the alphabet soup of compliance regulations (SEC, SOX, PCI, HIPAA, FISMA, OSHA, etc.). One of our clients, SAP, is doing a great job capturing share as the market for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software is expanding rapidly. Perhaps one of the key motivators for this growth is fear: fear of facing stiff financial penalties and/or even prison sentences for non-compliance. Examples in the business software industry alone include: Computer Associates’s execs being jailed for SEC violations and McAfee facing a $50M penalty for accounting trickery. But compliance is actually further down the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Corporate integrity would be a higher rung which calls corporate managers to “do the right thing” and elevate the organizations’ contribution beyond its immediate stakeholders.

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Posted March 19, 2008 | Permalink

On Giving Tough Feedback

by Sridhar Ramanathan

If you’re an executive you’ve probably done share your share of “coaching” (best case) or “cussing” (worst case) when an employee or peer has done something that you strongly disapprove. As consultants, we have the luxury to speak out if we think our client is making a big mistake or doing something that we do not “approve” because we see a better solution. This last week a CEO wrote me “it is not often that one comes across an individual who is able, capable and willing to provide such direct feedback. I appreciate it and am truly glad of it.” It made me stop and think what is it that really works when giving people tough feedback or in handling conflict. Here are the steps I personally take when dealing with conflict between two people or when having to provide hard feedback.

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Posted March 15, 2007 | Permalink

Selling to the CFO – A Dinner Conversation

by Sridhar Ramanathan

“Make it a double” barked Chris to the bartender to be heard above the restaurant din.

“Guess your boss came down on you pretty hard, huh?” said Jo.

“Well, I’m angry with myself more than anyone else for not being able to keep a two hundred thousand deal from evaporating” replied Chris.

“That’s why I wanted to buy you a drink, Jo” said Chris with a note of humility.

“I know you’re CFO of a publicly traded company and I figured you could coach me. You know…how to sell someone like you” whispered Chris as he began sipping his martini.

Continue reading "Selling to the CFO – A Dinner Conversation"

Posted March 4, 2007 | Permalink

The Power of No

by Sridhar Ramanathan

One of the most powerful statements you can make to someone is “no.” It can immediately trigger some strong reactions ranging from quiet resentment to outright rage. In my little kids, it can trigger a tantrum. We let our kids watch thirty minutes of the movie “Cars” last night and boy were they unhappy when we said “no” to more movie time. So clearly it’s a powerful word. But is there a more effective of way of saying “no” without triggering all the sound and fury that comes along with it? Here are a few stories and suggestions I want to pass along.

Continue reading "The Power of No"

Posted February 19, 2007 | Permalink

The Monk and the Riddle

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Recommended reading. Here’s a business book that reads more like an engaging novel than a dry tome. It’s written by Randy Komisar, known here in Silicon Valley as the Virtual CEO of companies like WebTV and TiVo. He was CEO of LucasArt and co-founder of Claris, the Apple spin-off. I used to work for his wife, Debra Dunn, at HP when she ran the video server business unit (checkout this talk Randy and Debra gave together at the Stanford series on Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders). Now back to the book. Why do I recommend this one?

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Posted November 27, 2006 | Permalink

Focus on the Stars

by Sridhar Ramanathan

What a hornet’s nest I stepped into this week. Recall that I was the featured speaker at a high tech company’s monthly management seminar series on leadership. One of the leadership practices I recommended is to focus on your star players not on your weakest players. It’s so easy to be dragged down by the bottom performers. But let’s face it. Your greatest gains come from your best players. In fact, I recommended firing the bottom dwellers so you don’t waste time on them. That triggered a reaction. Here’s the push back I got and my response. I would really welcome your views on this touchy topic.

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Posted August 4, 2006 | Permalink

Leading on Purpose

by Sridhar Ramanathan

When was the last time you took a few hours with your team to discuss its purpose? Executives and managers of successful companies are so busy working on the “what” (projects, deliverables, deadlines, issues, etc.) that they have very little time reflecting on the “why” (purpose, meaning, and the intent) behind their actions. They rarely stop to answer fundamental questions such as:

• Why is our organization here?
• What contribution do we make to the company, our customers and shareholders?
• Are we working on what’s most important?
• Are we doing the right thing or just doing things right?

Answers to these questions will help your organization produce better results and inspire breakthrough contributions. The mere discussion of these questions is quite motivational and empowering. It allows for new possibilities and breakthrough ideas that haven’t had the opportunity to emerge.

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Posted August 2, 2006 | Permalink

Successful Board Meetings

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Getting skewered and scorched in a board meeting seems almost a badge of honor for entrepreneurs/executives especially here in Silicon Valley. I’ve certainly learned the hard way myself on what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps some lessons are best learned that way but I sure wish I had these two fantastic resources back in b-school.

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Posted July 27, 2006 | Permalink

Leading High Performance Teams

by Sridhar Ramanathan

This week I was invited to address 80-100 engineering managers later this month on the topic of leading high performance teams. This “by the bay” high tech firm, asked me to share good management practices from my years as a senior manager at HP and at Pacifica Group where we serve a diverse client base. I’m no Peter Drucker or Ken Blanchard but I do have a few philosophies and observations to share. The specific question I’m answering here is: what can a manager do to lead the team to higher performance levels? Here are my suggestions. I’d be most grateful to hear your reactions before I bake them into the PowerPoint presentation. So please comment on this blog or shoot me an email to sridhar at pacifica-group.com.

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Posted July 9, 2006 | Permalink

Assessing the VP Job Offer --Due Diligence Questions

by Sridhar Ramanathan

“Now that I’ve got the job offer for VP Marketing, what due diligence questions should I be asking?” asked my dear friend, Doug, this week. Over the last five years, we’ve seen our share of executives transition in and out of jobs with our clients. These suggested questions are based on having seen both perspectives—the company’s and the executive’s. I think you’ll find them generalizable to most senior management jobs.

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Posted July 1, 2006 | Permalink

The Importance of a Corporate Story

by Sridhar Ramanathan

If you're a Marketing executive you probably already appreciate greating messaging skills. We've had the wonderful opportunity to work with some of the finest messaging strategists--Rich Binell and Greg Galle of C2 LLC. In the spirit of sharing best practices, we encourage you to checkout this link where the C2 guys show you why it's important that your company have a story.

Posted April 28, 2006 | Permalink

Leadership Focus -- Results versus Activities

by Sridhar Ramanathan

One of my favorite bloggers is Guy Kawasaki, ex Apple executive and CEO of Garage Technology ventures. He is both entertaining and insightful as he delivers daily advice for entrepreneurs. His recent posting, “How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion” is a must read if you are committed to stamping out bureaucracy and mediocrity in your company. One of my own pet peeves is the tendency to focus on activities rather than results. As leaders, we owe it to our organization to delineate expected results from all the urgent/important and, all too often, urgent/non-important activities that consume people.

Here’s my view of the results that sales and marketing professionals must deliver.

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Posted April 22, 2006 | Permalink

Ownership – A Key Trait for Business Leadership

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Ever notice how often the term “ownership” is used in job descriptions and resumes? Usually the sentence is phrased as “must demonstrate ownership”. But how often do you really see exemplary ownership behavior in your organization? The dictionary defines ownership as “having and controlling property.” Let’s examine this behavior in the context of the role of sales, marketing, and channel manager professional. You can see that ownership is largely about acting as if you literally owned and controlled the “property” which may be sales prospects, marketing initiatives, or channel partners.

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Posted February 10, 2006 | Permalink

Sales and Marketing - A Sibling Rivalry or Business Partnership?

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Sometimes sibling rivalry is a good thing. It can actually push kids to carve out their identities more distinctly and to perform better. The same is true in the business world. CEOs often encourage some healthy tension to push the organization to higher levels of performance. Between Sales and Marketing, for instance, you want Sales to push Marketing to define winning products while Marketing should be pushing Sales to keep prices up despite pleas for deep discounts. The same tension exists between Engineering and Support. Support would love more design for supportability built in, and Engineering would love not to worry about documentation and supportability needs.

But sometimes sibling rivalry goes too far. Often I hear CEOs of technology companies talk about the virtual fist fights between Sales and Marketing when it comes to handoffs. Having one VP of Sales & Marketing, unfortunately, does not always remedy the issue. In fact, some of the conflicts between the silos directly lead to longer cycle times between first customer contact and final contract. This clearly hurts revenue growth. So the problem statement then is: how do I ensure the best, fastest handoffs between Sales and Marketing? What’s the right goal congruence between the two functions?

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Posted June 4, 2005 | Permalink

Guide to Hiring an Enterprise Software Sales Rep

by Sridhar Ramanathan

What should you look for in an outside, direct sales rep selling enterprise software/services for a complex product? Here is a cheat sheet with interview questions for screening candidates:

Metrics:

• Tell me about your quota performance over the last five years? Why did you achieve or not achieve targets? Look for successful track record.
  
• How do you define success besides achieving quota? Look for things like relationship building, consultative selling, leadership/influence in the company.
  
• How do you track progress against your quota targets on a daily, weekly, quarterly basis? Look for results orientation versus purely activity based metrics.

Continue reading "Guide to Hiring an Enterprise Software Sales Rep"

Posted May 4, 2005 | Permalink

Guide to Hiring an Inside Sales Rep

by Sridhar Ramanathan

A good inside rep is literally worth their weight in gold. Why? They fuel the whole lead generation process which results in sales downstream. That means a 10% improvement in productivity means 10% more pipeline and 10% more revenue. Simple as that. It’s worth paying a little extra to hire a talented, experienced inside sales rep. Our definition of “inside sales” is a role that is responsible for:

• Proactively contacting prospective customers on a target list
• Responding to inbound inquiries coming from the website, telephone, events, etc.
• Qualifying prospects against clear criteria
• Pitching the solution to verify interest and quality
• Pass qualified leads to Sales to close (some Inside reps may do this too depending on average product selling price).
• Provide reporting of progress against daily, weekly, quarterly goals

Continue reading "Guide to Hiring an Inside Sales Rep"

Posted April 4, 2005 | Permalink

Bringing Edge to your Marketing Team

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Ask a Sales VP "did you make your quota last quarter?" and you get a "yes/no" answer. Ask a Marketing VP, "did you make your numbers last quarter?" and you get a blank look. Why is that? Most CEOs don't hold their Marketers and PR firm as accountable as Sales because, presumably and mistakenly, they've been told that you can't really measure Marketing output. I disagree. You can and should hold Marketing's feet to the fire just as much as any other function. Here's how.

First off, I must tell you my bias is that Marketing is here to drive demand that yields profitable sales. Full stop. Therefore, I am not a fan of big ad budgets or of lavish trade show spending just because the competition is there. Rather, I believe in surgically targeted awareness campaigns that condition the target audience for a laser-beam focused lead generation campaign separating out the real buyers.

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Posted March 6, 2005 | Permalink

The Bottom Line in Growing Top Line

by Sridhar Ramanathan

My enterprise software clients often complain about how brutal this economy is for closing deals, or why the sales process is torturously more difficult these days. The list of selling challenges grows longer ever day—decision-makers who really aren't, risk aversion causing paralysis, too many vendors chasing too few prospects, merger/acquisition activity has people focused on job preservation not ROI for the business, etc. There's one immutable reality in sales. Sales is a veritable "funnel." The more you put in, the more you get out. Even a small improvement in some key ratios will make a direct, immediate impact on sales. Let's look at three parameters in particular:

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Posted January 25, 2005 | Permalink

A Look Inside Inside Sales

by Sridhar Ramanathan

If you’re targeting the SMB, you already know that Inside Sales is one of the most efficient ways to reach your customers. But when was the last time you checked to see what’s happening in Inside Sales? All that most CEOs know is that Marketing is generating “leads” for Insides Sales which then hands off qualified prospects to Sales. For some products with low average selling price, Inside Sales may actually be responsible for closing sales. It’s worth your time to check it out because even a 10% improvement will result in 10% more Sales.
But what’s really happening inside Inside Sales? How do you know they’re firing on all cylinders?

First, let’s use a popular framework called AIDA. Marketing yields general “Awareness” but also “Interest” from specific inquiries (or “leads” as it’s sometimes loosely called). Inside Sales then qualifies them based on purchase intention, budget, urgency, solution fit, etc. An “interest” becomes “Desire” when the Inside Sales rep books a meeting with the customer prospect. After a qualification meeting, the output to Sales is a smaller list of qualified prospects they turn into sales or “Action.” The ratio of unqualified leads to qualified prospects is an important measure over time. Let’s look at some industry benchmarks for Inside Sales for IT software/services products.

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Posted August 6, 2004 | Permalink

Be a Thought Leader!

by Elise Bauer

Small companies have to work hard to get visibility, especially when the market is crowded with competitors all vying for the same business. In high tech they face the added dilemma that IT departments don’t want to buy from a small unknown vendor, and the vendor can’t become large and reputable unless it has major customers. So, how does a company become better known with limited resources? By becoming an industry thought leader.

What’s a thought leader?
A thought leader is a recognized leader in one’s field. What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.

Trust is built on reputation and reputation is generally NOT built on advertising. It is built on what others say about you. Become a thought leader in your field and it won’t matter as much how big you are. Companies will look to you for insight and vision. Journalists will quote you, analysts will call you, websites will link to you.

How does one become a thought leader?
Before one takes the first actionable step, a fundamental shift in mindset is needed. Thought leadership requires a spirit of generosity - generosity of one's time, intelligence and knowledge. It requires a trust that by being open with what you know, and by sharing your time and knowledge, the world will reward your efforts. With that in mind, here are steps that will help you on your way to being a thought leader:

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Posted November 10, 2003 | Permalink