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2 Alignment Problems that Destroy the “GTM Bridge” (and limit Revenue)

March 18, 2015 5:59 pm / Leave a comment

The challenge appears quite simple – How can a Tech organization set up and run their organization so that they drive revenue from their products and partnerships?  But think about your experiences with partnerships – like Bus Dev agreements, with Alliances, and with Indirect Channels (such as resellers and integrators), and I bet you can think of more examples of performance issues than of realized potential.  As I’ve talked about in many of my posts, many Tech vendors are set up to market and sell as if they were a direct sales organization – although many, even most, are heavily reliant on their partners to drive revenue.

The root cause seems to be “boxed” strategy and execution that results from organizations pursuing approaches that were developed in a different era, but no longer directly apply to today’s complex IT world of architectures, software-defined data centers and Hybrid Clouds. (more…)

Want to Sell Solutions, But at the Velocity of Transactions: Are You Using a “Hook” to Create “Pull”? (Part 1 of a Series)

March 12, 2015 11:08 pm / Leave a comment

“Sales Process “is a dirty word to many technology vendors, because they interpret it to mean a slow sales approach that delays the sale of your product, and causes Reps and Sales leaders to miss their number…

As I discussed in my post, “What 3 Questions Indicate Whether You Need to Sell Solutions”, and “Are you Jumping to the Product Sale too Early (and missing revenue…), product selling works best in a few situations early in the sales cycle, and is required late in the sales cycle in nearly all tech business– but in most situations, tech vendors market and sell based on product too early in the sales cycle – causing vendors to miss revenue opportunities.

So what are proven approaches to market and sell in situations where Solutions Selling is required? That is the topic of my post today. (more…)

Marketing and Sales Messages Not Aligned? Tie Your “Message Map” to a “Solution Blueprint” (Part 5 of a Series)

February 25, 2015 11:30 pm / Leave a comment

Over the past year, I’ve done a continuing series on what it means to market and sell “Solutions”  Today’s post is Part 5 of the Series

I’ve talked a lot about the advantages of using “Solution” (rather than “Product” messaging to connect to customers, and drive more revenue for your products, but the question I often get sounds something like this:

“OK, I see the advantages of using Solution Messaging – What do I do now?” 

That question is the focus of my post today.

The key to messaging Solutions is a tool that I call “The Solution Blueprint”, a visual tool that helps technology vendors communicate the value of their offerings in terms of “Solutions” to customer problems – and accelerate revenue. I talked about this tool in more detail in my Solution Blueprint post. In Figure 1 below, you can see an diagram that describes the key elements of the Solution Blueprint. (more…)

Startup or New Product? Building a “Route-to-Market (RTM) Bridge” as the Foundation for Revenue

February 9, 2015 10:39 pm / Leave a comment

In a number of my posts in the past year, I’ve talked about the importance and best practices for “Building a GTM Bridge” to create a repeatable approach to marketing and selling your products – and drive more revenue. This process is shown in Figure 1 below.

 

Figure 1: Building a “GTM Bridge”

Building an GTM Bridge

 

Building a GTM Bridge – to Make Your GTM Approach More Effective

What I have seen is that within a vendor, many organizations are involved in supporting the marketing, selling and delivering of products and solutions through sales channels – but often this alignment does not occur. The dynamics of why this process breaks down is covered in more detail in my series, “Why do Companies Struggle to Build the GTM Bridge?”

Here are some examples of what happens without a repeatable “GTM Bridge”: (more…)

Are You Jumping to the “Product Sale” Too Early (and Missing out on Revenue Opportunities)?

February 3, 2015 10:26 pm / Leave a comment

If you are a regular reader of my blog posts the past year you have seen a lot of discussion about the importance of “Solution” messages to connect to customers (and sell more of your products). My most recent series provides a good overview of the issues and the best practices in connecting with customers with Solution messages.

By now, I’m sure there are some folks out there that are saying to themselves – “This is getting old, we all know that selling products works (why else would everyone be doing it?)” It is true that I’ve made the discussion too much of a battle between “right” or “wrong” approaches, when the reality is that the right time to sell Solutions is more nuanced. (more…)

A Case Study: Building a Message Map that Connects to Your Customers and Accelerates Revenue

January 19, 2015 10:57 pm / Leave a comment

In my recent series “How Tech Vendor Messages Can Create Customer “Pull” and Revenue, we’ve talked about why tech vendor messaging often do not connect to customers (and miss revenue opportunities)

In today’s post, I will focus on how to leverage the lessons from these posts to create strong “pull” messaging for your products that help you drive revenue. To do this, we’ll pull together principles from the first 2 posts and then do a specific case study that illustrates how you can create customer “pull” for your products (and how this “out of the box” approach is different than what most technology companies usually do in their messaging).

(more…)