VP Product Marketing helps grow new line of business to 20% of revenue for IT Networking & CyberSecurity company.

Background

When a leading IT Networking company wanted to grow average selling price and create a new CyberSecurity business with a $100 million revenue target, they looked to their VP Product Marketing to deliver success.

Company Overview

With over 1000 employees and servicing over 350 of the Fortune 500, the company is a global leader in IT automation and security. The company focuses on managing and identifying devices connected to networks – specifically for the Domain Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, and IP address management (collectively DDI).

Challenges

There were three main challenges to building a new line of business and growing average selling price (ASP):

  1. The company had a new line of business with a target to grow it to 20% of overall revenue. It was a domain in which the company did not traditionally participate. This meant building a competency in the entire organization in a new domain, approaching a new buyer and playing in a different market.
  2. The goal was to grow average selling price (ASP) by 30% and channel sales by 20%.
  3. The company was used to selling point products or technology. Channel partners were in the business of selling solutions and customers valueded solutions more than technology. 

Solution

The VP Product Marketing was the first to identify a clear relationship between all three issues. Leading a cross-departmental team of six people he:

  1. Revamped messaging, positioning, content and stories to focus on solutions (vs. point technology)
  2. Trained the sales team to gain a base level of understanding in the new domain and use solution selling, so they were able to have a 2-legged initial sales call. 
  3. Created a thematic solution-based approach to all campaigns. 
  4. Modified the demand generation process to focus on buyers in the new domain and a higher-level buyer in the traditional line of business. 
  5. Built a better understanding of the buyer persona and competition – developing tactics that were most likely to succeed. 
  6. Retrained channel partners on the new approach with the goal of providing their sales team with information that would fit into their solution approach.
  7. Identified key success metrics to identify what was working and what was not – in both marketing and sales. 

Differentiators

Success was ensured for three main reasons: 

  1. Establishing solution selling as a discipline
    He involved the sales team in the ideation and execution of the program. They identified gaps in training, hand off in leads between sales and marketing and were able to secure three analysts that wrote about the industry solutions. As a result, they were able to exceed the goals for marketing contribution to pipeline by over 50%.
  2. Driving partner and customer acquisition success
    Previous teams had not built relationships with the customer to represent their perspective, did not recognize the value of aligning the organization behind the effort, and did not have the domain experience to build customer relationships. By connecting the dots between a better understanding of customer needs and revenue growth, he was able to get the organization to support the initiative and put his team members in a position to succeed.
  3. Created granular program goals and set up process to share successes and failures
    Leading by example and establishing metrics to measure his teams’ success created an environment for other teams to do the same. This established a culture that focused on joint progress rather than assignment of blame. The transparency led to better decision making and greater efficiency. In addition to meeting the revenue growth and channel goals, they were able to reduce the sales cycle by about one month. 

Results

Within just three months of initiating the process the company started seeing success. After 19 months the VP Product Marketing achieved the initial goal of 20% of revenue in the new domain, increased channel productivity by 25% (deals that the channel sourced) and improved ASP by 25%.

Testimonial

“He embodies all of the leadership traits I value most. He sets a very compelling and clear vision, empowers his team to execute against it, and provides incredibly valuable coaching and mentoring along the way. He’s humble, listens, collaborates, and actively seeks out feedback from his own team as well as other stakeholders. He was eager to listen to the input my team gathered from customers, prospects, sales, and partners which he used to make adjustments to our go-to-market approach. Other leaders may have rigidly held tight to their own ideas but not him. He wants to do wants right for the customer and company, leaving his ego at the door.”

– Senior Director, Global Field Marketing & Operations

Contact

To discuss in confidence how Marketing Moves can support your organisation’s growth, you can contact David by any of the means below:

technology marketing recruitment
David Holton

+1 (916) 474-4680
+1 (530) 412-2031
dholton@marketingmoves.com
linkedin.com/daholton

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