Summary
VP Marketing delivers twelve month campaign creating annual sales of circa $4million.
Overview
When a mid-sized IT consulting, managed services and software engineering firm with offices across the US and Asia established a SAP practice with the goal of developing a new revenue stream, the company’s VP Marketing was tasked with developing and executing a market plan to help the company meet the first year of revenue targets from new accounts.
Company
With a background in consulting and business process management, the company employs over 1900 people across the world. It helps clients in the financial services, manufacturing, education, aerospace and technology industries overcome their key business and technology challenges.
Background
The company had SAP implementation experience with several enterprise customers but did not have a formal SAP practice necessary to scale the business. Once the commitment was made to establish an SAP practice, the VP Marketing and their team was tasked with developing and executing a market plan to drive annual sales targets. The annual SAP event SAPPHIRE was identified as a critical awareness and demand generation initiative that would serve as the centerpiece of the program.
Process
The VP Marketing developed a comprehensive approach that rolled out over time. A three phase plan was used to:
- understand the SAP services market and what opportunities to focus on
- establish a presence at SAPPHIRE, the premier SAP event attended by all major players
- ensure a clean hand-off between Marketing and Sales for event generated leads with support necessary to close deals.
Research
What makes this VP Marketing different is the effort that went into market analysis and planning to determine where to focus for success. The SAP services market is highly competitive with about 300 similar firms vying for the same customers. Having an understanding of which segments to target was critical for success and their analysis indicated the most attractive segments where they could compete and differentiate themselves.
The VP Marketing also helped to define both clear offerings and value propositions as there was a lot of understandable uncertainty about the new services the company was selling.
Execution
Facilitating an executive steering committee of 10 and both directly and indirectly managing an extended team of 24, the VP Marketing was able to leverage the active involvement of the senior leadership team to make quick marketing team decisions. This meant that much of the work was performed internally with minimum spending on agencies and external vendors, whilst the entire effort took just 12 months from start to finish.
With numerous milestones along the way – covering market presence, brand awareness and thought leadership (which can be discussed in detail) – the campaign culminated in the annual SAPPHIRE event.
Combined efforts resulted in incremental revenue of $4M for the company’s SAP Solutions practice. New revenue of $4m is significant to this mid-sized company.
Testimonial
The company’s founder had this to say about the VP Marketing:
“We hired them to establish a formal marketing function. They have built a strong global team that provides Corporate Marketing, Branding and Field Marketing for our five industry segments. Under their leadership, we built a strong brand, enhanced our capabilities, and implemented the company’s marketing automation system and CRM. They work collaboratively with executives and staff and are respected throughout the organization. As a team member and as a leader, they definitely earn my recommendation. They are a delight to work with and their contributions have helped shape our best practices.”
Track Record
This isn’t the first time the VP Marketing has contributed to seven-figure revenue growth. In the past this executive has also:
- Worked with a global software provider to create a new community channel reaching 80,000 members and business partners that generated more than 2,500 “warm” leads resulting in over $30m in revenue.
- Institutionalized a lead generation program through a branded user community resulting in incremental sales of $16m in information management software with significant ROI in its first year plus measurable increases in brand loyalty
- Designed and implemented a market management system resulting in 20% revenue growth by identifying unmet market needs in previously targeted and untargeted segments.
- Drove development of strategy, marketing plans and partnership/alliances/acquisitions which generated an incremental $700M in solution sales for hardware, software and consulting services.
- Led cross-functional team that generated $50m in new sales and established COE for mobility solutions
- Closed new business for strategy consulting services valued at $750K to $1M /year
