Podcasts about Siebel Systems

In episode #274, I'm sharing some insight from a Mark Roberge talk in Tempe, AZ at PHX FWD. The software business is undergoing another major shift. In the 80/90's it started with on-premise software, then ASP, then SaaS, and now AI. - Business model changes - What if agentic AI entered your space? - Siebel Systems - from top player to SaaS laggard Be in the know! Join our SaaS community. https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page

Send us a textOn the nostalgic grounds of their shared alma mater, Wharton, Simi speaks with Dilawar Syed, the Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). A role he was nominated into by President Biden, Administrator Syed was the highest-ranking Muslim official in the U.S. Government at the time of this recording. WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE.Syed came to the SBA from the State Department where he served as Special Representative for Commercial & Business Affairs. As the State Department's top commercial diplomat, Deputy Administrator Syed advocated for U.S. companies to compete and win abroad and helped ensure U.S. competitiveness in markets across the globe. Before joining the Biden Administration, Syed held the roles of CEO at Lumiata, an AI healthcare company, and President at software company, Freshworks.  Earlier in his career, Syed oversaw business operations for Yahoo!'s platforms and infrastructure and was a product manager at Siebel Systems and SAP. His transition to public service is marked by civic efforts at the federal, state, and local levels. He was the founding Chair of the California Entrepreneurship Task Force with the Governor's Office, served on President Obama's White House Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs), and chaired the White House Initiative on AAPIs' Economic Growth Committee. In that role, Syed led the administration's engagement with small businesses across the U.S. after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In 2020, Syed was tapped by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo to help lead Silicon Valley's pandemic recovery as a member of the Silicon Valley Recovery Roundtable. Syed holds an M.B.A. from Wharton and earned a B.A. in Economics and Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

➡️ Join 321,000 people who read my free weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.scottdclary.com➡️ Like The Podcast? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstoryTim Guleri is a seasoned venture capitalist and managing partner at Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based early-stage technology-focused venture capital firm. With over two decades of experience in the technology industry, he has a strong track record of identifying and nurturing successful startups. Before joining Sierra Ventures, he co-founded Scopus Technology, which went public in 1995 and was later acquired by Siebel Systems for $460 million, and Octane Software, which was acquired by E.piphany in 2000 for $3.2 billion.  ➡️ Show Linkshttps://www.x.com/timguleri/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/timguleri/ ➡️ Podcast SponsorsHubspot - https://hubspot.com/  Lingoda - https://try.lingoda.com/successstory (Code: scott25)Vanta - https://www.vanta.com/scottFederated Computer - https://www.federated.computerCornbread Hemp - https://cornbreadhemp.com/success (Code: Success)Create Like The Greats Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/lu/podcast/create-like-the-greats/id1653650073FreshBooks - https://www.freshbooks.com/pricing-offer/Bank On Yourself - https://www.bankonyourself.com/scottStash - https://get.stash.com/successstoryNetSuite — https://netsuite.com/scottclary/Indeed - https://indeed.com/clary ➡️ Talking Points00:00 - Intro05:23 - The Common Thread in Tim's Journey08:01 - Born Entrepreneur or Learned Skill?10:31 - How Entrepreneurs Find Their Focus18:30 - Tim's Career & Investment Philosophy22:08 - Sponsor Break24:46 - The Evolution of Sierra Ventures30:27 - Founder Traps in Venture Capital35:08 - Managing Risk at Sierra Ventures40:57 - Finding Investors: Tips for Founders49:50 - Sponsor Break52:03 - The Biggest Challenge for First-Time Entrepreneurs57:24 - Riding Trends vs. True Innovation1:00:26 - Is There an Undiscovered Playbook for Distribution?1:03:17 - Scaling Without Crashing1:08:05 - Making High-Stakes Decisions with Confidence1:12:28 - Smart Exit Strategies for Entrepreneurs1:17:03 - Final Thoughts from Tim Guleri

Marc Benioff is the co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, the second-largest software company in the world. He started programming at age 15, selling his first program for $75, and went on to build Salesforce into a company worth more than $300 billion that also owns Slack, Tableau, Quip, and MuleSoft. Marc is known as a marketing legend, and is now leading Salesforce into the era of AI agents. In our conversation, we discuss:• The importance of maintaining a beginner's mind• His approach to product launches and marketing• Managing through tough times and layoffs• His relationship with Steve Jobs and lessons learned• Why Salesforce is betting big on AI agents• Many stories from his entrepreneurial roller coaster• Much more—Brought to you by:• Cloudinary—The foundational technology for all images and video on the internet• Enterpret—Transform customer feedback into product growth• Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-founder-marc-benioff—Where to find Marc Benioff:• X: https://x.com/benioff• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Marc Benioff and Salesforce(03:54) Marc's early career and domain names(05:59) The App Store story and lessons from Steve Jobs(15:18) Lessons from launching Salesforce(22:03) The importance of keeping a beginner's mindset(29:53) Why Marc calls Salesforce the “25-year startup”(31:47) Agentforce(36:09) Why Marc says AI is the defining technology of our lifetime(40:12) AI's impact on the workforce(42:31) Entrepreneurs need to be like conductors(46:02) Failure corner(50:32) The future of AI agents(56:34) Final thoughts and farewell—Referenced:• Bill.com: https://www.bill.com• App Store: https://www.apple.com/app-store/• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com• Larry Ellison on X: https://x.com/larryellison• Siebel Systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems• Saba Software: https://talentedlearning.com/lms-vendor-directory/saba-software• Tom Siebel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomassiebel• Avon: https://www.avon.com• Salesforce Chief Has Pulled Some Crazy Stunts: https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-benioff-salesforcecom-chief-has-pulled-some-crazy-stunts-2012-3•  Matthew McConaughey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officiallymcconaughey• Woody Harrelson on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/woodyharrelson• “Ask More of AI” with Matthew McConaughey: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnobS_RgN7JaxOsLD8WH0I9E6osK3UrfI• Marc's tweet about the ad with McConaughey and Harrelson: https://x.com/Benioff/status/1866175950062239784• Chris Rock on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisrock• Sushi Iwa: http://www.sushiiwa.jp/en/• Ryoanji Temple Rock Garden: https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/1145/• Neil Young Archives on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neilyoungarchives• Mount Tam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tamalpais• Spirit Rock: https://www.spiritrock.org• Jack Kornfield: https://www.spiritrock.org/teachers/jack-kornfield• Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/form/agentforce/demo• Minority Report on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Minority-Report-Tom-Cruise/dp/B00A2FSSHK• Peter Schwartz on X: https://x.com/peterschwartz2• UCSF Health: https://www.ucsfhealth.org• A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/health/chatgpt-ai-doctors-diagnosis.html• Does AI improve doctors' diagnoses? Study puts it to the test: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241113123419.htm• A.I. Will Transform the Global Economy—if Humans Let It: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/special-series/ai-transform-global-economy.html• Wargames on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Wargames-Dabney-Coleman/dp/B0011EQBOS• Her on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Her-Joaquin-Phoenix/dp/B00KATY250• AI (Einstein) at Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/in/artificial-intelligence• Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Airkit.ai: https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-airkit-ai• Salesforce Buys Big Data Startup RelateIQ for Up to $390M: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/salesforce-buys-big-data-startup-relateiq-for-up-to-390m• Salesforce to cut workforce by 10% after hiring ‘too many people' during the pandemic: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/04/salesforce-to-cut-workforce-by-10-after-hiring-too-many-people-during-the-pandemic• Michael Dell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdell• Bret Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettaylor• Akio Toyoda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akio_Toyoda• Kaizen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen• TRS-80: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80• CLOAD Magazine: https://archive.org/details/cload_newsletter—Recommended books:• Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War: https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-Novel-Next-World/dp/054470505X• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Dollar-Company/dp/0470521163• Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change: https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Business-Greatest-Platform-Change/dp/1984825194—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

SEASON: 4 EPISODE: 14Episode Overview:If you are ready to improve your productivity and increase your revenue, then you are going to enjoy this episode of Becoming Preferred as we dive into the world of sales enablement and go-to-market transformation with a true industry luminary.My guest on this episode is a powerhouse in the realm of business strategy, leadership coaching, and sales enablement. He's the author of the game-changing book, Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence, and his expertise has transformed countless businesses from struggling to thriving.In today's episode, my guest will share his insights on creating clear paths to success for small to medium-sized businesses. We'll explore how companies can improve productivity, increase revenue, and navigate the complexities of today's market, so get ready for a conversation packed with actionable advice, inspiring ideas, and transformative insights. Join me now for my conversation with the brilliant strategist and sales enablement guru, Roderick Jefferson!Guest Bio: Roderick Jefferson is an internationally recognized, business-focused speaker. He has shared his dynamic and energetic voice in a variety of events including keynotes, guest lectures, webinars, podcasts, and domain expertise panels, with companies such as ATD Conference, B2BMX Conference, Cisco, Collibra, LinkedIn, MindTickle, Revasum, Oracle, Sales Assembly Conference, Sales 3.0 Conference, Sales Enablement PRO Conference, Salesforce (Dreamforce), SAP, Seismic, Showpad, SiriusDecisions, Uber, and Zoom.Roderick is also an acknowledged thought leader in the sales enablement space and author of the Amazon #1 New Release & Bestselling book, Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence. He has held a variety of executive leadership, sales, sales enablement, operations, and customer experience roles at 3PAR, AT&T, Business Objects, Magnit, Marketo, Oracle Marketing Cloud, NetApp, Netskope, PayPal, Roderick Jefferson & Associates, Salesforce, and Siebel Systems, and Siteimprove.Resource Links:Website: https://roderickjefferson.com/keynotes/Product Link: https://amzn.to/3vENYAoInsight Gold Timestamps:04:25 You learned the importance of setting the goal, and how were you going to get there?05:39 I think you train animals, you enable people07:03 Sales enablement in 3.0 is both art and science07:29 It's communication, it's collaboration, and it's orchestration09:38 What isn't sales enablement?11:44 I'll see trainers that are teaching people how to give presentations instead of having conversations15:36 Culture is what happens when no one is watching17:20 Where I see the biggest problem18:48 What a sales onboarding program might look like20:49 We're constantly validating24:29 What's gone forever and what are the new things that we should be preparing for24:37 Those two big little words, AI26:33 You're doing it because of a why, not a what, and you're getting to the root cause28:32 A strategic investmentConnect Socially:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roderickjefferson/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThevoiceofRodTwitter (X): https://x.com/ThevoiceofRodYouTube:

What if people aren't buying your product or service because their idea of what it does is wrong? In this episode, Shane asks April Dunford to reveal all her secrets about what makes good and bad product positioning, how a startup should differ in its communications from a big company, and the difference between B2B and B2C positioning. Dunford also shares how a startup can better identify pain points their customers face, how to write the best sales page copy, and the best way to objectively evaluate a product's positioning. If you're an executive at a company, this episode will make you reflect on your current marketing and sales pipelines and ask, “Are we doing this right?” If you're a designer, engineer, or marketer at a company, this episode will teach you the secrets to selling a product that will help get you promoted and earn trust within your organization. Dunford spent the first 25 years of her career as a startup executive running marketing, product, and sales teams positioning products acquired by companies like IBM and Siebel Systems. Since then, she's worked with over 200 companies as a consultant, developing a system to better position technology products and companies. She studied Engineering at the University of Waterloo and is most recently the author of Sales Pitch. Watch the episode on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/theknowledgeproject/videos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Newsletter - I share timeless insights and ideas you can use at work and home. Join over 600k others every Sunday and subscribe to Brain Food. Try it: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/newsletter/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ My Book! Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results is out now - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/clear/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://beacons.ai/shaneparrish⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/membership/ (00:00) Intro (02:07) Positioning, explained (16:47) Why is positioning important? (20:40) B2B vs. B2C positioning (29:03) When re-positioning a product failed (32:31) How to identify customer's pain points (34:35) How to position a product on a sales page (38:06) How technology has changed positioning (41:40) How to evaluate product positioning (45:43) Who's in charge of positioning at a company? (50:27) On storytelling (56:35) Should a company have a point of view on the market? (1:00:21) Dealing with gatekeepers in B2B marketing (1:03:02) Mistakes people make with positioning (1:05:21) What schools get wrong about marketing (1:08:59) Secrets of B2B decision-making (1:11:18) On success

Today's episode is a repost of one of my favorite topics: why value is important for positioning for B2B technology companies. In this episode, first I define value vs. differentiated value, and explain why the latter is key to everything. Next I explore how to find the right balance between features and value, and I share tips on mastering your product walkthrough and proving your claims to customers. I also cover common mistakes to avoid when segmenting your audience, the job of a market category, and how a strong understanding of your differentiated value will inform successful messaging that resonates with your customers. Lastly, near the end of the episode, I discuss my book, “Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win,” which you can get from Amazon https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY and wherever good books are sold—see more links below. (When I originally published this episode, my book wasn't out yet. But it's been out for 10 months now and has received hundreds of 5-star reviews.) —If you want to skip ahead: (00:15) Defining value.(01:14) A story about Janna Systems and their biggest competitor, Siebel Systems.(04:19) How one sales rep changes everything.(07:35) How Janna Systems shifted their positioning and won over Siebel Systems.(08:34) Customers don't care about your features.(10:28) Value vs. differentiated value and what really matters.(13:15) Value buckets.(14:06) Why value is difficult to understand.(16:06) Helping customers translate value on their own.(18:21) Mastering your product walkthrough.(20:00) The importance of proving your value to customers. (21:47) Finding your best-fit customer.(23:50) Common mistakes to avoid. (25:11) Differentiated value and the job of a market category.(27:43) How differentiated value informs messaging.(29:30) My book about sales pitches. —Connect with April Dunford and learn about practical positioning that accelerates marketing and sales: Work with April: https://www.aprildunford.com/contact April's newsletter: https://aprildunford.substack.com/ April's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/ April's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/aprildunford —Get April Dunford's books and audiobooks: “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.”“Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win.”Amazon US: https://amzn.to/49l0ZRY Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4ac9hgt Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vosDzQApple Books: https://apple.co/3xihSzC—The Positioning with April Dunford podcast: Want to make your product stand out in a crowded market? It all starts with great positioning. Using April's battle-tested methodology, she'll teach you the nitty-gritty of positioning so that you can unlock better marketing and sales performance.Podcast website:

This week, I am delighted to welcome Scott Saslow, Founder and CEO of Palo Alto, CA-based ONE WORLD Investments Inc., which provides investment capital and advisory services to help organizations scale social impact. Over his career, Scott has been a founder or founding team member of seven start-up businesses. Prior to ONE WORLD, Scott was the Founder & CEO of The Institute of Executive Development, supporting executives in Global 2000 organizations including American Express, Blackrock, Intel, Time Warner, and the US Navy, and earlier in his career, he worked at Siebel Systems and Microsoft Corporation in leadership roles. Scott has authored over twenty-five articles for publications such as Forbes and Directorship and has been interviewed by and quoted in Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek. Scott expounds on the concept of “sustainability” as it pertains to a family office, and he provides his definition of a sustainable family office and explains why sustainability is important in this context. Having emphasized how important this objective is for the family, Scott then talks about how families and family offices pursue sustainability and how they prepare for it and how they achieve it. He outlines the many dimensions and ways to make a family office sustainable. Scott is just about to release his new book Building a Sustainable Family Office, which is an excellent, and to some extent, autobiographical, compendium of everything families need to know or consider as they create or take over a family office. The book is organized around and culminates in the definition of what Scott refers to as “the five key elements of success.” Scott gives us a sneak peek into what the five elements are and how each of them contributes to the long-term success of the family and its family office. Sustainability is also often referred to as an investment philosophy and a values system. Scott shares his views about how families can connect their aspiration for sustainable investing with their effort to build and operate a sustainable family office. Don't miss this insights-packed conversation with a rising-gen owner of a family enterprise, a successful entrepreneur and wealth creator, and a proponent of family sustainability and positive impact.

In episode 74 of the Investing in Impact podcast, I speak with Scott Saslow, Founder of ONE WORLD Investments, on his journey into impact and sustainable investing, family offices, and his new book.About Scott:Scott is an accomplished entrepreneur and impact investor with a proven track record of developing successful businesses and products. He is the founder ONE WORLD Investments, and had key roles at The Institute of Executive Development, Microsoft, and Siebel Systems, among others.Scott is the author of the book, "Building a Sustainable Family Office: An Insider's Guide to What Works and What Doesn't," published by Greenleaf Publishing Group and available on Amazon.As an impact investor, advisor, and consultant, Scott works with both for-profit and non-profit social enterprises. He founded ONE WORLD Investments, an organization that provides training and investment capital to social impact enterprises in the Bay Area, aimed at improving lives globally.About ONE WORLD Investments:ONE WORLD Investments leverages its Silicon Valley base to offer innovative and profitable approaches to increasing social impact. The organization supports a diverse network of entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate professionals, and provides capital through various investment vehicles to early-stage companies, impact private equity and venture capital funds, and public markets, all aimed at scaling social impact.About the episode:Scott discusses his journey into impact investing and the importance of building sustainable family offices. He explains that family offices are the infrastructure created to manage wealth and philanthropy for wealthy individuals and families. However, many family offices are not sustainable and fail during generational transitions.Scott emphasizes the need for a new model in managing family offices to ensure their longevity and impact. He also explores the role of family offices in impact investing and the ripple effect their failures can have on society.Family offices are increasingly interested in sustainable and impact investing, but many are still in the early stages of incorporating these strategies. The younger generation within family offices is often the driving force behind these initiatives, as they have a socially minded approach and a desire to make a positive impact.While many family offices already engage in philanthropy, there is an opportunity to go beyond traditional giving and use investment capital to address social and environmental concerns. The change towards more sustainable and impact-focused family offices can come from both the principles themselves and the non-family professionals they work with.This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

E106 Fireside with a VC speaking with Ken Goldman, former President of Eric & Wendy Schmidt's family office, former CFO of Yahoo!, Fortinet, Siebel Systems (acquired by Oracle), Excite@Home, Sybase, and Cypress Semiconductor. Discussed the changes in VC, going public and the reasons companies should go public again, the problems secondaries for founders create, how to leave a company ethically, general advice on how to win in the big leagues, selling Siebel to Oracle, the dynamics of changing CEOs, lessons learned from board of directors dynamics at Yahoo!, working with activist shareholders, how enterprise software companies should or should not go international, running Eric and Wendy Schmidt's family office, and now speaking at family office and other conferences. Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/krSWnl3eGco. Find this and all full episodes for Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC. https://www.7bc.vc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/ Join our Newsletter to get our insights and favorite curated content from the VC-startup ecosystem - Fireside with a VC: https://subscribe.7bc.vc. Join the conversation, leave comments, and tell us what you think about these topics and this episode. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/firesidevc/message

YEMI'S BIO This episode is a master class in emerging markets investing, capital allocation and developing economies by one of the best in the game. He was very early investing capital in two consequential geographies, China in the early 2000's and Africa a few years later. He is now a London-based Partner & Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at TPG, a leading global investment firm managing $212 billion in assets. He leads investment activities for the firm in Africa and a leader on emerging market investment activities in the technology sector for TPG's Rise Fund. Prior to joining TPG in 2015, Yemi founded and was Managing Partner of Adlevo Capital, one of the first venture capital firms focused on early stage technology investments in Africa. Previously, he was a Principal at GGV Capital, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm and one of the first focused on investments in both the US and China. Yemi started his career as an engineer and held engineering leadership and product management positions at Hewlett Packard and Siebel Systems. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Lagos, a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. YEMI  RELATED LINKS Yemi's TPG Profile TPG Rise Fund's Portfolio Airtel Africa $200m Deal| TechCrunch Investing in African Tech Companies| Built Tough Pod Africa's Booming Tech Sector| Bloomberg GENERAL INFO| TOP OF THE GAME: Official website: https://topofthegame-thepod.com/ RSS Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/topofthegame-thepod/feed.xml Hosting service show website: https://topofthegame-thepod.podbean.com/ Javier's LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/javiersaade & Bio: https://tinyurl.com/36ufz6cs  SUPPORT & CONNECT: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/96934564 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551086203755 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOPOFGAMEpod Subscribe on Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/site/podcatcher/index/blog/vLKLE1SKjf6G Email us: info@topofthegame-thepod.com   THANK YOU FOR LISTENING – AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PLATFORMS  

Juan Luis Betancourt, a seasoned business executive and human capital management expert, understood the vital role of meaningful connections from early in his career. Recognizing that a lack of authentic connections negatively impacts productivity and retention at organizations globally, Juan founded Humantelligence – a company that leverages analytics and AI to humanize and optimize work across sectors and countries.Juan is a thought leader, speaker, and business executive in human capital management with 25+ years of experience. At Humantelligence, he has helped clients like Visa, Coca-Cola, and Honda to enhance productivity, boost motivation, and reduce turnover in the workplace.In this episode, Dart and Juan discuss:- Humanizing work through technology- The significance of workplace connections- Adapting leadership to diverse learning styles- Humantelligence's innovative services and their development- Juan's global experience in 8 countries- What work culture is and its evolution alongside company growth- Dispelling work culture myths- And other topics…Juan Betancourt is the CEO of Humantelligence, a company dedicated to leveraging analytics and AI to align organizational culture and strategy. At Humantelligence, Juan has helped clients like Visa, Coca-Cola, and Honda to enhance productivity, boost motivation, and reduce turnover in the workplace. Prior to Humantelligence, Juan developed his experience in human capital advising as a partner at Korn/Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles. With a global career spanning 25+ years and encompassing eight different countries, Juan has garnered senior-level experience at prominent organizations such as Siebel Systems (now Oracle), Puma, Reebok, Decathlon, and Proctor & Gamble. During his tenure at Puma, Juan notably played a key role in the company's successful rebranding, contributing to one of the most significant consumer brand turnarounds in the past two decades.Juan received his M.B.A. from The Wharton School, his M.A. in International Management from the University of Pennsylvania, and his B.A. from Harvard University. He serves as a board member of the Miami Theatre Center and maintains affiliations with the Wharton and Harvard Alumni Associations in South Florida. Resources mentioned:www.humantelligence.com Don Sull: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/donald-sull Connect with Juan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanluisbetancourt/ www.humantelligence.com

Have you ever wondered why, despite having amazing products, customers still struggle to understand your company's value?April Dunford, an authority on product positioning, discusses the critical role of positioning in sales and marketing. Known for her first book "Obviously Awesome" and her expertise in positioning, April shares her insights on why companies often struggle with positioning their products. She emphasizes that most companies have positioning, but it's not deliberate, leading to misalignment and missed opportunities. April highlights the transformative power of effective positioning, using an illustrative story from her early career where repositioning a product from enterprise CRM to CRM for investment banks led to significant business growth and acquisition by a major player.The episode underscores the common disconnect between how companies perceive their products and how customers understand them. April points out the importance of involving sales teams in positioning discussions, as they have direct insights into customer perceptions and competitors. And describes in her second book, Sales Pitch, how to translate the marketing work done for positioning into sales speak. April advises CEOs to routinely reassess their company's positioning, even if it seems satisfactory, to ensure alignment with market realities. She stresses the need for a cross-functional team approach to redefine positioning involving sales, marketing, and product teams. The episode serves as a crucial reminder for CEOs and sales leaders of the importance of clear and strategic positioning in today's competitive market. April Dunford's insights offer valuable guidance on how to approach this process thoughtfully and effectively to drive business growth and customer satisfaction.This podcast is a must listen and her books are both must reads. Chapters05:26 Lack of methodology and squishiness surrounding positioning in marketing0:09:02 Naming of April Dunford's books: "Obviously Awesome" and "Sales Pitch"11:12 Importance of aligning positioning with customer perception14:01 Components of positioning: competition, differentiation, value, customer, market19:07 Example of a company positioned as Enterprise CRM but found success in investment banking22:36 Shifting positioning to target specific industries led to success25:51 Understanding the buyer's perspective and guiding them through the buying process31:20 Buyers are overwhelmed with information and struggle to make decisions33:56 Poor positioning and difficult buying process on websites.39:07 Cross functional team approach to positioning.42:45 Leveraging product knowledge to identify unique value propositions.44:59 Characteristics of a Best Fit customer and market categories46:13 Mapping positioning to a sales narrative for effective storytellingSocial Links You can learn more about and connect with April Dunford in the links below.Connect with April on LinkedIn:(99+) April Dunford | LinkedInCheck out April's website:April Dunford - Positioning for B2B Tech CompaniesCheck out April's Podcast:Positioning With April DunfordCheck out April's NewsletterPositioning with April Dunford | SubstackYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn:(99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice's website:Alice Heiman - Alice HeimanAbout GuestI spent the first 25 years of my career as a startup executive, running marketing, product, and sales teams. I led teams at seven successful B2B technology startups. Most of those startups were acquired (DataMirror to IBM, Janna Systems to Siebel Systems, then SAP, Watcom to Sybase via Powersoft, to name a few), and I ran big teams at IBM, Siebel, Sybase, and others. The total of those acquisitions is more than two billion dollars. Across that journey, I positioned, re-positioned, and launched 16 products, and created dozens of sales pitches.I have a deep curiosity about what makes the difference between a winning product and a loser. Developing a systematic way of positioning technology products and companies has become my life's work. As a consultant, I have had the privilege of working with more than 200 companies, allowing me to go even deeper and broaden my positioning expertise. The bulk of my work is with growth-stage startups and larger technology companies. Companies where the stakes are high - and weak positioning can mean the difference between success or failure.My first book, Obviously Awesome - How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get it, Buy it, Love it (aprildunford.com), captures my ideas about positioning and a methodology for doing it that any startup can follow. It's become a best-seller and popular among entrepreneurs, product, and marketing folk. My second book, Sales Pitch, was designed to teach a step-by-step way of building a sales pitch that reflects that positioning, and helps make a clear compelling case for why prospects should pick you over the competition.I studied Engineering at the University of Waterloo. If you had told me back then that someday I would be an author, I would have said you were nuts. It turns out my grade 6 English teacher was wrong about the importance of grammar. I'm at the stage of my career where I'm trying to give back as much as I can. I am a mentor and advisor to dozens of startups and folks that work in them. I am also an enthusiastic board member at a handful of startups. I live in Toronto, Canada. I have kids, a small dog, and a cabin in the woods.

Solving the right problem with change management is a perennial problem for IT leaders. Juan Betancourt is a tech entrepreneur who is willing to keep looking in the mirror, ask the hard questions, and continuously improve until he gets it right. Our conversation focuses on how he led his team through massive business shifts because that's what it takes to keep up in his industry. Leading a team through change that is forced from external pressures (looking at you ‘rona) is different from leading a team through change because of internal pressures and business vision. Listen to this episode as Juan describes his leadership and company pivots when demand for their services went to zero. About Juan Juan Betancourt is the CEO of Humantelligence, an HR enterprise software solution like Grammarly, but instead of writing tips, it surfaces tips for communicating and collaborating. This major innovation, impacting the way distributed knowledge workers collaborate, earned HRO Today's Top HR Tech for Collaboration and TalentCulture's Top HR Tech for Employee Collaboration awards. Juan also founded Gonza Executive Search and served as a client partner for both Korn Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles. He was an executive at Procter & Gamble, Decathlon, Siebel Systems, Reebok, and Puma. Recently named a Top 30 HR Tech Influencer, Juan is an expert in helping organizations build high-performing teams, while operationalizing inclusion & belonging.

Join us as we take an insightful journey with Salesforce Architect, Mike Topalovich, who uncovers his unique career path, starting from his early introduction to coding as a young child, and leading up to his current role in the Salesforce ecosystem. As he recalls his days writing script language programs, working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and using Siebel systems, you'll gain a better understanding of how technology can be used to simplify and enhance people's lives. In our conversation, Mike also discusses the convergence of AI and architectural design. As we tackle the concept of 'move fast, break stuff', we consider its relevance and limitations. We also delve into how AI is transforming the design process and the potential for feedback loops to foster positive human-machine interactions. Mike also shares his perspective on the importance of UX design in creating positive user experiences. This is an episode brimming with lessons, insights, and stories that are bound to resonate with developers, architects, and technology enthusiasts alike. Show Highlights: Mike's emphasis on user experience and technology's potential to simplify lives, illustrated by his stint with Siebel Systems. The intersection of AI and architectural design, and its implications in terms of innovation, risk management, and enhanced design processes. The potential threats of AI and quantum computing in the hands of state actors. Mike's thoughts on UX design principles, psychological safety, political safety, and their application in creating secure and efficient systems. Links: LinkedIn account: https://linkedin.com/in/topalovich

In this episode, I go deep on one of my favorite topics: value. First, I'll define value vs. differentiated value, and explain why the latter is key to everything. We'll explore how to find the right balance between features and value, and I'll share tips on mastering your product walkthrough and proving your claims to customers. I also cover common mistakes to avoid when segmenting your audience, the job of a market category, and how a strong understanding of your differentiated value will inform successful messaging that resonates with your customers. Lastly, I'll give you a sneak peek of my upcoming book on sales pitches.  — In This Episode, I Cover: (00:00) Welcome to the Positioning Show (00:15) Defining value (01:14) A story about Janna Systems and their biggest competitor, Siebel Systems (04:19) How one sales rep changes everything (07:35) How Janna Systems shifted their positioning and won over Siebel Systems (08:34) Customers don't care about your features (10:28) Value vs. differentiated value and what really matters (13:15) Value buckets (14:06) Why value is hard to understand (16:06) Helping customers translate value on their own (18:21) Mastering your product walkthrough (20:00) The importance of proving your value to customers   (21:47) Finding your best-fit customer (23:50) Common mistakes to avoid  (25:11) Differentiated value and the job of a market category (27:43) How differentiated value informs messaging (29:30) A tease on sales pitches and my upcoming book (30:00) Thanks for listening, and please leave a review! — Where To Find Me: Podcast Website: https://www.positioning.show/  Personal Website: https://www.aprildunford.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprildunford/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/aprildunford — Referenced: • Janna Systems: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/janna-systems-inc • Siebel Systems: https://www.oracle.com/cx/siebel/ — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/

Traction. What is it? How do you generate it? In this episode, we are excited to bring on Bruce Cleveland to talk about how founders can improve their odds of success while traversing the traction gap where most startups fail. Bruce is the author of the bestseller "Traversing the Traction Gap", a practical guidebook for navigating the tumultuous early life of a startup. He has been a Silicon Valley CMO and CPO holding senior executive positions at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems, and C3 AI, as well as a General Partner in two venture capital firms. During his VC career, Bruce was the first investor and a board member of Marketo and an investor in C3, Doximity, Vlocity, Workday, and many other startups. https://tractiongapbook.com/ https://twitter.com/brucevc https://medium.com/@bcleveland  

IN THIS EPISODE:  In this episode, our host, Philip Guarino, is joined by Juan Betancourt, the CEO of Humantelligence, an HR enterprise software solution. They discuss how the pandemic has greatly affected how employees think and behave amidst a significant rise in employee dissatisfaction with work. The rise of work from home and hybrid work and an increased reliance on technology has provided many opportunities but it also poses new challenges. How can leaders encourage engagement and improve productivity in an increasingly diverse and virtual workforce?  Humantelligence aims to bridge those gaps by using psychometric tools that sync to different organizational platforms. By acknowledging that there is no universal way of managing people and teams, Humantelligence helps team members gain a better understanding of their co-worker's personalities. This new technology is paving the way for leaders to drive inclusivity and productivity by knowing what motivates their people and how they prefer to engage with one another. GUEST BIO: Juan Betancourt is the CEO of Humantelligence, an HR enterprise software solution like Grammarly, but instead of writing tips, it surfaces tips for communicating and collaborating. This major innovation, impacting the way distributed knowledge workers collaborate, earned HRO Today's Top HR Tech for Collaboration and TalentCulture's Top HR Tech for Employee Collaboration awards. Juan also founded Gonza Executive Search and served as a client partner for both Korn Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles. He was an executive at Procter & Gamble, Decathlon, Siebel Systems, Reebok, and Puma. Recently named a Top 30 HR Tech Influencer, Juan is an expert in helping organizations build high-performing teams, while operationalizing inclusion & belonging. 

Paul Cimins interviews Manisha Lad, Neurodiversity Family Coach. Her journey started as an Information Technology consultant and worked in the field with leading companies like Siebel Systems, Metlife, UBS bank in Tokyo. 2001 I decided to quit my career when our only son Akhil Lad was diagnosed with AUTISM.  Since then I educated myself to become an Holistic Health Coach and our education and treatment with Akhil changed our perspective of AUTISM from Behavior to Biomedical and NeuroSensory Motor disorder.  Our son Akhil Lad is now an adult though minimally speaking is taking Associate Science Degree with Rowan College of South Jersey. He also inspired us to start Akhil Autism Foundation. I coach parents to get started on Autism Journey and understand them different puzzle pieces with right resources. Global Virtual Neurodiversity Symposium 2023 Empowering Neurodiversity: Global Virtual Symposium for Caregivers, Professionals, & Researchers April 17th - 19th, (8AM - 3PM EST), Virtual - Online Register for virtual symposium: https://akhilautismnds23.vfairs.com/ www.akhilautismfoundation.org www.heal-wellness.com www.akhillad.me  

In this podcast, I talk to Ajay Sabhlok about his career. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!

In this podcast, I interview Ajay Sabhlok. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!

What's the formula for building a hyper growth organization? This has been a hot topic for debate in many business circles. Because the key to tapping into accelerated growth often starts with understanding your audience, your market, and where you can enable your teams to exploit competitive advantages. All of this is easier said than done, but when done right, building in the key pieces you need to unlock hypergrowth can empower your sales teams to close more deals and transform passive buyers into lifelong superfans. In this episode of The Modern Selling Podcast we explore the concept of hypergrowth enablement, what it is, how leaders can effectively spark it within their organizations, and what specific strategies are needed to build a hypergrowth focused company. Our guest for this episode, Jerry Brooner, is the leading thought leader in this space and has worked with top technology companies to help them tap into incredible, exponential growth – while also serving their customers well. Jerry Brooner is the President of Global Field Operations at Enable, a collaborative rebate management platform that helps manufacturers, distributors, and retailers take control of their rebate programs and turn them into an engine for growth. He has over two decades of experience as a high-growth global enterprise SaaS technology executive. Previously, he was the former Chief Revenue Officer at Scout RFP, and has built high growth teams at Dropbox, SAP, Callidus, and Siebel Systems. Download the full episode to hear firsthand what Jerry believes is the winning formula to spur hypergrowth for any organization. Why is hyper growth enablement important? Enablement is a word that is often thrown around, especially in sales circles. I wanted to hear Jerry's take on what the real power in enablement is and why he sees it as the core of being able to create hyper growth. His insights are eye-opening, “ I think enablement is very underutilized and often overlooked, especially at startups. Companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to recruit top talent, but once they're hired they get very little support to be successful. This model is flawed. Enablement is about getting your people excited about their work and equipped with the right tools, resources, and support to be successful on day one – if not before.” And, it's this concept of what you do before a new hire starts that sheds new light on the onboarding process for me. Jerry follows a simple, yet highly effective onboarding process that goes as follows: Education – he provides his new hires with key information about the company, the industry, competitors – any and everything they may need to get up to speed on who they're working for and what they'll be doing. Expectations – even before someone starts, Jerry shares their 30 day calendar with them that outlines all trainings, meetings, and requirements. This is a great tool because it helps new hires coming in the door understand the expectations they will need to meet and enables them to align their personal life to meet their business goals as well. Empowerment – Every new hire has a “shadowing” plan that shows them upfront where and when their hands-on learning opportunities will be. This positions people from the beginning to get excited about learning and aware of where they can go for more support – without trying to figure it all out on their own. This is such an effective strategy – Education, Expectations, and Empowerment – because here at Vengreso we employ a similar model and find that it accelerates onboarding and our reps and SDRs that do this are much more successful – faster. How does diverse hiring drive enablement? We hear it all the time – increase diversity in hiring to produce a more innovative organization. I was curious to get Jerry's perspective on the role that diverse hiring has for enablement and establishing a hyper growth company. He shares, “Diversity in hiring is super important. But, the key is not just racial, ethnic, or gender diversity. You want to also have diversity in where and what industries you hire from. We recruit people from a much wider industry background than most companies do – by design. For example, if we know we're going after a lot of manufacturing customers, we'll go out and hire people who have worked in manufacturing because they understand the industry.” This is such a novel approach to diverse hiring. Jerry makes a powerful point! If you want to better serve or prospect a particular customer or industry, it would make total sense to recruit sales people who may have worked in those industries because they will know that industry, inside and out. Listen into the full conversation to hear what other unique ways Jerry recommends hiring so that your team will be primed for hyper growth. What key metrics and KPIs should you track for hyper growth? In sales, metrics are everything. My motto is: If you're not tracking it, then you can't improve it. Jerry agrees and outlines some key metrics he monitors within his organization to ensure that they're exponentially growing. “The most important part about metrics is that they need to apply to everyone in the organization. Your KPIs need to also make sense for each position or role within your company – all the way up to the VP level as well. Because the power of metrics is it helps you to keep the pulse on what's working, what's not and where exactly you need to focus your attention to see improvements.” One thing that Jerry highlighted that I found to be profound was the lack of VP or Director level interactions with customers. He finds (and my experience also validates this) that when more levels of your sales team get involved with a prospect, you're more likely to close the deal. I mean imagine what it would mean to a prospect to have the company CEO personally reach out to answer their questions. It seems like a simple task – but so many companies don't do it. In our conversation, Jerry also goes through the six high value activities he focuses on to spark rapid growth. Be sure to listen to the full episode to hear these gems and hear why Jerry says it takes 98 of these high value activities to close a single deal. This episode of the Modern Selling Podcast is brought to you by Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry transforms sales teams using their world-class Miller Heiman, methodology, employee assessments, benchmarking and talent advisor capabilities to increase win rates and quota attainment. Korn Ferry offers Korn Ferry Sell, a sales effectiveness app available in App Exchange and app source that helps your sales team develop and replicate powerful sales strategies that help sellers win more deals and crush their quotas.  Learn more at kornferry.com/saleseffectiveness.

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep with one of my favorite people in Silicon Valley, Bruce Cleveland. Bruce Cleveland has had a career in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. And he's pretty much done it with building companies, technologies, categories, and brands, as well as working on and with some of Silicon Valley's best executive teams and entrepreneurs. He's been a successful investor. He's also a bestselling author. In fact, one of my favorite books is Traversing the Traction Gap, which he wrote. And I recommend it to all entrepreneurs. By the end of this dialogue, we hope you'll have gained radical new insights into how you can do legendary things in your life and career. Traversing the Traction Gap The conversation begins with a discussion of Bruce Cleveland's book, Traversing the Traction Gap. His best-selling book was praised by Silicon Valley insiders and many entrepreneurs for the information and insights it provided. Bruce shares that his reason for writing the books stems from people trying to make VC seem like a mystical thing, rather than explaining things in a clear way. “The reason I wrote it was because I began to grow pretty weary of really, really smart people not making it. Their companies not surviving for a variety of reasons. And they all tended to be pattern-matched against those reasons. I was also not happy with the venture community in its entirety, because I don't think it was honest with a lot of these entrepreneurs as to why they weren't getting investments, etc. And I kind of wanted to demystify those issues.” – Bruce Cleveland Bruce Cleveland on helping out entrepreneurs Another reason Bruce gives for writing out the book is that he wanted to help out fellow entrepreneurs who may be feeling lost, or guide those who are doing well into things that could make their ventures better. “The purpose and objective of this book was to share with entrepreneurs that, “hey, here's some things you could possibly do to significantly enhance the probability of success.” You know, we only get one shot at this life, I felt like I owed it back to the entrepreneurs of the world who take all the risk as to what I saw, from my vantage point, both as an operating exec and as an investor, to why I thought things weren't working for the vast majority of startups.” – Bruce Cleveland C3.ai and Enterprise AI The conversation then goes to Bruce's latest ventures into category creation. Together with Tom Siebel, they founded C3.ai, which delves into enterprise AI. Bruce then talks about how it came to be, and how working on C3.ai has been so far. “I think this is one of the benefits of having a CEO who understands and believes in category creation, is that it as your job as CMO becomes much easier to do.” – Bruce Cleveland When they started conceptualizing and creating the category of enterprise AI, the term wasn't even on the radar. While there were companies who were doing something similar to a lesser degree, it wasn't clearly defined, and no one was pursuing rapid advancement on it. Now, it's something that a lot of companies are looking at, and C3.ai is at the forefront of it. To hear more from Bruce Cleveland and how to have a legendary career in VC and tech, download and listen to this episode. Bio Bruce Cleveland's career in Tech spans more than 40 years as a venture investor and operating executive. He was a first investor and a board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired in 2018 by Adobe for $4.75B. He was an early-stage investor in other notable companies such as C3.ai, Doximity, Vlocity, and Workday. Bruce also held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing at Apple, AT&T, C3.ai, Oracle and Siebel Systems. His book, Traversing the Traction Gap, is a prescriptive guide for startups and new product initiatives within larger companies helping teams to use ‘market engineering' techniques t...

This past May London-based payments infrastructure provider Paddle secured $200 million in a Series D funding round led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., perhaps better known as KKR.No less than 15 days later, the company announced the purchase of US-based subscription metrics and retention automation startup Profitwell in a deal reportedly worth north of $200 million.With today's funding environment for startups getting tougher and tougher, we've seen a noted uptick in the number of mergers and acquisitions taking place in Europe. And we expect to see more.Joining me today to discuss some key items to keep in mind when considering and negotiating an acquisition deal, I'm joined today by a man who's seen both sides of the table when it comes to an acquisition, closing the Profitwell deal, but also as a Senior Director at Siebel Systems, a popular CRM that was acquired by Oracle back in 2005, Paddle President and COO Jimmy Fitzgerald.

In this episode, you will learn:Pavel's journey of building a web development company straight out of universityHow hard was it for Pavel to move to the US from  Russia and start a venture fund?How does Mindrock Capital operate and the value it provides to its investors?How does the prediction model at Mindrock Capital that evaluates the probability of a startup's success work? What are its data points?What is the Hack Temple project, the reason why Pavel started it and why it's a mystical project for him?Implications of the war in Ukraine on Mindrock Capital and how they have managed to cope with it AboutPavel Cherkashin is the Managing Partner at Mindrock Capital. At Mindrock, Pavel is responsible for it's vision and strategy. He oversees over $1B in AUM. Earlier in his career, Pavel held senior positions at Microsoft Russia, Adobe Systems and Siebel Systems. He founded several IT companies that were acquired by leading global organizations and managed two early-stage venture capital funds.

It's hard to imagine being a key part of three industry-defining product categories, which is exactly what Bruce Cleveland has experienced in his Silicon Valley software career.  First, Bruce was an early executive leader at Oracle (first 100+ employees) as they re-defined relational databases, then on to Apple where he led the object-oriented engineering division, next he led the business development and alliances team at Siebel Systems before he took over products as they defined Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and then again at C3.ai in defining Enterprise AI. Three of those experiences resulted in IPOs.  Bruce then became a VC, first at InterWest Partners where he invested in early-stage B2B SaaS startups such as Marketo (acquired by Adobe), and then he started Wildcat Venture Partners with two other people, again focused on early-stage startups such as Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce).  Based uponthe above experiences, Bruce wanted to create an easy-to-understand and prescriptive framework to help entrepreneurs move through each stage of a start-up's journey. The result was the Traction Gap Framework.  The different stages of the Traction Gap Framework include:  Minimum Viable Category (MVC): Does the market segment already exist or is there an opportunity to create and lead a new product category - creating your own category (e.g., Gainsight) presents more risk but the returns are much higher.  Initial Product Release (IPR): The first version of the product beyond prototypes and wireframes that serves as the feedback mechanism to refine and evolve the product to present to multiple new customers.  Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The product state that is required to acquire several new customers and provide tangible value while using early customers feedback to prioritize feature/function refinement and enhancement  Minimum Viable Repeatability (MVR): This is the point where external investors (VCs) are most interested in investing in an early-stage SaaS/Cloud company and become seriously interested as the initial referenceable customers are in place, and the ability to leverage the learnings from early customers can now be used to rinse and repeat the customer acquisition process  Minimum Viable Traction(MVT): This is after a company has “crossed the chasm” and is ready to materially scale a business to $20M - $50M while establishing market leadership.  I asked Bruce about the secrets to creating a new product category.  Bruce highlighted that not everyone wants to be the spokesperson leading the creation of a new category. He used the example of Marketo, where the founders decided that Jon Miller, a co-founder, would be positioned as "the father of marketing automation" while the other co-founder and CEO, Phil Fernandez chose to primarily focus on leading strategy and operations.  Bruce coined the term "Market Engineering" to help frame the content in his book. The basic concept is developing the positioning and messaging of the company to a few innovative and provocative concepts that everyone can easily understand and clearly differentiates the company from others. Steve Jobs at Apple is a great example of a category creator. Bruce shared the four pillars the Traction Gap Framework including: 1) Team; 2) Product; 3) Revenue; 4) Systems.  Each pillar takes a point of prominence at various stages when traversing the Traction Gap - though TEAM is the common foundation at each stage across the journey  If you are a student of Silicon Valley and the SaaS start-up world, starting or already on your own entrepreneurial journey, this discussion with Bruce Cleveland, who has been there and done that is a must listen. 

Is positioning for your product or for the brand? Well, it's both! And the better your positioning, the better you sell. But how do we go about this? We spoke to the the leading expert in the space, April Dunford to unpack her secrets to success for you. More About April (from April) I spent the first 25 years of my career as a startup executive, running marketing, product, and sales teams. I led teams at seven successful B2B technology startups. Most of those startups were acquired (DataMirror to IBM, Janna Systems to Siebel Systems, then SAP, Watcom to Sybase via Powersoft, to name a few), and I ran big teams at IBM, Siebel, Sybase, and others. The total of those acquisitions is more than two billion dollars. Across that journey, I positioned, re-positioned, and launched 16 products.  I have a deep curiosity about what makes the difference between a winning product and a loser. Developing a systematic way of positioning technology products and companies has become my life's work. As a consultant, I have had the privilege of working with more than 100 companies, allowing me to go even deeper and broaden my positioning expertise. The bulk of my work is with early and growth-stage startups. Companies where the stakes are high - and weak positioning can mean the difference between success or failure. I also work with large global companies, helping them develop deeper positioning expertise in their product and marketing teams.  My book, Obviously Awesome, captures my ideas about positioning and a methodology for doing it that any startup can follow. It's become a best-seller and popular among entrepreneurs, product, and marketing folk. I studied Engineering in University, and if you had told me then that someday I would be an author, I would have said you were nuts. It turns out my grade 6 English teacher was wrong about the importance of grammar.  I'm at the stage of my career where I'm trying to give back as much as I can. I am a mentor and advisor to dozens of startups and folks that work in them. I am an enthusiastic board member at a handful of startups.  I live in Toronto, Canada. I have kids, a small dog, and a cabin in the woods. Want More? Visit us at https://changecreator.com/ (https://changecreator.com) Ready to Grow Your Brand Authority and Revenues? Book a call to chat with Adam at https://studio.changecreator.com/ (https://studio.changecreator.com)

In this HRchat, we focus on company culture and the concept of 'Culture As a Service'. Bill's guest is Juan Luis Betancourt, CEO at Humantelligence.  Juan has previously been named as a Top 100 HR Tech Influencer in HR Executive Magazine. His experience in human capital advising was developed while a partner at Korn/Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles. Previously, he had a global career as a general manager. Questions Include: Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about HumantelligenceCulture As a Service - How to define culture? And what advice would you give on culture? What is CaaS – culture as a service?Should the aim be to find candidates that match up with the values of the company or should organizations be looking to hire people who help to evolve the corporate culture and mission?What are the potential consequences of not hiring in a way that tries to ensure new employees are a culture fit?How can HR support efforts to make the kind of hires that increase the diversity of thought in a company?Your module, HireGuru is designed to give recruiting firms expert insights on how candidates will fit into their clients' team culture and available roles. How can that be a USP for recruiters during The Great Resignation?How can we learn more?More About Juan Luis BetancourtJuan previously worked at Siebel Systems (now Oracle) and at Procter & Gamble, in both the US and Latin America. While at Puma, as Chief Marketing Officer & Strategy Officer based in Germany, he was responsible for re-launching the Puma sports brand globally.More About HumantelligenceHumantelligence is a cloud-based Culture Analytics and recruiting platform that aims to solve today's top workforce challenges with advanced patented technology leveraging behavioral science and Artificial Intelligence to improve key talent management areas like recruiting, hiring, culture alignment, employee engagement, and employee turnover. We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.   

In this episode, Richie brings on Dave Levitt to share his expertise. They cover, how tennis helped Dave in sales, Dave's unique roi model, and the importance of always thinking ahead. Dave Levitt has spent the past 30 years selling and managing sales into all sectors of the Energy industry. At LiquidFrameworks, Dave is responsible for all aspects of sales on a worldwide basis. Directly preceding joining LiquidFrameworks, Dave created, developed, and managed the Energy Region for Salesforce.com, growing his region 20X in Total Contract Value within a four-year period. Previously, Dave spent six years each at SAP, Siebel Systems and Datalogix. Dave received a BS degree in Newspaper Journalism from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications. Learn more about having Richie speak at your next event or how he can implement the Next Play™ Accountability System in your organization: https://www.relentlessrichie.com Learn more about the Relentless Warrior Fitness accountability and coaching program: https://relentlesswarriorfit.com Free Access to Relentless University: RelentlessUniversity.com Download the Relentless University app free: http://onelink.to/6cjar9 Follow Richie on Social: IG: @RelentlessRichie Facebook: @RelentlessRichie

Ex Silicon Valley Executive & Investor Stephynie Malik is a Global Business Strategist and Crisis Expert. She is also a 3x Founder, Consultant, Podcast Host and Speaker. Stephynie's career was built in sales, marketing, business development, and strategic alliance roles, holding leadership positions at Actuate, Silicon Graphics, Icarian. She then made the move into independent consulting before founding her first management consulting firm, MalikCo, LLC. While leading alliances, she was responsible for creating countless Partnerships and Technology deals with American Express, Monster.com, Siebel Systems, Deloitte, Nike, People Soft, Actuate, and Toyota to name a few over her 25-year career. Driven by her desire to make an impact, she currently sits on 3 boards and lends her time to brands she believes in that have the potential to change the world. She is working on her first book and has recently launched a podcast called Spin It with Stephynie Malik, a business podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of influential individuals who turned obstacles into opportunities. In addition, she created 2 business courses in 2021: Executive Presence Elevated, how to win and influence leadership, and ScaleOS, scaling your business with practical wisdom and grit. She is also currently rolling out 2 new “By Invitation Only" retreats for men that are struggling with the new way to lead — the ever-changing rules on presence and connection. Stephynie is a Mother of 4 kids — 2 boys and 2 girls, aged 11-26 years old. She is an avid foodie and is a strong influence on Mental Health and Learning Differences. Leadership Top Tip: Say “YES” as much and as often as you possibly can. Attitude is everything. You will NOT know your WHY until you are 100% clear on your Why Not. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike is the CEO of Directly, an innovator in digital customer support. Companies like Microsoft, Airbnb, and SAP use Directly to understand what their customers want, automate conversations, and involve experts and "power users" to solve customer problems. The Directly platform includes a global WFH network of power users to resolve support cases quickly, boosting CSAT by 20% while saving companies tens of millions of dollars per year. Mike has built a career in technology that improves the customer experience at HP, SAP, and Siebel Systems, prior to Directly. Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikejdela... Visit Directly: https://www.directly.com/

This week we meet Chin-Heng Hong, the VP of Product Management at Couchbase, for a discussion about what’s new in database technologies and some of the patterns he sees in the industry. We also talk about Couchbase’s recent survey of Data Architects and some of the interesting findings it contains. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kO0jQs_O6rk Your next business card will be a YouTube channel! – Learn more at https://algmin.com Save 20% on your first order at the DATAVERSITY Training Center with promo code “AlgminDL” – https://training.dataversity.net/?utm_source=algmindl_res About Chin-Heng Hong: Chin-Heng Hong is VP Product Management at Couchbase, the modern database for enterprise applications. A senior engineering executive with more than 25 years of experience, Hong previously held roles at Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Siebel Systems and others. Couchbase – https://couchbase.com Episode Transcript 100:00:05,000 –> 00:00:08,916anthony_algmin: Welcome to the Data Leadership Lessons Podcast. I’m your host, Anthony J. 200:00:09,166 –> 00:00:12,666anthony_algmin: Algmin. Data is everywhere in our businesses and it takes leadership to make 300:00:12,833 –> 00:00:16,375anthony_algmin: the most of it. We bring you the people stories and lessons to help you 400:00:16,625 –> 00:00:20,541anthony_algmin: become a data leader. Our show is produced by Algmin Business Media, where we 500:00:20,625 –> 00:00:23,958anthony_algmin: make having your own video podcast as easy as joining a video call and 600:00:24,041 –> 00:00:28,208anthony_algmin: sending an email. At Algmin Business Media, the stage is yours! Today 700:00:28,291 –> 00:00:28,583anthony_algmin: on data leadership lessons we welcome Chin Hong. Chin is V. P of product 800:00:28,583 –> 00:00:31,625anthony_algmin: on data leadership lessons we welcome Chin Hong. Chin is V. P of product 900:00:31,625 –> 00:00:36,208anthony_algmin: management at Couchbase, the modern database for enterprise applications, a 1000:00:36,291 –> 00:00:39,416anthony_algmin: senior engineering executive with more than twenty five years of experience. 1100:00:39,916 –> 00:00:44,625anthony_algmin: Chin previously held roles at Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Siebel systems, as well 1200:00:44,791 –> 00:00:46,958anthony_algmin: as others. Chin, welcome to the show! 1300:00:48,208 –> 00:00:49,666chin: thank you, Antony. 1400:00:50,625 –> 00:00:53,666anthony_algmin: So likely, do with all our first time guests. Please take a moment and 1500:00:53,750 –> 00:00:57,833anthony_algmin: just tell the audience a bit more about your career before Couchbase, And A. 1600:00:57,916 –> 00:01:01,083anthony_algmin: How that led you to what you’re doing now? 1700:01:01,875 –> 00:01:02,208chin

Why Listen: Ken is an absolute Rockstar. His career includes working at some of the most iconic brands in Silicon Valley; Siebel Systems, McAfee, AVAST Software, FireEye, and now founding and running his own investment firm, NightDragon. Here are six different things to keep an ear out for in this episode. First of all, why veterans should consider a career in cybersecurity and what the characteristics of this industry are. Second, what life is like as a mid to late-stage investor. Third, the one thing everyone overlooks when it comes to networking. Fourth, using the lens of fun learning and money to evaluate career shifts. Fifth, why you should always take a job interview even if you're happy at your current job. And sixth, an overview of the corporate development role, something we've never talked about on the show. As always at beyondtheuniform.org you'll find the show notes for this episode with links to everything we discussed, as well as 408 other episodes just like this all provided for free. About Ken: Ken Gonzalez is the Managing Director of NightDragon, an investment and advisory firm focused on investing in growth and late-stage companies within the cybersecurity, safety, security, and privacy industry. Prior to NightDragon, Ken was the Managing Director of ForgePoint Capital. Previously, he led the strategy and corporate business development functions at FireEye, AVAST Software, McAfee, and Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) and was responsible for acquisition target selection, deal negotiation, and post-merger integration. He also served in the United States Army as an infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment.

C3 AI talks to its founder, chairman and CEO, Tom Siebel, about why enterprise AI will drive the next generation of CRM applications. In his previous venture, Tom was the chairman and CEO of Siebel Systems, which introduced the first widely adopted customer relationship management (CRM) software and grew to 8,000 employees in 29 countries, with over 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue in excess of $2 billion. Oracle acquired Siebel Systems in 2006. He started C3 AI in 2009 when he saw how sensor proliferation, big data, low-cost cloud computing and AI would create a new digital stack and an era of rapid business transformation.  In this podcast you will learn:  How the CRM market has evolved since Siebel Systems invented it in 1993.  Why AI-enabled CRM represents the next generation of CRM's $80 billion addressable market.  How “exogenous data” such as weather, oil prices and GDP reports can affect sales forecast accuracy. How deep vertical industry expertise can be designed into AI-CRM.  How AI-CRM fits into the broader enterprise AI opportunity – e.g., precision health, predictive maintenance, fraud detection, etc.

What are your learnings about effective B2B marketing at Oracle, Seibel Systems etc.? Why is there so much friction in the buyer's journey? How do we reduce it ? Why is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform the best hub for marketing automation for SMEs? Eric Dickmann answers the above questions and shares his experience as a Senior Director of Marketing at Oracle, Marketing Lead at Siebel Systems. Currently as a Chief Marketing Officer of The Five Echelon Group, Eric is a Strategic Marketing Advisor & Fractional CMO. Eric is also the host of 'The Virtual CMO' podcast. Eric's Profile at Linkedin : linkedin.com/in/edickmann Eric's Company Website : fiveechelon.com Jagged with Jasravee is facilitated by Jasravee Kaur Chandra, Director- Brand Building, Research & Innovation at Master Sun, Consulting Brand of Adiva L Pvt. Ltd. Jasravee has over 20 years experience as a Strategic Brand Builder,Communications Leader and Entrepreneur. Please connect with Jasravee on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasravee/ Eric talks about how he built awareness and generated executive level leads at Oracle and how to build nurturing programs for leads working closely with sales leadership. He also talks about his experience in Siebel Systems and how helped position it as a leading CRM software in financial services. He also talks about his stint at how he repositioned Sunview Software and achieves a significant decrease in lead acquisition spends & 620% increase in organic web traffic. Follow Jagged with Jasravee on Social Media Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/jaggedwithjasravee Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/jagggedwithjasravee/ Podcast Page : https://anchor.fm/jagged-with-jasravee Youtube Page : https://www.youtube.com/c/jaggedwithjasravee Linktree : https://linktr.ee/jaggedwithjasravee Jagged with Jasravee, is an initiative of Master Sun, the Consulting Brand of Adiva Lifestyle Pvt Ltd. Please visit our blog at http://www.mastersun.in/ #b2bmarketing #buyersjourney #enterprisesoftwaremarketing

Why Listen: As an entrepreneur focused on marketing, it was an extreme honor to interview today's guest, Bruce Cleveland. Bruce is an absolute Silicon Valley legend, having worked in operational roles at companies including Oracle, Apple, and Siebel Systems. In addition to that, he has worked in venture capital for 15 years, where he has personally generated over a billion dollars in returns. This includes his work at InterWest Partners, one of the most respected VCs in the world, but also as the founder of Wildcat Venture Partners where he worked for five years. He is now the Chief Marketing Officer of a company called C3.ai. He just took that company public. It was founded by Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems, who has now created three different billion-dollar ventures. We talk about marketing, the CMO role, artificial intelligence, venture capital, and more.  As always, at beyondtheuniform.org you'll find show notes with links to everything we discuss, as well as a lot of books and great resources that Bruce recommended. About Bruce: Bruce Cleveland is the Chief Marketing Officer at C3.ai, a leading enterprise AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation with nearly 700 employees listed on LinkedIn. C3.ai raised over $228 million before going public in December of 2020. Bruce started out at West Point with the class of 1980. He left early to pursue a career in technology including time at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems, nine years as a General Partner at investment firm InterWest Partners and more.

Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence by Roderick Jefferson About the Book: Sales enablement is both an art and science. There are no magical silver bullets or single approach that will guarantee that you will be successful. There is, however, a formula just like any other success process, program, or tool that requires a combination of practical application, trial and error, mixed with a lot of conversations with sales leaders to understand their wants, needs, and expectations. At its core Sales Enablement 3.0 is an innovative approach focused on increasing sales productivity through a systematic, personalized, and collaborative approach designed to support buyers that will fuel the conversation economy and impact revenue. This book will provide you with a blueprint that will help you to navigate the twists and turns that will ultimately lead you to designing, deploying, measuring, and iterating a world-class sales enablement organization.  About the Author: Roderick Jefferson is an award-winning senior executive with 20+ years of sales leadership and is an acknowledged practitioner and keynote speaker in the sales enablement space. He is currently an Executive-in-Residence with VentureScale and one of the founding members of the Sales Enablement Society. Prior to his current position at Netskope, he held a variety of executive leadership, sales, sales enablement, operations, and customer experience roles for various companies including Oracle Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.com, PayPal, Siebel Systems, & AT&T. And, interesting fact - as a child growing up, his favorite cartoon was The Jetsons! Click here for this episode's website page with the links mentioned during the interview... https://www.salesartillery.com/marketing-book-podcast/sales-enablement-roderick-jefferson

If you have yet to meet Roderick Jefferson, allow me friends. RJ is currently the VP of Field Enablement at Netscope. A fitting spot after 24 years in Sales Enablement at orgs like Siebel Systems, Network Appliance, Business Objects, HP, PayPal, Oracle, Salesforce, and Marketo. If you're wondering how the business of sales got to this point, this is the conversation for you.   We talk sales enablement and how the function got to where we are today. We talk where it's going, 3.0-style. We talk communication, transparency, value, metrics, and alignment.  We talk weaving sales enablement into the fabric of GTM strategies, starting at the top.  We talk root cause problems vs. chasing symptoms, indefinitely.  We talk revenue, profitability, and efficiency.  We talk sales boss (vs. sales leader) and manager skill development.  We talk flipping the script of building high-potential programs vs. high potential leaders. We talk the power of the question: Do you want me to listen? Do you want me to coach? Do you want me to fix? (40 mins) We talk "shiny tool syndrome." And we talk team design.  We talk succession planning for sellers! We talk the cost of doing nothing. We talk transparency, my all-time favorite topic. We talk how it starts and ends with the buyer's journey.  We talk selling and leading with empathy and EQ. Really though, we talk human.  For more on Roderick "RJ" Jefferson, check him out on https://www.linkedin.com/in/roderickjefferson/ (LinkedIn,) the website.  And buy the darn https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Enablement-3-0-Blueprint-Excellence/dp/1736190903 (book), friends. Interested in joining the conversation? Hit us up @ 646-470-0248. Resources:  https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Enablement-3-0-Blueprint-Excellence/dp/1736190903 (Sales Enablement 3.0) by Roderick Jefferson https://open.spotify.com/episode/44g34lvN03ktx15b6K3ngZ (Made It: The Black Sales Stars Show with Roderick Jefferson) What's Your Problem https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-identify-what-makes-a-great-manager/steps/learn-about-googles-manager-research/ (Project Oxygen) https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Habit-Less-Change-Forever/dp/0978440749 (The Coaching Habit) by Michael B Truth, love, and joy, friends.  Happy selling! 

Discover the secret to building high-performance teams from one of the top branding CMO's in the world. Learn the potential of brand experiences, the importance of curiosity, and the role of community from Margaret Molloy, CMO of Siegel+Gale and former marketing leader at Siebel Systems. Legends of Sales and Marketing is produced by People.ai.

Eileen Voynick has held senior operating roles and board leadership roles at companies including SAP, Oracle, Siebel Systems, All Scripts, Sparta Systems, and Chair of the Board at Jefferson Health.In this episode, Eileen shares the evolution of Customer Success, both as a function and as a focus in the enterprise software industry.Eileen's initial foray into Customer Success was formed in part by the large SAP partner ecosystem.  At SAP, Customer Success was focused on the business value that a customer can derive from the use of their software.  A consistent theme across every software deployment model is that business value and satisfaction have to be understood from the C-Suite all the way down to the individual user.Customer Experience has always been important in the software industry and has an elevated role in the "Cloud".  Eileen highlight that if you look at the switching costs of Cloud deployed versus on-premise are very similar in highly regulated fields such as health care and financial services. "Customer Experience" may have a higher focus today however, that is not primarily due to the deployment model, but rather the evolution of software becoming more common across industries, functions, and processes.Creating a "Customer Journey Map" which includes every touch from initial touchpoint to full implementation and deployment is a critical task to complete for every Cloud company.  This includes ensuring that customer touchpoints are also included post successful deployment to ensure that customer engagement is maintained across every customer stakeholder beyond one to two months before a renewal discussion.We asked Eileen, "what's next?" in the world of Customer Experience,  Product Management becoming more focused on customer experience versus feature/function will become table stakes. Eilleen's example of how a vendor wowed doctors after watching how they performed specific tasks and then came back with a prototype that was met with astonishment by the potential customer.At the end of the day, customer experience boils down to the "business value" that a software provider delivers to each customer. When the question "who owns an account after it's closed?" was asked, co-host Ray Rike responded with some benchmarks including, CS now consumes 11% of revenue at the median in B2B Cloud companies.  Ray shared that Customer Success should own customer value-based upon user engagement, the value received from using the software but CS should NOT own up-sells, and cross-sells,  it should be a "team" approach to ensure customer satisfaction and thus customer retention + growth.Eileen views the CSM as a great facilitator that orchestrates priorities across their company to ensure customer success.  In the "land and expand" model, she shared that having an account management team that works closely with Customer Success to identify, nurture and close up-sells and cross-sells is a preferred model.  A caveat is that based upon the maturity of the company, this approach will vary.The CRO needs to take leadership in establishing a sales-oriented, customer value culture that centers around the customer as job 1. This will go a long way towards building cross-functional alignment.Lastly, we covered the role of the board of directors in helping companies make the Digital Transformation?  Eileen shared that over the last 10 years, her primary role as a board member has centered around product and Go-To-Market strategy which are both core to a successful digital transformation journey.  Eileen shared that as a board member, understanding the investor thesis and the company objectives to ensure they are aligned is one of her key responsibilities.Finally, Eileen shared that being a lifelong learner with strong active listening skills are critical for early career professSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mark Hanson is the Co-founder of Bricoleur Vineyards, a place that brings people together through their vast array of activities such as wine tastings, food and wine experiences, acres of gardens, and even fishing. Mark purchased a Russian River Valley vineyard with his wife and daughter, and in 2017 transformed it into Bricoleur. Aside from being a lover of wine, Mark has over 30 years of experience in the software industry and is still on the Strategic Advisory Board at Genstar Capital. He has held previous executive positions at Siebel Systems, Visigenic Software, and Sybase. In this episode: If you're a wine enthusiast, you've probably attended many wine tasting experiences. But what if there was an all-inclusive winery that has fishing, bocce ball, locally grown produce, and tasty wine? Meet Mark Hanson of Bricoleur Vineyards, who is changing the game of wine tasting experiences. After a successful career in the software industry, Mark, along with his wife and daughter, decided to purchase a vineyard in the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County, CA. They officially opened Bricoleur in 2017 and have produced six original wines — and counting. Mark is here to share his journey and recommend some food and wine pairings along the way. On this exciting episode of the Legends Behind the Craft podcast, Drew Hendricks talks with the Co-founder of Bricoleur Vineyards, Mark Hanson. They discuss all Bricoleur has to offer, how to craft a unique visitor experience, the process of creating new wines, and much more. You don't want to miss this jam-packed episode!

https://youtu.be/iBIAIO4lUj0 Eric Dickmann is the CEO of the Five Echelon Group, a virtual CMO and strategic marketing advisory service provider for SMBs looking for growth and profitability. We talk about digital transformation, marketing automation, and how to remove friction in the buyer's journey.   --- Digitize your Business with Eric Dickmann Our guest is Eric Dickmann, who is the CEO of the Five Echelon Group. He's a seasoned marketing strategist and fractional CMO. He is an expert in digital transformation and marketing automation. He is the former senior director of marketing with Oracle for 18 years. And he's also the host of the virtual CMO podcast. Welcome to the show, Eric. Steve, thank you for having me on the show. I'm really excited to be here today. It's great to have you here today. So, Eric, tell me, I mean, we don't have too many Fortune500 experienced entrepreneurs here on this podcast. So after 18 years at Oracle, why do you decide to become an entrepreneur? Oh, that's a great question. You know, Oracle was a tremendous experience for me. I actually started out working at this company called Siebel Systems and about seven years into that journey, they were acquired by Oracle. So all told it was about 18 years, but it was a fantastic experience. Got to travel the world, got to do some incredible things with marketing because, you know, they're a big company, big budgets. But I will tell you that one of the challenges working in a large enterprise company, it's a bit like being on a hamster wheel. Everything is very repetitive. It just keeps going around and around. Budget cycles happen. You tend to do similar things every year. You know, we're going to cut back just a little bit, but do just as much. And, you know, there's the usual cutting of resources and staff. And after a while, I just got to thinking that there's got to be something else. There's got to be some challenges that are more exciting, more fulfilling. And, you know, Steve, I'm a big believer that small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of this economy. They are really what are keeping the lights on for so many people. And those are the businesses that I really wanted to help. And so I thought, what better way to do that than to branch off on my own, take the skills and experience that I had and put that to work helping some of these small and mid-sized businesses. That's great to hear. You know, I teach a lot about this idea of these management concepts. I talk about several management concepts in my book that they have all been implemented by the MBAs of fortune companies. And it's time for small to medium-sized companies to also implement these things. So what are some of the things that you have seen work for Oracle that could be somehow maybe simplified for small to medium-sized enterprises, and they could also apply those concepts or frameworks? You know, when you are a big company, a big enterprise company, they have spent so much money over time developing their brand that they become fairly militant about it, about maintaining their brand profile, their brand image. And that's a positive and a negative, but what it has shown me is that there is real value in consistency. Some people may think it's a little bit picky if you specify to every designer that the red that you use in your logo is hex number, you know, F3, whatever it may be. But there is consistency because there are brands that are out there that you can literally look at the font that they use in their advertisement or the color of something and recognize that it's that brand without even seeing their name listed. And so I think for a lot of small and mid-sized companies, one of the things that they can learn from these larger enterprise competitors is that there is value in being consistent, in putting your message out there in a consistent way so that people begin to recognize you. Look, you have a lot less dollars to spend usually,

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Sales enablement as a function has undergone massive transformation in recent years, and as it’s continued to be elevated more and more as a strategic business function to empower revenue growth, practitioners and business leaders want to know what good looks like. But in sales enablement, there’s no silver bullet or secret sauce that will lead to success for everyone. However, there are some core components of successful sales enablement that professionals can apply to their own organizations to drive meaningful outcomes. Roderick Jefferson’s new book, “Sales Enablement 3.0”, covers just that, and I’m so excited to have him join us to talk a bit more about his book. Roderick, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Roderick Jefferson: First of all, thank you very much. I’m absolutely honored to be here and can’t wait to dive into this. A little bit about myself, I am the consummate salesperson. I started as a BDR, so I've got a lot of love for them. I understand that role and how difficult it is. I got promoted into AE, went to president’s club, and all that fun stuff, and then got promoted to sales leader and promptly turned it down. I know it sounds odd, but it’s because I figured out that I absolutely loved the process of selling versus actually taking down big deals. I stepped at that point into my first training role and that was years ago with, at T&G. I’ve been fortunate since then. I have run enablement at Siebel Systems, NetApp, eBay, HP, Oracle, Salesforce, and Marketo. While that was a great run, I decided I was going to be a masochist and go out on my own and give it a shot as a consultant, which went really well. I had a great time for about three years consulting and helping companies. I started in the SMB space and then slowly got pulled further upstream by some larger clients and then realized done everything I wanted to do as a consultant, and it was time to come back in house. As of today, I am the vice president of field enablement at Netskope, which is a network security company. OF: Fantastic. As I mentioned, your new book is titled “Sales Enablement 3.0”. I’m wondering, can you just tell our audience a little bit about what “Sales Enablement 3.0” is all about? How have you really seen sales enablement evolve over the last few years, given your wide breadth of experience, and then what do you think is really the current state of the function right now? RJ: Well, I’ll go backwards and then I’ll come back to today if I can. If you would’ve asked me that as a couple of years ago, I would have said sales enablement was about breaking the complexity of sales into practical ideas, through scalable and repeatable processes that will lead to accelerated speed to revenue, increase seller productivity and customers for life, and then ultimately leading to increase revenue. Now, to answer your second question and why I wrote the book, we have completely changed now. I believe that sales enablement is more of an innovative approach focused on increasing sales productivity, through systematic, personalized, and collaborative approaches, designed to support the buyer to fuel what I’m calling the conversation economy. There was a time where we could talk about how do we help them increase productivity, decrease pain. Well, COVID changes everything, as we know. Even the pre-COVID things were starting to shift to where enablement now has become more of a strategic function that is woven into the fabric of companies. We should be a part of the go-to-market strategy. We are actually a differentiator if done correctly for both internal and external messaging and positioning around the key differentiation, competitive advantage, and business value of a given company. We’ve stepped away from what I call the kiddie table now. We sit squarely at the strategic table at a C-level. It’s interesting, the last three companies I was at, sales enablement and now field enablement was actually one of the top five initiatives for the overall company, which really speaks volumes to how much we moved away from being just training. OF: Absolutely. I could not agree more that sales enablement really must be a strategic function and viewed that way by the C-suite and given that seat at the table. You described “Sales Enablement 3.0” as both an art and a science. I’m curious, what do each of those aspects look like and enablement today – the art and the science – and why is it important to have both working in tandem in order to be successful in sales enablement? RJ: Fantastic question. When I was putting this together, I was like, how do I bring both the art and the science together that I’ve seen over the last few years? I realized something really quickly. There are no silver bullets. There’s no single approach that’ll guarantee success. However, there is a formula, just like any other successful process, program, or tool that requires a combination of practical application, trial and error, mixed with a lot of conversations with different sales leaders to understand what their wants, their needs, and their expectations are. You’d take the practical application piece and you tie it together with learning how to and how not to. You look at it from the processes, programs, platforms, tools, all of those things that we do, but there’s another piece and here’s where the art comes in. Think of an orchestra. you’ve got strings, percussion, woodwind, brass, and they’re all trying to play the same song. Sometimes the notes are out of key. They’re out of faith. Now, let's align that to the business units: you’ve got marketing, product marketing, product management, HR, engineering, sales, and enablement. We’re all trying to do the right thing for the customer, but most of the time there’s a lack of collaboration or coordination. Sometimes we’re stepping over each other. Sometimes multiple messaging is going to the same prospect or customer. Until – just like the orchestra – internally, one person or one organization that I call sales enablement steps up and taps the stand and all of that chaos before now becomes a beautiful piece of music. There’s the art piece of it. OF: That is a fantastic analogy. I love that orchestra. You mentioned this also, that your book lays out a formula or blueprint for building a world-class enablement organization. What are the core components of an effective enablement strategy in your opinion? RJ: I think there are eight pieces and they fall into three categories. I look at it as strategy, architecture, and then reinforcement. In the strategy piece, it’s about defining and building a charter that outlines and defines what enablement means to your company and what it doesn’t mean. I don’t mean this isn’t my job. I’m looking at it more of here’s what we are best at what we bring the largest amount of value. Here’s how we can collaborate. Also, here’s how we can be what I call the translators of dialects and languages. Let me explain that briefly. We go out and we meet with different customers and prospects. We come back and we say, “product marketing, absolutely love the first call pitch. Problem is, slide eight gets a little fuzzy. Can we either smooth that out or remove it?” Then we come back to product management and say, “we’ve heard this same request for a feature 10 times. How do we get that moved up on the release cycle?” Then, step over to sales and talk to them about not only our ICP, or ideal customer profile, but because we don’t have enough acronyms, I’ll add another one. IEP — what’s our ideal employee profile for our sellers? Because as companies grow, the maturation cycle requires a different type of seller. You may have that volume velocity sell upfront, and then as you grow, you’ve got more complex and or larger big-ticket items. You need a more mature seller. Then we go to HR and say, “as we are out recruiting, here’s what we’ve worked with sales to define as a new IEP. Here’s the new look for the recruiting piece.” On that point, I think enablement has to be a part of the overall interview process as well. Then you’ve got to look at how do you make learning a marathon and not a sprint? And I’m talking about everything from talent acquisition, role-specific onboarding, to a business acumen at a role-specific level, to coaching and reinforcement for your first and second-line managers on two levels: one net-new manager for the first time and second, the legacy manager or that old dog that we’ve got to teach new tricks because obviously we are all looking at things differently now. Then you’ve got measurements and I’m not talking about smiley sheets and butts and seats like we used to look at. I’m talking about what are we doing to impact revenue-generating metrics. Then finally, you’ve got to have a succession plan in place because how are you going to get folks from that individual contributor level to leader? I don’t necessarily mean just sales leader. They may figure out along their journey that, “Hey, I want to go look at product marketing or product management”, or “I may want to go look at this thing that we’re calling sales enablement. I think that fits me better.” OF: I love that holistic view of all the possibilities of how salespeople can grow in their careers and how sales enablement can support that. You did mention a few core partners that sales enablement works with in the business and going back to that orchestra analogy as well, one of those core leaders is the sales leader. You talk about the importance of really understanding the needs and expectations of sales leaders to be able to design effective enablement programs. What are some of your best practices for really building alignment with sales leaders? RJ: It may sound corny and simple, but I start every conversation with sales leaders with a single three-point question. Do you want me to listen, do you want me to coach, or do you want me to fix? The reason I do that is because it allows me to put on the right set of ears, if you will, and hear what it is that they need. Secondly, it shows them that this conversation is all about them. The second is I approach sales leaders with a simple three-part process. That is listen, learn, then lead. Too many times as sales enablement practitioners, we want to dive in because we’re fixers by nature, but that may not be what that sales leader needs. Then the third piece is when I’m building out a seller enablement org, my goal is that everyone on my team has carried a bag in some sort prior to going into enablement, whether you’re a BDR, an AE, a CSM, you’re in channels, or wherever you may have been. The reason is there’s an enormous amount of credibility by saying I’ve walked in your shoes and I understand what’s going on. Plus, it raises our BS filter a lot higher with sales because we’ve done that job. We can go, “that’s not going to be two weeks. It’s more like four days. Come on now.” OF: Yes. I love that point about really having credibility with sales leaders and one of those ways that you can also build credibility is just by furthering the sales leader's strategic goals and their priorities. In your opinion and in your experience, how does sales enablement help further the strategic priorities of sales leaders? RJ: First and foremost, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know”. We don’t have the answers to everything and we’re not the fix to every problem. We are a matter of fact, we’re not the break fix organization at all. Back to credibility, when you say that to a sales leader, most people think, “Oh, no, I’m supposed to know this. I can’t say, I don’t know.” No, no, no. What it does is it gives you credibility because it gives you an opportunity to learn from them. It also forces you to be the perpetual learner and listener to learn from the sales leader. The next is talk to them in the language that they speak. Don’t try and get them to speak sales enablement jargon. Too many times, we throw all of these cool acronyms out thinking they’re going to pick it up. No, listen to them as your internal customer, not your stakeholder. That’s because if their stakeholders, that means you’re beholden to them as an internal customer. You’re doing everything to ensure that they are successful and satisfied, but it also has to be mutually equitable. That’s where the third thing comes in. You cannot be a sales scribe. You cannot be seen as sales support. You cannot be seen as the break fix organization. You need to outline what your value is that you bring and agree with the sales leader upon what enablement means in your company at this particular point of the maturation cycle. Come back on a regular basis to make sure that as the company is changing messaging, positioning, competitive landscape, hiring acquisitions, those kinds of things, that you revisit what that definition means and agree upon that so that when you have your deliverables – which should be no more than five, because above five, you’re setting yourself up for failure – when you have those deliverables, you can always come back and you have a baseline with them. That way, the goalpost doesn’t move when you think you’re about to jump into the end zone and score. OF: Absolutely. You actually touched on something that I want to dig a little bit deeper into, which is really just defining your deliverables and how you’re going to measure results so that you really have that alignment. What are some of the core metrics that you recommend looking at in order to really just prove the business impact of sales enablement? RJ: I love that question, because for so long, we have been seen, as I said earlier, as smiley sheets and butts and seats, and those days have changed. If you don’t have hard line metrics, then you don’t have a lot of value to the organization or to sales in general and they will completely cut you off. To that point, I believe there are two types of enablement metrics. First, there are the metrics that we influence and then there’s the others that we own. Let me say this as a caveat, if you’re in enablement and you say that you’re driving revenue, I call BS. Unless you’re carrying a bag, we are influencing. We do not drive revenue. Let me say that again. We influence and impact, we do not drive revenue unless you have an actual number on your head that your team is responsible for. On the influence side, it’s things like accreditation completions, average deal size, collateral frequency, usage, deal velocity, pipeline created, closed deals, product mix, quota attainment quarter over quarter, annual time to first close, win and loss rates. We impact those with our processes and programs and tools. The things that we actually own are things like the accreditation process, the biannual needs analysis, the program-based surveys, the usage stats, the communications, the e-learnings, all of the pieces that come together that we help. As I talked about, there is a journey and marathon of learning earlier that we own. Then we come back on the back end with reinforcement and that reinforcement is working directly with and partnering with the sales leaders to ensure that they own the adoption, the execution, and most importantly, the positive modeling of all of those programs that we have. We can give you the best, most world-class programs, processes, platforms, and tools in the world. What if the sales leader first and second line doesn’t buy into it and own it? We’re dead in the water. OF: Yeah. That’s a great way to think about it, the metrics that sales enablement has influence over versus those that enablement can own. You are very forward-thinking in sales enablement, so I’m curious, how do you think the function will continue to evolve in the next year and possibly even beyond that? RJ: Phenomenal question. I’ll give a little book teaser. Don’t be afraid of AI, make it your friend. It’s everywhere. I think that AI is going to play a larger piece and role in sales enablement than ever before going forward. I also think that the metrics that I just outlined there are separate metrics for sales and separate metrics for CSM. Those are going to be your best friend. If you don’t have dashboards right now, start getting them together out of your CRM. Metrics are going to play a bigger role. I also believe that we’re going to become more and more ingrained in the fabric and the culture of companies, because I’m seeing more and more CEOs now that are putting enablement on their top priority lists and their deliverables list. The next is build a field enablement council as I call it. That is, bring all of the players together. The product marketing, marketing, product management, HR, bringing them together once a month, once a quarter to make sure that everyone is on the same page. You have to become the orchestra master. That is going to become more and more important because the changes in landscape from a competitive perspective, mergers and acquisitions are going to play larger piece in what enablement actually does. Determine where you are in the maturation cycle of your company, and start building for where your CEO is trying to take you. Start that build today. Don’t be afraid of scaling automation and don’t be afraid of AI. Those are going to be an integral part of enablement going forward and play an even bigger piece. At one company, I was even reading out to the board, what our metrics were on a quarterly basis. I believe that enablement is going to have a higher profile in companies than ever before. OF: That is fantastic advice, and I love your perspective on the future of enablement. Roderick, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to our audience today about your book. RJ: Thank you for having me. Again, I’m absolutely honored and I am dying to get that baby that I call my book out there to the world so that they can see and grasp and my hope is start executing on “Sales Enablement 3.0”, which is I call the blueprint sales enablement excellence. You want to get there, go grab the book OF: To our audience, you can find Roderick’s book now on Amazon. Thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you. You can purchase “Sales Enablement 3.0” now on Amazon here.

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Sales enablement as a function has undergone massive transformation in recent years, and as it’s continued to be elevated more and more as a strategic business function to empower revenue growth, practitioners and business leaders want to know what good looks like. But in sales enablement, there’s no silver bullet or secret sauce that will lead to success for everyone. However, there are some core components of successful sales enablement that professionals can apply to their own organizations to drive meaningful outcomes. Roderick Jefferson’s new book, “Sales Enablement 3.0”, covers just that, and I’m so excited to have him join us to talk a bit more about his book. Roderick, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Roderick Jefferson: First of all, thank you very much. I’m absolutely honored to be here and can’t wait to dive into this. A little bit about myself, I am the consummate salesperson. I started as a BDR, so I've got a lot of love for them. I understand that role and how difficult it is. I got promoted into AE, went to president’s club, and all that fun stuff, and then got promoted to sales leader and promptly turned it down. I know it sounds odd, but it’s because I figured out that I absolutely loved the process of selling versus actually taking down big deals. I stepped at that point into my first training role and that was years ago with, at T&G. I’ve been fortunate since then. I have run enablement at Siebel Systems, NetApp, eBay, HP, Oracle, Salesforce, and Marketo. While that was a great run, I decided I was going to be a masochist and go out on my own and give it a shot as a consultant, which went really well. I had a great time for about three years consulting and helping companies. I started in the SMB space and then slowly got pulled further upstream by some larger clients and then realized done everything I wanted to do as a consultant, and it was time to come back in house. As of today, I am the vice president of field enablement at Netskope, which is a network security company. OF: Fantastic. As I mentioned, your new book is titled “Sales Enablement 3.0”. I’m wondering, can you just tell our audience a little bit about what “Sales Enablement 3.0” is all about? How have you really seen sales enablement evolve over the last few years, given your wide breadth of experience, and then what do you think is really the current state of the function right now? RJ: Well, I’ll go backwards and then I’ll come back to today if I can. If you would’ve asked me that as a couple of years ago, I would have said sales enablement was about breaking the complexity of sales into practical ideas, through scalable and repeatable processes that will lead to accelerated speed to revenue, increase seller productivity and customers for life, and then ultimately leading to increase revenue. Now, to answer your second question and why I wrote the book, we have completely changed now. I believe that sales enablement is more of an innovative approach focused on increasing sales productivity, through systematic, personalized, and collaborative approaches, designed to support the buyer to fuel what I’m calling the conversation economy. There was a time where we could talk about how do we help them increase productivity, decrease pain. Well, COVID changes everything, as we know. Even the pre-COVID things were starting to shift to where enablement now has become more of a strategic function that is woven into the fabric of companies. We should be a part of the go-to-market strategy. We are actually a differentiator if done correctly for both internal and external messaging and positioning around the key differentiation, competitive advantage, and business value of a given company. We’ve stepped away from what I call the kiddie table now. We sit squarely at the strategic table at a C-level. It’s interesting, the last three companies I was at, sales enablement and now field enablement was actually one of the top five initiatives for the overall company, which really speaks volumes to how much we moved away from being just training. OF: Absolutely. I could not agree more that sales enablement really must be a strategic function and viewed that way by the C-suite and given that seat at the table. You described “Sales Enablement 3.0” as both an art and a science. I’m curious, what do each of those aspects look like and enablement today – the art and the science – and why is it important to have both working in tandem in order to be successful in sales enablement? RJ: Fantastic question. When I was putting this together, I was like, how do I bring both the art and the science together that I’ve seen over the last few years? I realized something really quickly. There are no silver bullets. There’s no single approach that’ll guarantee success. However, there is a formula, just like any other successful process, program, or tool that requires a combination of practical application, trial and error, mixed with a lot of conversations with different sales leaders to understand what their wants, their needs, and their expectations are. You’d take the practical application piece and you tie it together with learning how to and how not to. You look at it from the processes, programs, platforms, tools, all of those things that we do, but there’s another piece and here’s where the art comes in. Think of an orchestra. you’ve got strings, percussion, woodwind, brass, and they’re all trying to play the same song. Sometimes the notes are out of key. They’re out of faith. Now, let's align that to the business units: you’ve got marketing, product marketing, product management, HR, engineering, sales, and enablement. We’re all trying to do the right thing for the customer, but most of the time there’s a lack of collaboration or coordination. Sometimes we’re stepping over each other. Sometimes multiple messaging is going to the same prospect or customer. Until – just like the orchestra – internally, one person or one organization that I call sales enablement steps up and taps the stand and all of that chaos before now becomes a beautiful piece of music. There’s the art piece of it. OF: That is a fantastic analogy. I love that orchestra. You mentioned this also, that your book lays out a formula or blueprint for building a world-class enablement organization. What are the core components of an effective enablement strategy in your opinion? RJ: I think there are eight pieces and they fall into three categories. I look at it as strategy, architecture, and then reinforcement. In the strategy piece, it’s about defining and building a charter that outlines and defines what enablement means to your company and what it doesn’t mean. I don’t mean this isn’t my job. I’m looking at it more of here’s what we are best at what we bring the largest amount of value. Here’s how we can collaborate. Also, here’s how we can be what I call the translators of dialects and languages. Let me explain that briefly. We go out and we meet with different customers and prospects. We come back and we say, “product marketing, absolutely love the first call pitch. Problem is, slide eight gets a little fuzzy. Can we either smooth that out or remove it?” Then we come back to product management and say, “we’ve heard this same request for a feature 10 times. How do we get that moved up on the release cycle?” Then, step over to sales and talk to them about not only our ICP, or ideal customer profile, but because we don’t have enough acronyms, I’ll add another one. IEP — what’s our ideal employee profile for our sellers? Because as companies grow, the maturation cycle requires a different type of seller. You may have that volume velocity sell upfront, and then as you grow, you’ve got more complex and or larger big-ticket items. You need a more mature seller. Then we go to HR and say, “as we are out recruiting, here’s what we’ve worked with sales to define as a new IEP. Here’s the new look for the recruiting piece.” On that point, I think enablement has to be a part of the overall interview process as well. Then you’ve got to look at how do you make learning a marathon and not a sprint? And I’m talking about everything from talent acquisition, role-specific onboarding, to a business acumen at a role-specific level, to coaching and reinforcement for your first and second-line managers on two levels: one net-new manager for the first time and second, the legacy manager or that old dog that we’ve got to teach new tricks because obviously we are all looking at things differently now. Then you’ve got measurements and I’m not talking about smiley sheets and butts and seats like we used to look at. I’m talking about what are we doing to impact revenue-generating metrics. Then finally, you’ve got to have a succession plan in place because how are you going to get folks from that individual contributor level to leader? I don’t necessarily mean just sales leader. They may figure out along their journey that, “Hey, I want to go look at product marketing or product management”, or “I may want to go look at this thing that we’re calling sales enablement. I think that fits me better.” OF: I love that holistic view of all the possibilities of how salespeople can grow in their careers and how sales enablement can support that. You did mention a few core partners that sales enablement works with in the business and going back to that orchestra analogy as well, one of those core leaders is the sales leader. You talk about the importance of really understanding the needs and expectations of sales leaders to be able to design effective enablement programs. What are some of your best practices for really building alignment with sales leaders? RJ: It may sound corny and simple, but I start every conversation with sales leaders with a single three-point question. Do you want me to listen, do you want me to coach, or do you want me to fix? The reason I do that is because it allows me to put on the right set of ears, if you will, and hear what it is that they need. Secondly, it shows them that this conversation is all about them. The second is I approach sales leaders with a simple three-part process. That is listen, learn, then lead. Too many times as sales enablement practitioners, we want to dive in because we’re fixers by nature, but that may not be what that sales leader needs. Then the third piece is when I’m building out a seller enablement org, my goal is that everyone on my team has carried a bag in some sort prior to going into enablement, whether you’re a BDR, an AE, a CSM, you’re in channels, or wherever you may have been. The reason is there’s an enormous amount of credibility by saying I’ve walked in your shoes and I understand what’s going on. Plus, it raises our BS filter a lot higher with sales because we’ve done that job. We can go, “that’s not going to be two weeks. It’s more like four days. Come on now.” OF: Yes. I love that point about really having credibility with sales leaders and one of those ways that you can also build credibility is just by furthering the sales leader's strategic goals and their priorities. In your opinion and in your experience, how does sales enablement help further the strategic priorities of sales leaders? RJ: First and foremost, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know”. We don’t have the answers to everything and we’re not the fix to every problem. We are a matter of fact, we’re not the break fix organization at all. Back to credibility, when you say that to a sales leader, most people think, “Oh, no, I’m supposed to know this. I can’t say, I don’t know.” No, no, no. What it does is it gives you credibility because it gives you an opportunity to learn from them. It also forces you to be the perpetual learner and listener to learn from the sales leader. The next is talk to them in the language that they speak. Don’t try and get them to speak sales enablement jargon. Too many times, we throw all of these cool acronyms out thinking they’re going to pick it up. No, listen to them as your internal customer, not your stakeholder. That’s because if their stakeholders, that means you’re beholden to them as an internal customer. You’re doing everything to ensure that they are successful and satisfied, but it also has to be mutually equitable. That’s where the third thing comes in. You cannot be a sales scribe. You cannot be seen as sales support. You cannot be seen as the break fix organization. You need to outline what your value is that you bring and agree with the sales leader upon what enablement means in your company at this particular point of the maturation cycle. Come back on a regular basis to make sure that as the company is changing messaging, positioning, competitive landscape, hiring acquisitions, those kinds of things, that you revisit what that definition means and agree upon that so that when you have your deliverables – which should be no more than five, because above five, you’re setting yourself up for failure – when you have those deliverables, you can always come back and you have a baseline with them. That way, the goalpost doesn’t move when you think you’re about to jump into the end zone and score. OF: Absolutely. You actually touched on something that I want to dig a little bit deeper into, which is really just defining your deliverables and how you’re going to measure results so that you really have that alignment. What are some of the core metrics that you recommend looking at in order to really just prove the business impact of sales enablement? RJ: I love that question, because for so long, we have been seen, as I said earlier, as smiley sheets and butts and seats, and those days have changed. If you don’t have hard line metrics, then you don’t have a lot of value to the organization or to sales in general and they will completely cut you off. To that point, I believe there are two types of enablement metrics. First, there are the metrics that we influence and then there’s the others that we own. Let me say this as a caveat, if you’re in enablement and you say that you’re driving revenue, I call BS. Unless you’re carrying a bag, we are influencing. We do not drive revenue. Let me say that again. We influence and impact, we do not drive revenue unless you have an actual number on your head that your team is responsible for. On the influence side, it’s things like accreditation completions, average deal size, collateral frequency, usage, deal velocity, pipeline created, closed deals, product mix, quota attainment quarter over quarter, annual time to first close, win and loss rates. We impact those with our processes and programs and tools. The things that we actually own are things like the accreditation process, the biannual needs analysis, the program-based surveys, the usage stats, the communications, the e-learnings, all of the pieces that come together that we help. As I talked about, there is a journey and marathon of learning earlier that we own. Then we come back on the back end with reinforcement and that reinforcement is working directly with and partnering with the sales leaders to ensure that they own the adoption, the execution, and most importantly, the positive modeling of all of those programs that we have. We can give you the best, most world-class programs, processes, platforms, and tools in the world. What if the sales leader first and second line doesn’t buy into it and own it? We’re dead in the water. OF: Yeah. That’s a great way to think about it, the metrics that sales enablement has influence over versus those that enablement can own. You are very forward-thinking in sales enablement, so I’m curious, how do you think the function will continue to evolve in the next year and possibly even beyond that? RJ: Phenomenal question. I’ll give a little book teaser. Don’t be afraid of AI, make it your friend. It’s everywhere. I think that AI is going to play a larger piece and role in sales enablement than ever before going forward. I also think that the metrics that I just outlined there are separate metrics for sales and separate metrics for CSM. Those are going to be your best friend. If you don’t have dashboards right now, start getting them together out of your CRM. Metrics are going to play a bigger role. I also believe that we’re going to become more and more ingrained in the fabric and the culture of companies, because I’m seeing more and more CEOs now that are putting enablement on their top priority lists and their deliverables list. The next is build a field enablement council as I call it. That is, bring all of the players together. The product marketing, marketing, product management, HR, bringing them together once a month, once a quarter to make sure that everyone is on the same page. You have to become the orchestra master. That is going to become more and more important because the changes in landscape from a competitive perspective, mergers and acquisitions are going to play larger piece in what enablement actually does. Determine where you are in the maturation cycle of your company, and start building for where your CEO is trying to take you. Start that build today. Don’t be afraid of scaling automation and don’t be afraid of AI. Those are going to be an integral part of enablement going forward and play an even bigger piece. At one company, I was even reading out to the board, what our metrics were on a quarterly basis. I believe that enablement is going to have a higher profile in companies than ever before. OF: That is fantastic advice, and I love your perspective on the future of enablement. Roderick, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to our audience today about your book. RJ: Thank you for having me. Again, I’m absolutely honored and I am dying to get that baby that I call my book out there to the world so that they can see and grasp and my hope is start executing on “Sales Enablement 3.0”, which is I call the blueprint sales enablement excellence. You want to get there, go grab the book OF: To our audience, you can find Roderick’s book now on Amazon. Thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you. You can purchase “Sales Enablement 3.0” now on Amazon here.

Paddle, the Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies appoints software industry veteran Jimmy Fitzgerald to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Fitzgerald will help Paddle with its mission to supercharge the growth of fast-scaling software businesses everywhere. Fitzgerald was COO at SaaS price optimization startup SignalDemand (acquired by PROS) and held senior leadership positions at customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Siebel Systems (later acquired by Oracle). Caller-identification application Truecaller announces a new solution for enterprises, which will allow businesses to verify their identity on the platform. With this feature, verified businesses will get a green caller ID and a verified business badge, and can also lock their brand name and profile photo. However, consumers will continue to see the number of spam markings as usual and they retain the right to mark verified numbers as spam or block them completely. E-commerce investor Upper90 raises $55M for equity investments. Upper90 is led by CEO Billy Libby, former head of quantitative education sales at Goldman Sachs, and Chairman Jason Finger co-founder of Seamless, and it was the first investor in both Thrasio and Clearbanc. The firm offers debt and equity funding, and it just closed a $195 million fund in December. Chili Piper, a sophisticated SaaS appointment scheduling platform for sales teams, raises a $33 million B round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Base10 Partners and Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused VC, also participated. This brings the company's total financing to $54 million. The company will use the capital raised to accelerate product development. The previous $18 million A round was led by Base10 and Google's Gradient Ventures nine months ago. Substack announces a $1M initiative to fund local journalists. The startup described Substack Local as a $1 million initiative that will fund independent writers creating local news publications. Similar to the Substack Pro program, the company will offer cash advances of up to $100,000, as well as mentorship and subsidized access to health insurance and design services. In exchange, Substack will take 85% of subscription revenue for a year.UserZoom raises $100M and acquires EnjoyHQ, to grow its platform to improve UX and other interactive design elements. It has built a platform used by companies like Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, and many others to help them stay off the bad design radar with tools to evaluate their design and identify where and when it doesn't work.MedChron LLC Launches Its Innovative New SaaS for Small to Mid Size Medical Practices, Optimizing CCM, CCP, and MWV Medicare Billing. MedChron was founded to fix problems and deliver an affordable web-based software solution that quickly, efficiently, and neatly organizes all contacts and interactions with patients. 

Bruce Cleveland has been a Silicon Valley CMO and CPO (and venture investor) holding senior executive positions at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems and C3 AI. His experience in business and technology include: ◆ Siebel - Over 10 years, led the marketing, alliances, & product divisions. During my time, Siebel grew from $4M to $2B annual revenue. ◆ Apple - Led an engineering division where we developed multiple Apple software products. ◆ Oracle - Joined Oracle when it was an early stage startup; led the Unix product division. Some of his investment successes… ◆ Marketo - Was the first investor in Marketo when it was just a concept. Served on its board for 7 years to the IPO. Acquired by Adobe for $4.75B. ◆ C3.ai- A first investor in C3.ai. Asked by Tom Siebel to help form initial business plan. Served on Advisory Board for 4 years. ◆ Vlocity - Early investor. Provided input on Vlocity’s partner strategy. Recently acquired by Salesforce for $1.2B. Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter. Buy his book here. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mindloom/support

View the full video interview here. Why Customer Value Management is the next big thing in business, and how you can use it to win Customers for Life. Jim Berryhill is the CEO & Co-Founder of DecisionLink. Jim spent over 30 years in enterprise software sales and sales management, leading high-performance teams at ADR, CA, Siebel Systems and HP Software with a focus on value selling. He founded DecisionLink with a vision to empower companies to make customers for life by delivering the first enterprise-class platform for Customer Value Management. Jim is a graduate of the University of Georgia, resides in Atlanta with his wife Elise and has two children and three grandchildren.

Episode Notes:Avaya SVP and CMO Simon Harrison joins The Customer Experience Show to discuss how being a product manager has helped him become a successful customer experience leader, what the future of CX looks like as the world transitions into an experience economy, and much more.3 Takeaways:Before they can improve the CX experience, CX leaders need to make sure they understand every detail of the customer journey.One key to creating a great customer experience is listening to customers and learning from what they are saying and what they want and need.Trust is an important part of building a great CX. Leaders need to train their employees how to create a great experience, and then empower and trust them to do the right thing.Key Quotes:“We have a relentless focus. Effectively, if you have engaged and empowered staff, they enjoy great experiences and that directly translates to our customers having great experiences.”“It's whether you decide the ambition to change things is significant enough for you to push on into a role where, it may be out of your comfort zone, but you could make a difference. I took the leap and worked hard to become perhaps somewhat of a success as a product manager.”“As a CXO or someone that's passionate about customer experiences and in a leadership role in a company, I'm really keen to talk about the customer journey and understand more about how to make people feel better. It's about memorable experiences rather than trying to sell them something.”Thank you to our friendsThis episode is brought to you by IBM. If you are responsible for Customer Experience, they've created a White Paper just for you. In the CX North Star Report, you can learn more about how to activate your CX vision. Download it here.Bio: Simon Harrison is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, leading the global marketing function to engage new and existing customers and partners, drive adoption of the company's software solutions and support Avaya as the leading player in a dynamic digital communications market.Simon joined Avaya in 2020 from leading research and advisory firm, Gartner, where he was research director and lead analyst for the Unified Communications and Contact Center market. In a career spanning over 25 years, he has been a thought leader, product strategist, marketer and consultant in the communications solutions industry. Prior to Gartner, he held leadership roles in Marketing, Sales, Product Marketing, and Product Management for companies like Cirrus, Vocalcom, Siebel Systems, and others.

Guest: Kevin Knieriem, Chief Revenue Officer of Clari In this episode we cover what Clari does, how the business has transformed Kevin’s life, and what the company’s sales organization looks like today. (3:55)... How Kevin approached the interview process at Clari and what he discovered about how well the business’ leadership team works together. (8:07)... ‘The reverse pyramid’: A look at the leadership values Kevin brings to Clari and how the business’ didn’t hire any external recruiters when building its go-to-market machine. (13:00)... Kevin’s background working in sales at Siebel Systems. (19:42)... ‘Data is now the foundation of everything’: What “revenue operations” means to Kevin. (23:48)... What Kevin looks for in new hires and how selling has changed in recent years. (27:51)... Why Kevin believes that the single most important number to any company are sales forecasts and how Clari helps visualize business data for improved decision making. (35:46)... How AI is changing sales and why Kevin believes it’s still important for leaders to pay attention to their gut instincts. (43:07)... How Kevin defines grit. (46:45)

Jim Berryhill is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Director of Value Management pioneer DecisionLink. He has spent over 30 years in enterprise software sales and sales management, leading high-performance teams at ADR, CA, Siebel Systems, and HP Software with a focus on value selling. Jim founded DecisionLink with a vision to make Customer Value a strategic, […] The post Jim Berryhill with DecisionLink appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Jim Berryhill is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Director of Value Management pioneer DecisionLink. He has spent over 30 years in enterprise software sales and sales management, leading high-performance teams at ADR, CA, Siebel Systems, and HP Software with a focus on value selling. Jim founded DecisionLink with a vision to make Customer Value a strategic, […]

DTRH Ep.13: The Origin of Sales Enablement - Feat. Roderick Jefferson  Ever heard of the term "Sales Enablement"? Well, you're about to learn not only what it is but what it means and uncover the origin of the term from the man who coined it himself—Roderick Jefferson. The man, the myth, the legend. Oh yeah, baby, you gonna learn today!  Episode Summary  In today’s episode of Down The Rabbit Hole, your host, Rob Turley, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at White Rabbit Intel, delves deep into the mind of Roderick Jefferson to unearth the truth about sales enablement and sales team strategies by aligning with The Buyer's Journey.  The Buyer's Journey is the most critical piece to a successful sales strategy while enabling sales because people buy from people! That's the truth. There is nothing fictitious about a business's success that drives selling via customer engagement and relationship building. The key is to think on your feet to put oneself into the buyer's shoes as best as possible, and to do that, you need to understand not only them but their industry as well.  How would you want to buy the product or service you're selling? Do you want to be treated as a "cha-ching" or a number? Nope! You want to be treated like a valuable asset. Like you matter. Like you are the most important person in the room. It's all about getting helped and being shown, not told and sold. Simple as that.  If your sales strategy does not drive this simple concept, then you're not going to get very far, and you're not going to last. That's when the relationship starts, not when it's concluded. Your job as a sales professional is not done until the relationship has concluded to its entirety, and even still, staying in touch and on good terms is vital to success.  “If a sales professional believes that the sale is over after the close, they're dead wrong. It has only just begun.”  – Rob Turley  About Roderick  Roderick Jefferson is the CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates. He has 20+ years of sales leadership and is an acknowledged thought leader and keynote speaker in the sales enablement space. Roderick is a highly regarded executive whose expertise and insight is sought after because he understands how to create bridges between internal organizations to empower sales to exceed expectations.  Prior to Roderick Jefferson & Associates, he held various executive leadership, sales, sales enablement, operations, and customer experience roles for Marketo, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, 3PAR, Business Objects, NetApp, PayPal, Siebel Systems, & AT&T.  Check out Roderick's new book Sales Enablement 3.0 and mention that you got referred by Down The Rabbit Hole Podcast and you'll get a massive discount! It's worth it because it's a hell of a read.    Feel free to connect with Roderick Jefferson or Rob Turley on LinkedIn or Follow Roderick @ThevoiceofRod, and Rob @RobTurley2 on Twitter!  #DTRHpodcast #FollowTheWhiteRabbit #SalesEnablement #SalesCoaching #Leadership #SalesEnablement3dot0 #TrainAnimalseEnablePeople #HopeIsNotAStrategy 

Pavel Cherkashin is a co-founder and managing partner at Mindrock. He is also a managing partner at GVA Capital, overseeing over $300M in assets under management. Earlier in his career, Pavel served in executive roles at Microsoft Russia, Adobe Systems and Siebel Systems. He also founded several IT companies, including Sputnik Labs, AdWatch and Actis Systems, all of which were acquired by leading global organizations. FIND PAVEL ON SOCIAL MEDIA LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter ================================ SUPPORT & CONNECT: Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/denofrich Twitter: https://twitter.com/denofrich Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/denofrich YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/denofrich Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_of_rich/ Hashtag: #denofrich © Copyright 2022 UHNWI data. All rights reserved.

Pavel Cherkashin is a co-founder and managing partner at Mindrock. He is also a managing partner at GVA Capital, overseeing over $300M in assets under management. Earlier in his career, Pavel served in executive roles at Microsoft Russia, Adobe Systems and Siebel Systems. He also founded several IT companies, including Sputnik Labs, AdWatch and Actis Systems, all of which were acquired by leading global organizations.FIND PAVEL ON SOCIAL MEDIALinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Folks, in this episode Sarbjeet and I took a very deep dive into the history, the current state and the future of the Artificial Intelligence market. We focused on the company called C3.AI ($AI) that has been picking up steam for the last few years. They were founded in 2009 and they IPO’d earlier this December. Their current CEO is Tom Siebel, who sold his Siebel Systems company to Oracle back in 2005. This company is very interesting. They seem to be doing a lot of things right. They have an app development platform that many large clients already use (i.e. Shell has ~200 projects built on top of c3.ai, according to Tom Siebel). They also have several apps of their own that their clients use. Tune in and we hope you will really like our discussion. We apologize for a couple of technical problems with internet and Zoom that we experienced along the way. Note: Although we may briefly discuss the investment aspect of companies we analyze, Fat Protocols episodes are not financial advice.

The job is what you make it. Be patient. Know how to break down problems into clear and specific steps. Ask for help. Soft skills are just as important as hard skills. Just let it go.Some people have gained so much wisdom, it feels like every other sentence they say is a piece of invaluable advice. Nitsa Zuppas is one of those people. With over 20 years in the marketing world, Nitsa has created dozens of award-winning advertising campaigns with talented teams, made a profound impact in the business world and beyond, and gathered countless insights from mentors and her own experiences. And she’s happy to share them. In this episode, enjoy Nitsa’s lessons learned from working her way up to the VP of Marketing at Siebel Systems, becoming the Executive Director of the Siebel Foundation, and now having earned the position of CMO at Veeva Systems. You’ll also hear: How she views a career like a wide staircase instead of a ladderWhy the number one feeling she has about her career is surprise How she got a crash course in documentary filmmaking in the first few weeks at the Siebel Foundation If you’d like to hear more from Nitsa, reach out to her on LinkedIn.

In over 100 podcast almost every CEO/founder of a tech-enabled company mentions the word “culture” as one of the keys to success. Juan Luis Betancourt is a real pioneer  and thought leader in measuring and hiring for “culture”. He launched Humantelligence, the culture software, which measures, manages, and hires for culture and performance.   Juan Luis is consistently voted “Top 40 Global HR Tech Influencer”. He was a Partner at Korn/Ferry and Heidrick&Struggles, and at Gonza Search.   Juan Luis  worked at Siebel Systems, P&G, Puma (CMO/COO), and Decathlon, the world's largest sports retailer and manufacturer with $120B in revenue and 120,000 employees.   Juan Luis received degrees from Harvard (BA), Wharton (MBA), and The Lauder Institute (MA).In the tech world Juan Pablo has co-founded Idea.me, Miami Angels, the Lab Miami, Lab Ventures & Wonder (purchased in 2020 by Atari). He also publishes a widely read column on the TecnoLatino https://latamlist.com/author/jpcappello/ and continues advising entrepreneurs in the region from PAGLaw https://www.pag.lawThe podcast “Aqui & Ahora” asks: What are the leaders of the TecnoLatino doing “here & now”? How are they facing the changes and challenges we are living? “Aqui & Ahora” offers tips for entrepreneurs, investors and supporters of the TecnoLatino & MiamiTech.

A simple marketing model goes something like this: We have a product that solves a problem; a buyer who has that problem finds us, decides it’s a fit and a sale happens. Right? Sounds great! But it puts some big expectations on a buyer: that they can feel their unmet need, their problem  That there’s a well-known product category for out there and that they can find the vendors  That they can predict the success they’d get from buying our product  It’s a stretch to imagine a buyer could independently do all these. That’s what content marketing is meant for, to educate the prospects, informing them of the solution’s value and elevating us, the content’s author, in the process. Relax marketers everywhere, Content is the answer to your prayers.  Content is all you need. What’s that you say? You don’t have enough Content?  Or You don’t know how to deploy it externally to its maximum effect?  Well, our guest has good news for you, he feels content can be found internally in our companies. And, for those who sell technology products, he’s also full of ideas on how content draw in prospects, getting them to use and come onside with our products.   My guest is Paul Schneider, came to using content for marketing by using content for a different purpose: training & education. Content has posed the same challenges in their field as ours, as they tried to modernize training content, letting people take it in at their own pace, no matter how distant they were from a classroom. He got into this field by studying in education and psychology, which led him to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for a PhD. Illinois is practically the American epicenter of large-scale computing, which onto the internet through tools like Telnet, Eudora, the Mosaic browser. Companies built by U of Illinois alumnus include Netscape, Siebel Systems, PayPal and YouTube.   Being at this school while all this was going on, he witnessed efforts to take learning onto the internet, built on top of browsers. He got in on the ground-floor and a decade and a half later is SVP of business development at a company that makes eLearning authoring software Dominknow. Paul spoke to me from Colorado; he shares how his company, Dominknow Learning Systems use content to market their SaaS-based software.  Show Notes: Instructional Designer IDIODC podcast Adobe Authorware Toolbook eLearning software Subject Matter Expert (SMEs) xAPI protocol to evaluate eLearning experiences LMS LCMS For complete Show Notes, go to: http://leadgeneering.com/episode-38-a-cooperative-approach-to-content-with-paul-schneider/

Rebecca Costa, Sociobiologist and Futurist, shared the story behind her title with us on Sunday, August 30, 2020.Rebecca is the preeminent global expert on the subject of “fast adaptation” and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives, and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa's work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts, and Wole Soyinka.Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M, and others. She has been at the forefront of technological and scientific innovation, assisting venture capitalists and large corporations to identify, fund, and launch disruptive new trends.SUE SAYSThe work that Rebecca Costa does, and continues to do to this day, is one of the most fascinating topics out there. Studying human behavior, genetics, and how both are tied to evolution and the challenges we face today is an enormous contribution to the world. What fascinated me the most about Rebecca was her openness as a scientist, and her willingness to share that her drive actually ties directly to her childhood living with fear in Vietnam. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/women-to-watch-r/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Science is the opposite of Politics.Rebecca Costa Rebecca Costa, Sociobiologist and Futurist, shared the story behind her title with us on Sunday, August 30, 2020. Rebecca is the preeminent global expert on the subject of “fast adaptation” and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka. Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. She has been on the forefront of technological and scientific innovation, assisting venture capitalists and large corporations to identify, fund and launch disruptive new trends. SUE SAYS The work that Rebecca Costa does, and continues to do to this day, is one of the most fascinating topics out there. Studying human behavior, genetics and how both are tied to evolution and the challenges we face today is an enormous contribution to the world. What fascinated me the most about Rebecca was her openness as a scientist, and her willingness to share that her drive actually ties directly to her childhood living with fear in Vietnam. Listen (and subscribe!) to our full interview with Rebecca below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Radio.com or iHeartRadio!

Sales enablement thought leader Roderick Jefferson and Paul Butterfield, Instructure Sales Enablement VP explore the role that sales enablement teams should play in driving a diverse and inclusive corporate culture. As Roderick put it “Diversity means you’re invited to the table. Inclusion means you have access to the menu along with the opportunity and ability to order from it.” How sales enablement teams can help ensure a diversity of job candidatesWhat ways can we create sales assets, training materials and courses that are inclusiveThe critical role onboarding and ramping have in helping new diverse employees feel welcome and includedPrior to Roderick Jefferson & Associates, he held a variety of executive leadership, sales, sales enablement, operations and customer experience roles for Marketo, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.com, 3PAR, Business Objects, NetApp, PayPal, Siebel Systems, & AT&T.

In this episode of Star Talks, Justin Dooley shares how he began studying chemical engineering at the University of Illinois and how his interest in high-tech blossomed eventually leading to his contributions as one of the first Executives at Siebel Systems where he helped define and pioneer the CRM software category. We talk about how following Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel Systems, Justin served as CEO for the National Institute of Transplantation where he’s helped take the organization to new heights. Justin also shares how we can fight the global pandemic with innovative solutions, such as the one’s Tarus Capital is funding like UV Angel who builds pathogen control technology systems, and with Chassi – a technology that helps companies gain unprecedented access to business process performance data so they can compete like Billion dollar companies do.

Ken Goldman is the current President of Hillspire, a Family Office, responsible for financial and administrative functions, along with real estate, aviation and maritime activities. Mr. Goldman is the former chief financial officer of Yahoo!. Mr. Goldman joined Yahoo! in 2012 and throughout his five year tenure was responsible for Yahoo!’s global finance functions including financial planning and analysis, controllership, tax, treasury and investor relations. Prior to joining Yahoo! Mr. Goldman served as chief financial officer at Fortinet, Inc, a provider of unified threat management solutions, from 2007 to 2012. Mr Goldman also served as chief financial officer of Siebel Systems, Inc. During a professional career spanning over forty years, Mr Goldman has served as CFO of multiple public and private companies and as CFO has helped take three companies public. In addition Mr Goldman’s experience includes board director, audit committee chairman and financial advisory roles at more than 40 corporate boards, of which over 10 have gone public while he was a board member. Mr. Goldman currently serves on the board of directors of NXP Semiconductor, Trinet, RingCentral, Zuora, GoPro, Inc. and the SASB Foundation; and other non-profit boards such as the RFK Human Rights Board.

Salespeople Have a Love/Hate Relationship With CRMs   Almost everyone is using CRM in their businesses  for its efficiency in data collection. But truth be told, many salespeople have a love and hate relationship with CRM. CRMs are a great way to hold data but it doesn't offer solutions on how to utilize this data in a way that reflects real time engagement with customers.    Kevin Knieriem is the Chief Revenue Officer at Clari, a revenue platform for companies in Toronto. He's been with the company for 15 months and he's had a background in enterprise software for over 25 years. He started his software sales career with Siebel System, the first enterprise CRM and from there, Kevin spent 11 years at SAP and due to an acquisition, also spent time with Oracle.    What is a CRM? CRMs are a place for account, contact, and opportunity information to be stored. These are major components  to track sales so it has been the primary  revenue solution for companies for the last 25 years. Keeping your CRM up to date is important so the organization understands the health of its revenue.   Starting with Siebel Systems, Kevin hasn't seen much change in CRMs. It still has the same basic model for accounting opportunities. It's a place where sales reps can post information but it doesn't provide any feedback about how to utilize the data. It takes a lot of maintenance to update a CRM but we use it anyway. Unlike SaaS or subscription, CRM doesn't allow you to track the continuous journey of the customers.    The limitations of CRM Adobe is a company that runs on subscription.Let's say for example that an Adobe seller is selling a marketing automation solution, Marketo Acquisition. A client who buys the service and wishes to expand will have to get another subscription over time.  Even though the data is present, the activity that is involved over the time of a subscription doesn't get tracked by the CRM. The challenge for reps and the sales leader using the CRM tool is that it doesn't give you the real-time feedback that is needed to run the business as efficiently or effectively as they could.  It turns into a circular problem because the data give no feedback to the sales rep about how to move forward, but when the manager is approached for coaching, they are still looking at the same data with no additional insight.  Layers of managers get involved in analyzing the data and by the time a solution is created, the data is from the past and no longer applies.  It doesn't take into account the customer's journey and sales cycle. You can't really make good decisions using data that may no longer be relevant.    Sales reps are Franchisees Kevin suggests that sellers  be looked at as individual franchisees. This positions each sales rep to utilize the resources of their company to best execute the business.    Nothing happens unless you make it happen. I think companies need to help arm their sales and revenue organizations with solutions that help them in this modern time of transparency. #SalesHelp   Using Clari  Clari is a revenue platform.  Sales reps need to spend the majority of their time selling and not just inputting data. This is how Clari can help. There are tools now that allow auto-capturing the context of CRM data and combining that context with the database.  This means activity around the data can be analyzed and as a result, better decisions and interactions can occur.    When an automation process is in place, more critical questions can be answered:       How engaged is the customer? Are they engaging with you or with your marketing machine?  Is your top-of-funnel nurturing the sales process? Do your ABM campaigns work?     The answer to these questions will give you the idea a better understanding of how healthy opportunities really are. The single most important skill for any company to have is its ability to forecast. The forecast directly impacts the operating plan of the company. The single most important function of a company is the ability to sell. Typically, the biggest expense of any company is its sales force. Because of this there has to be a consistent process surrounding sales.    Kevin's job for Clari is to remove barriers, give sales reps the clarity they need for their business, and to help sales reps be as productive as possible.   The Challenges Faced by Sales Reps A big challenge sales reps face is meeting with their managers.  It can feel more like an interrogation than a coaching session. It's equally unpleasant for managers who may have a difficult time relaying the opportunities to their team.  When a meeting can be used more as a training tool, the whole dynamic can change for both the sales team and the sales leader.     The art of selling has changed over the years because of the available data today and the fluidity of a customer's journey. The sales reps have to evolve as well. For example, sales reps now can make meetings via Zoom. As a result they need to show their faces, they can't multi-task, and they can't hide their emotions. The good sellers of today embrace these new changes because they know it helps them be more effective in their jobs.    CRM is just one of the data sources that Clari brings in. Clari also brings in other signal data that's happening in a company's upstream top-of-funnel systems. Clari is a revenue process that applies machine learning and AI to help spot risks and identify opportunities to help companies grow.    “Salespeople Love / Hate Relationship With CRM and How To Get Value From It” episode resources Nothing happens unless you make it happen. Companies need to help their sales team by giving them instrumentations and solutions to improve their efficiency in sales. Sales reps are the frontline of any company and an effective process and system provide the best opportunity for success.   Knowing the process and having the accurate directions will help the sellers become ironmen in sales. Reach out to Kevin Knieriem via his email kevink@clari.com. You can also check out his LinkedIn account.  If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald about it. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns.  This episode is brought to you in part  by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It's a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can go and visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals also call us at (561) 570-5077.  We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes so tune in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings to every episode you listen to.  You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Bruce Cleveland is a Partner at Wildcat where he focuses on early stage software startups that enable digital transformation across business, government, and education markets. Bruce enjoys working with companies that use technology and data to increase revenue and decrease costs. Bruce held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing with companies, such as Apple, AT&T, Oracle and Siebel Systems. Bruce’s last operational role was as a member of the founding executive team of Siebel Systems, where he served as senior vice president and general manager of Marketing and Products. In this role, Forbes and IDC credited him with creating the most effective B2B alliance program in the software industry. Bruce began his venture capital career at InterWest Partners, where he was the first investor and a former board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired by Adobe in 2018 for $4.75 billion. Bruce is also the author of the best seller, Traversing the Traction Gap ( https://amzn.to/2wAFj7P ) and lectures on the Traction Gap Framework at various universities and industry events.

Innovation is king. But that doesn’t mean everyone understands it or knows how to leverage it. In fact, many view it as the silver bullet and the easy button that changes everything overnight. And that’s just not how it works. Innovation evolves step by step and can be years in the making before a viable product or concept can be leveraged. And that’s why companies invest in future technologies. On our latest episode of What’s Your Story?, Sally speaks with Bharath Kadaba, Chief Innovation Officer of Intuit, about his role building and leading the Technology Futures group within Intuit, and how that group communicates about their work in a way that builds interest and buy-in.   More About Bharath Kadaba Bharath Kadaba is Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Intuit, and leads the Technology Futures group.  His organization is responsible for creating game-changing technology in support of Intuit’s mission to power prosperity for consumer, small business and self-employed customers. Since joining the company in 2008, Bharath has served in a variety of executive leadership positions. Prior to his current role, he was Vice President and Engineering Fellow with responsibility for leading engineering teams that built innovative new technology for the company’s QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint product lines. Before that, he led advanced technology development as Vice President for Global Ready Offerings, and Vice President for the Global Business Division, Product Development, respectively. Before Intuit, Bharath was Vice President of Media Engineering at Yahoo, where he led the development of a shared services platform to serve as the foundation for all media properties (news, finance, sports, games, etc.) and significantly expanded the U.S. media product capabilities. Prior to Yahoo, he was an executive with Siebel Systems, AristaSoft, and News Corp., after spending 15 years at IBM and IBM’s TJ Watson Labs. Bharath earned a Ph.D. in Computer Networks from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a BSEE and Master’s in Computers and Control from the Indian Institute of Science.   Show Highlights Innovation evolves- What is it and how do you leverage it? Why do companies invest in future technology? How does a company define a future technology group? How do we bring technologies and build products that benefit our customers? Start with the customer problems. The goal is to help consumers lead a prosperous life as technology is constantly changing, what is the match between the customer problem and the new technology? Purpose: To help customers at the same time as building future technology. Customers always want to see how they can make more money. Small teams that are obsessed with technology - How can we change the way humans interact with machines? There is a need for people who are passionate about the work, problem solver, innovative, and future thinking. The beauty of the deep craft expertise is somebody who knows the tech well and can problem solve. Always be willing to explore multiple solutions. Fall in love with the problem not the solution. What is a craft expert? How do you find a craft expert and a person with curiosity and expertise? Find somebody customer obsessed, they will be the first to solve the problem. Customer Collaborative commerce? What is it? How does your team think about clarity when outcomes aren’t always clean/how to find clarity in communication? Understand what is clear and what is ambiguous - Always set the expectations of what you know and don’t know from the start. Communication and narratives are critically important. Know what the challenge is and why you have the challenge. How to show that you are about the future and relevant today at the same time. How to invert a story so that it’s built entirely from the consumer's perspective? How to teach a team to do good work and illustrate what they do? How much has awareness gone up since they began talking about what they do? How storytelling has brought to life the impact of what they have done and how they do it? Doing Great Work is not enough, you have to stand up and tell a story.

What will it take to solve many of the world’s most difficult and complex challenges? Rebecca D. Costa is an American sociobiologist and futurist. She is the preeminent global expert on the subject of "fast adaptation" and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa's work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka. Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. She has been on the forefront of technological and scientific innovation, assisting venture capitalists and large corporations to identify, fund and launch disruptive new trends. Retiring at the zenith of her career in Silicon Valley, Costa spent six years researching and writing the international bestseller The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse. Her follow-on book, titled On the Verge was introduced in 2017 to critical acclaim, shooting to the top of Amazon's #1 New Business Releases. In today’s conversation with us, Rebecca Costa explains how climate change and other world problems remain unresolved because they are similar in nature. The real culprit is our lack of distinction between empirical fact and our beliefs and opinions, leaving us at the mercy of competing interests. Rebecca shows how artificial intelligence-powered predictive models can help us solve these issues, and help us predict future events with unprecedented accuracy, paving the way for leaders to act before-the-fact.  Using real world examples, she demonstrates how the certainty of future outcomes is changing the way business and governments solve problems and preempt danger.  Key Takeaways As a society loses a grip on the difference between an unproven belief and an empirical provable fact, it loses its way. Social and public policy quickly becomes based on opinion. The distinction between what is a scientific and empirical fact and what is your opinion or belief is probably the most important distinction to make in any transformation. There are billions of temperature recordings of the Earth’s surface temperature. Like it or don’t like it, believe it or don’t believe it, it doesn’t matter. The empirical data says that the oceans are warming and the land is warming. We are beginning to see some of the symptoms of that. Record floods, super storms, and other signs that scientists predicted would happen. The predictions on the timeline have been wrong, so it’s easy to dismiss the empirical facts, but that doesn’t change the fact that the climate is changing and it is warming. The political question is now, how much if any has human activity contributed to it? Causation in science is extremely difficult to prove, particularly with something as complex as global climate change. Even if human activity contributed all, part or none, do we have the ability to reverse that climate change? That’s the question to focus on. When it comes to complex problems, the danger people have is they overstate what the empirical data indicates and that will eventually bite you in the behind. Rather than saying something is causal, say it’s correlated. We have to be careful about telling the truth about what we know and what we surmise. If there is any threat that could wipe out the entire species then better safe than sorry comes to mind. We owe it to ourselves to do everything we can, knowing that it may not do anything. But at least we’re doing everything we can. If I have worry right now, it’s that we’re not an empirical-driven world. If I have optimism, it’s that we’re relying more on machines to make decisions on our behalf. And machines do not have beliefs, only data. There can be no social change of any importance without recruitment. When you get into someone’s face and alienate them, call them names, and treat them as they are stupid and their opinions are invalid, you’re doing exactly the reverse of what you intend to do. In order to create social change, you must leverage the media to do that recruitment, to bring the reason you seeking social change into the livingroom of every human being. Make your message compelling and relevant to them. Without critical mass you have nothing. The polarization we see right now between the Republicans and the Democrats is the reason that nothing gets done. They don’t understand that they have to recruit people from the other team. There are many things in life where you may not know that the outcome is certain. So you place really good bets. The bigger the upside and downside the more important it is to place those bets. Unlike previous civilizations we have this tremendous opportunity to allow computers and artificial intelligence to guide our decisions on an empirical and factual basis, in spite of our opinions and theories. The billions of data points that artificial intelligence can observe and analyze data in real time in a dynamic way, is going to overshadow human capability, and is already doing so. What AI and quantum computing has allowed us to do is take millions of facts and very precisely predict whether a future event is going to occur. In many respects, we’re moving into an era where we can avoid many problems – like mass shootings – because we can work backwards to see the data that showed that the mass shooter was moving toward criticality. That data is actually in the public domain. They’re posting their manifestos on social media. Opioid addiction is rampant around the world. Companies like Fuzzy Logix can administer a written questionnaire and look at your health records and determine within 85-90% whether you are genetically predisposed to become an opioid addict before the doctor gives you your first prescription. We’re getting to a point where AI algorithms can do everything from inform judges at arraignment hearings whether the person should be released on their own recognizance, what the bail should be, and whether they should not be released into society. So predictive algorithms can inform us of the likelihood of a future event so we can make better decisions today. But there is a problem with knowing what the future is. In 99.999% of the cases, we can predict what you’re going to do, however there is that small chance that you could intervene through free will. There’s always a chance that you could override, make a different decision and change course. But are we going to bet on free will or are we going to play the percentages? When you know what the future is, you can reverse engineer the decision to avoid a failure or danger. So there really shouldn’t ever be a product launch that doesn’t make it because we have tools that will say, how many will sell, at what price, and when your product needs refreshing or be dead in the water. Where it gets tricky is where computers don’t have any information. Innovation for example. The challenge right now is that the tools to do this are very expensive. In some ways that digital divide is creating a social divide. For those who know what’s going to happen, there couldn’t be a bigger advantage. There are some very fundamental building blocks you have to have in order to experience happiness. 50-60% of your aptitude to be happy and enjoy life is genetically inherited. Approximately one-third is your decisions in life, which makes that one-third extra important because it’s the only part that you can manipulate. Unemployment numbers should not be looked at as an economic barometer anymore. It’s actually tied to people’s ability to be optimistic and happy in life. When you have massive unemployment you are actually building a depressed society. Resources On the Verge (Book) The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse (Book) Connect With Rebecca D. Costa Website: rebeccacosta.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccadcosta Twitter: https://twitter.com/rebeccacosta LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-costa-53145240

Rebecca D. Costa is an American sociobiologist and technology futurist. She is a renowned global expert on the subject of “fast adaptation in complex, high failure-rate environments” and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka. Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. Retiring at the zenith of her career in Silicon Valley, Costa spent six years researching and writing the international bestseller The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse. Her follow-on book, titled On the Verge, was introduced in 2017 to critical acclaim, shooting to the top of Amazon’s #1 New Business Releases. The success of The Watchman’s Rattle led to a popular weekly news program called The Costa Report which was syndicated throughout the United States until 2018. Owing to global pressures to respond more rapidly and efficiently to the accelerating pace of change, Costa is a popular international speaker. She brings both an evolutionary biologist and technologist’s perspective to the subject of fast adaptation. Rebecca's links Web: https://www.rebeccacosta.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/rebeccacosta Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccadcosta And don’t forget to support the podcast by subscribing for free, reviewing, and sharing. Web: https://unstructuredpod.com/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/unstructuredp Facebook: https://facebook.com/unstructuredp Instagram: https://instagram.com/unstructuredp Join the Facebook group:  fb.com/groups/unstructured

Rebecca Costa:Rebecca D. Costa is an American sociobiologist and futurist. She is the preeminent global expert on the subject of "fast adaptation" and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa's work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka.Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. She has been on the forefront of technological and scientific innovation, assisting venture capitalists and large corporations to identify, fund and launch disruptive new trends.https://www.rebeccacosta.com/Complete Radio Promotional Package Playlist:1. Vegas by George Hendrickson“Want to thank Mike Mathisen, studio engineer/ drummer at Minisink Sound Labs,, Also, Stuart Epps ,production / Lead guitar,,, The song is about loneliness ,and the fact that there is always life "out there" somewhere,,, Last, but not least, thank you to Douglas for being so supportive.”https://www.douglascolemanmusic.com/featured-artists/Music submit.com playlist:1. Been There Done That by Big Al Staggs2. Breathe by The Sam Sims Band3. Hammock in The Shade by The PuckhogsComplete Radio Promotional Package: The Douglas Coleman Show is now offering a complete radio promotional package for music artists. Your track will air 28 times a week for 1 month. Your track will air over all of our online and terrestrial platforms as well as permanently archive on Spreaker, Itunes and many other sites. With this package, you will also get a 15min interview on our show to promote your latest, single, EP, LP or upcoming gig. Similar packages like this can run hundreds of dollars and often are subscription based. Our package is a one-time fee of just 49.99. Let's work together to get your music heard. https://douglascolemanmusic.com/crpp for complete details. Sponsorship:If you're interested in being a sponsor on The Douglas Coleman Show, please check out our packages on Patreon or contact us directly. https://www.patreon.com/douglascolemanshowdouglascolemanshow@gmail.comOR if you'd prefer to make a one-time donation, please check out our GoFundMe. https://www.gofundme.com/the-dcs-needs-your-help

Rebecca Costa:Rebecca D. Costa is an American sociobiologist and futurist. She is the preeminent global expert on the subject of "fast adaptation" and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and leading venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa's work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka.Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. She has been on the forefront of technological and scientific innovation, assisting venture capitalists and large corporations to identify, fund and launch disruptive new trends.https://www.rebeccacosta.com/Complete Radio Promotional Package Playlist:1. Vegas by George Hendrickson“Want to thank Mike Mathisen, studio engineer/ drummer at Minisink Sound Labs,, Also, Stuart Epps ,production / Lead guitar,,, The song is about loneliness ,and the fact that there is always life "out there" somewhere,,, Last, but not least, thank you to Douglas for being so supportive.”https://www.douglascolemanmusic.com/featured-artists/Music submit.com playlist:1. Been There Done That by Big Al Staggs2. Breathe by The Sam Sims Band3. Hammock in The Shade by The PuckhogsComplete Radio Promotional Package: The Douglas Coleman Show is now offering a complete radio promotional package for music artists. Your track will air 28 times a week for 1 month. Your track will air over all of our online and terrestrial platforms as well as permanently archive on Spreaker, Itunes and many other sites. With this package, you will also get a 15min interview on our show to promote your latest, single, EP, LP or upcoming gig. Similar packages like this can run hundreds of dollars and often are subscription based. Our package is a one-time fee of just 49.99. Let's work together to get your music heard. https://douglascolemanmusic.com/crpp for complete details. Sponsorship:If you're interested in being a sponsor on The Douglas Coleman Show, please check out our packages on Patreon or contact us directly. https://www.patreon.com/douglascolemanshowdouglascolemanshow@gmail.comOR if you'd prefer to make a one-time donation, please check out our GoFundMe. https://www.gofundme.com/the-dcs-needs-your-help

Lance Walter, CMO of Neo4J, walks us through the difference between hearing and listening, as well as how sales and marketing can actually integrate with a lot of success in an organization. The code is right in front of you. Get ready to shake up how you've been doing it somewhat successfully to taking it much further. About our guest: Lance Walter, CMO Neo4J Lance Walter has two decades of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing experience. Lance started his career in technical roles at Oracle Corporation supporting enterprise relational database deployments. Since then, Lance has worked at industry leaders like Siebel Systems and Business Objects, as well as successful startups including Onlink (acquired by Siebel Systems), Pentaho (acquired by Hitachi Data Systems), Aria Systems, Capriza. Lance’s first experience with alternative database platforms was at Arbor Software, the pioneer of the multi-dimensional database / OLAP market. Twitter: @lancewalter ___________________________________________     Revenue Optimization Radio is hosted by Patrick Morrissey of Altify which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.  Altify is the sponsor of Revenue Optimization Radio.

Most marketers only have responsibility for promoting one brand. A few senior marketers are responsible for a handful of brands. Leslie Tom, SVP of AppExchange Marketing and Programs at Salesforce, has marketing responsibilities for an entire ecosystem. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Leslie sits down with Ian and Lauren to talk about how she handles this unique challenge, best practices for partner marketing, the top technology trend she’s watching, and much more. Links: Full Notes & Quotes: http://bit.ly/2k556iI Leslie’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lesliejtom/ Leslie’s Twitter: twitter.com/lesliejtom Salesforce: salesforce.com/ 5 Key Takeaways: - Partner marketing allows two companies to share the strength of their customer relationships with each other, creating significant growth opportunities. - Ecosystems provide a larger variety of solutions than a single company ever could, while still maintaining consistency in the customer experience. - "Trust your gut more. Trust that little voice in your head, especially if you have the experience." - Leslie Tom - "Be intentional. I think everybody succeeds if they have some intention and purpose in their career." - Leslie Tom - Artificial intelligence is the technology that is most likely to disrupt how marketers do business in the coming years. Bio: Leslie Tom is the senior vice president of AppExchange marketing and programs at Salesforce. She has been named on Computer Reseller News’ (CRN) Power 100: The Most Powerful Women of the Channel list. Prior to joining Salesforce in 2005, Leslie worked in several marketing leadership roles at Siebel Systems and Oracle. Leslie holds a double major in Business and Psychology from San Jose State University. --- Marketing Trends is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Pardot, B2B marketing automation on the world’s #1 CRM. Are you ready to take your B2B marketing to new heights? With Pardot, marketers can find and nurture leads, close more deals, and maximize ROI. Learn more by heading to www.pardot.com/podcast. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

We have the brilliant & talented April Dunford on the podcast today. She’s a much sought-out international speaker on the topics of Positioning, Market Strategy and New Product Introduction. April is a positioning consultant. 7 successful technology startups and 3 global tech giants, over 16 products and more. She knows how to make magic happen & she’s sharing these secrets in her new book called ‘Obviously Awesome - how to nail product position, so customers get it, buy it and love it!”   SUBSCRIBE TO CANINNOVATE iTunes| iHeart | Stitcher | Google | Spotify | SoundCloud     Episode Overview: This episode is really for everyone. We all need to learn how to position products, services and ourselves!  April has launched a book called ‘OBVIOUSLY AWESOME’ April and I get down deep to talk about: The inspiration for the book The real value behind positioning - Positioning is the strategic underpinning of everything we do in sales and marketing and yet it is very misunderstood and rarely done well What positioning is & What positioning is NOT If you thought branding and messaging, you weren’t alone. I thought that too until...this book The pitfalls of Pitch competitions How writing a book is so hard. We both have definitely underestimated the amount of work, in creating it.   And so much more I’ll do a separate Q&A for anyone that joins my Book Launch team, for Connect the Dots, turning strangers into meaningful network relationships. For those that want the behind the scenes - the good/bad & the ugly.   April's Book:  Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It    What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking?   April spent 25 years as an executive at a series of successful Canadian startups, 6 of which were acquired by larger U.S. companies so she also was an executive at IBM, Siebel Systems, Sybase, etc. Across my career I launched 16 products into market. I have always been fascinated by what makes some products very successful while others, even some that had clearly better technology, failed.    The past few years I've transitioned to doing consulting work and my focus is specifically on Positioning. Positioning is the strategic underpinning of everything we do in sales and marketing and yet it is very misunderstood and rarely done well. I've developed a methodology for doing Positioning that I've validated with dozens of tech companies and I've just released a book that will help any company do it for themselves.     Connect with April:   Website: AprilDunford.com Twitter: @Aprildunford LinkedIn: April Dunford    

In today’s episode, Billionaire Entrepreneur Tom Siebel shares some thought-provoking insights on new, leading technologies and its impact on businesses and society. He is the founder of C3.AI, a new software platform that harnesses Big Data, IoT AND AI. Tom covers in this episode the contents of his book, Digital Transformation, as well as some intriguing ideas about huge US Tech companies. Silicon Valley Entrepreneurial Giant Listeners might recall Bruce Clevland, author of “The Traction Gap” and guest in episode 033. He used to work with Tom Siebel at Siebel Systems, which was the category king in the 1st wave of CRM. In the year 1999, Fortune magazine named Siebel Systems “the fastest growing company in the United States.” In 2006, they merged with Oracle for $5.85 billion. Digital Transformation Tom has a brand new book entitled “Digital Transformation.” The book covers giant Megatrends and impacts on business and society. CEOs and senior leaders would find this book highly beneficial to their decision-making process. “The coming two decades will bring more information technology innovation than the past half-century.” -Tom Siebel, Digital Transformation Further, he discussed that companies who fail to seize this massive technological growth will be extinct in the future. In the last 30 years, companies that didn’t make the necessary transition required in their industry, cease to exist today. Continuous Learning and Education Tom Siebel and his company have a real commitment to their employees: to focus on continuous learning and education. Employees can take online classes via Coursera—in relation to AI, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, among others. Universities such as Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois offers these online courses. “Things are changing more rapidly so to be on top of these, you must be continuously learning”  - Tom Siebel The company recognizes the employees who completed the courses and awards cash bonuses — ranging from $1500 to $25,000.  At the moment, the company is rolling out new incentives — a 15% increase in compensation and an additional equity grant. “These people are better equipped to do their jobs and to serve customers. This is to advance their careers professionally. They also do feel more empowered, so everybody wins.” - Tom Siebel To hear more about digital transformation and more relevant information from Tom, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Tom Siebel is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C3.ai. He was the Chairman and CEO of Siebel Systems, which merged with Oracle Corporation in January 2006 for $5.85 billion. Mr. Siebel is also the Chairman of the Siebel Energy Institute, a global consortium for innovative and collaborative energy research for the public domain. Mr. Siebel serves on the boards of advisors for the University of Illinois College of Engineering and the University of California at Berkeley College of Engineering. Mr. Siebel is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a B.A. in history, an M.B.A, and an M.S. in computer science. Links: Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction Thomas Siebel - Linkedin Thomas Siebel - Forbes Profile We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

You need to LISTEN to this episode. Lance Walter walks us through the difference between hearing and listening, as well as how sales and marketing can actually integrate with a lot of success in an organization. The code is right in front of you. Get ready to shake up how you've been doing it somewhat successfully to taking it much further. About our guest: Lance Walter, CMO Lance Walter has more than two decades of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing experience. Lance started his career in technical roles at Oracle Corporation supporting enterprise relational database deployments. Since then, Lance has worked at industry leaders like Siebel Systems and Business Objects, as well as successful startups including Onlink (acquired by Siebel Systems), Pentaho (acquired by Hitachi Data Systems), Aria Systems, Capriza. Lance’s first experience with alternative database platforms was at Arbor Software, the pioneer of the multi-dimensional database / OLAP market. Twitter: @lancewalter  

In this podcast, I talk to Ajay Sabhlok about his career. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!

In this podcast, I interview Ajay Sabhlok. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!

Salesforce is celebrating its 20th anniversary today. The company that was once a tiny irritant going after giants in the 1990s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market, such as Oracle and Siebel Systems, has grown into full-fledged SaaS powerhouse. With an annual run rate exceeding $14 billion, it is by far the most successful pure cloud application ever created. Twenty years ago, it was just another startup with an idea, hoping to get a product out the door.

Rebecca D Costa (@rebeccacosta) is an American sociobiologist and futurist and a recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and other leading publications and here weekly column, THE FIX, is presently featured on Newsmax and on her site: rebeccacosta.comCosta was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of introducing disruptive, bleeding edge technologies for industry leaders like HP, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M, and others.Rebecca spent six years researching and writing the international bestseller The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse and her follow-on book On the Verge shot to the top of Amazon's #1 New Business Releases. The success of The Watchman's Rattle led to a popular weekly news program called The Costa Report which was syndicated throughout the United States until 2018.You can listen right here on iTunesIn our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:* How AI and predictive analytics shifts the balance of power* Why the future is becoming increasingly knowable* The truth about complexity and what it means for all of us* How evolution has primed people to fail today's challenges* The big problems facing society and how to solve them* Why terrorism inevitably leads to Minority Report* The effect of CRISPR on human nature* How nano-bots will impact the future of healthcare and pharma* The reason Rebecca isn't that worried about the existential risk* How to think about the future of politics and governments* Why we basically bonobos monkeys with better techMake a Tax-Deductible Donation to Support The DisruptorsThe Disruptors is supported by the generosity of its readers and listeners. If you find our work valuable, please consider supporting us on Patreon, via Paypal or with DonorBox powered by Stripe.Donate

Don has more than 25 consecutive years of quota over-achievement. Currently, he is the Vice President of Global Inside Sales for BMC Software. Don is responsible for over 200+ sales people at 6 world-wide locations including Raleigh-Durham, Tampa, Dublin, Buenos Aries, Singapore and Salt Lake City. BMC Software is an IT game-changer! Global Businesses rely on BMC Software to transform their Cloud, Mainframe, Virtual and Mobile IT services. BMC Software innovates and secures extraordinary business performance at significantly reduced risk. Topics Discussed: Sales Quotas – Accepting quotas that are attainable, while still being a stretch, and creating a plan to achieve them Filling your sales pipeline with the right sized opportunities Engaging your Executive Team on big deals The 3 Whys of Forecasting (why buy anything, why buy from me, why buy this quarter?) Applying your time on the opportunities that have the best chance of closing Standardizing the sales candidate interview worldwide (6 different offices) based on the book, “The Sales Acceleration Formula” – by Mark Roberge Qualities important to being a successful salesperson “Don’t let fear keep you from pushing forward.” Laugh about your mistakes. Create an environment where it’s OK to make mistakes Leadership Hire the right people, and get out of their way Work ethic is most important, followed by being coachable Work hard AND work smart Millennial employees Leveraging ExecVision to review inside sales phone calls (good and bad) Don’s evolution as a sales leader What can I do to help my team today? Their success is my success! Personal Achievements Climbing the 7 highest peaks…one on each continent (7 Summits) Dream big…your dreams should scare you a little Sharpening your skills Read books, listen to podcasts Take care of your mental, physical, career, family relationships Prospecting Cut through the noise in your prospecting (uses Consensus for video messages) Video messages, handwritten messages, make your message personal, get your recipient to laugh SendBloom Find your own groove Artificial Intelligence in sales #AI   Don’s Bio: 2015 – Present – Vice President Global Inside Sales, BMC Software 2009 – 2015 – Vice President Inside Sales and Account Development, Adobe 2004 – 2009 – Vice President Sales and Account Development, Omniture 2000 – 2003 – Senior Director of Mid-Market Sales, Siebel Systems and Oracle Company   Music Provided by: https://www.bensound.com Share This:

A dense and comprehensive interview with Silicon Valley pioneer Tom Siebel, one of the first twenty Oracle employees and founder of two companies: Siebel Systems and C3 IoT. He'll take you back to the bygone days of the 80s when running a business was “easy” to today, where running a business is far more complicated. You'll hear about how the Internet of Things (IoT) will impact our everyday lives and how healthcare will benefit the most with disease prediction and precision medicine. And then, Siebel describes in harrowing detail how he survived an elephant attack that left him critically wounded on the barren ground of the Serengeti for three and a half hours.

George has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the enterprise software space. Prior to Jitterbit, George was a founding member of C3, a Tom Siebel venture focused on energy and carbon management. Previously, George was vice president of worldwide sales at Cast Iron Systems, leading global field operations for the integration appliance vendor prior to its acquisition by IBM. George has also served as regional vice president at Oracle and Siebel Systems, leading the most successful sales team in the history of the company.

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer of Coupa, and drives the company's strategy and execution. Rob has over two decades experience in the business software industry. He came to Coupa from SuccessFactors, where he ran Global Product Marketing & Management, as a member of the executive management team, as the company scaled from an early start up to a successful public company. Prior to that, Rob directed Product Management at Siebel Systems, where he helped build Siebel ERM into one of the company's fastest growing product lines. Rob also did a stint in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and spent four years at Accenture, where he focused on global SAP systems implementations. Rob is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Stanford business schools, and a frequent contributor to Forbes and Fortune magazines. He can often be heard providing commentary on major news channels including Bloomberg and NPR. Rob earned a BS in Information Systems from the State University of New York at Albany and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, is one of the early employees at Oracle, as well as a co-founder of Siebel Systems. He is working on a book on The Traction Gap framework that his firm uses in its venture capital practice.

Rajeev Batra is a Partner at Mayfield, a firm that has championed bold entrepreneurs since 1969. Rajeev’s investments at Mayfield include the likes of Crunchbase, SmartRecruiters, Marketo (IPO then taken private by Vista Equity), ServiceMax (acquired by GE Digital) and more incredible companies. Prior to Mayfield, Rajeev was at Mobius (Softbank) Venture Capital and Austin Ventures. Before making the move into VC, Rajeev was on the operational side as an entrepreneur and executive with three of the companies he worked with going public and later being acquired, including the very notable Siebel Systems. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Rajeev made the transition from successful operator with 3 IPOs under his belt to investing in the next generation of enterprise companies with Mayfield? What does Rajeev mean when he says “startups do not die of starvation, they die of indigestion”? How does this realisation affect Rajeev’s approach to customer profiling and segmenting customers? Why does Rajeev believe that “early product market fit can be misleading”? How does Rajeev look to provide context and action from numbers and analytics in the early days? How does Rajeev feel that founders should approach gross margin from the early days? How should this relationship and thought process towards gross margin change over time? Why does Rajeev believe that retention is the number 1 metric for SaaS founders to focus on? In the stack of metrics, how does this compare to gross margin, CAC/LTV and payback period? 60 Second SaaStr Enterprise investing is spreadsheet investing: True or false? How does Mayfield use an internal budget to align themselves to entrepreneurs? What does Rajeev mean when he says “I look for 2 act opportunities”? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Rajeev Batra

Jeff sits down with Barbara and Tina, the creators of LiveBinders to disgust this revolutionary free web tool that is sweeping the educational universe. Topics Covered:What is LiveBinders? How do LiveBinders work? Creating an account Bookmarking your LiveBinder account Keeping your LiveBinder organized Sharing your LiveBinder Following other LiveBinders Helpful Tutorials Why should teachers be using LiveBinders? How should teachers be using LiveBinders? What types of resources can be found on LiveBinders?” How can students use LiveBinders? How to add things to your live binder Integrating your live binders with your social networks Taking LiveBinders with you on the road The Future of LiveBinders Websites and Apps Discussed: http://www.LiveBinders.com/ (LiveBinders) About our Guests: Barbara Tallent has a real passion for creating products that customers love and products that help them communicate. With over 25 years in the Information Technology Industry, Barbara was President/CEO of BoldFish (email marketing software), which she sold to Siebel Systems (now Oracle) She has held executive positions at a number of Internet startup companies and spent six years with NCD, eventually running the Z-Mail division which was one of the first internet email clients. She volunteers at her local schools where she focuses on technology integration and support. She also volunteers for Astia (Formerly Women's Technology Cluster) where she coaches women on business planning for their start-ups. Tina Schneider is passionate about creating technology that connects people and ideas; her mission is to enhance digital communication through new forms of narrative. As an MFA graduate student at SF State she applied art theory practice to digital mediums. Tina continued to develop that perspective as in intern at Xerox PARC and then as software researcher with FX Palo Alto Laboratory.  In 2003 she received the prestigious Fuji Xerox Innovative Technology Award for her work addressing the communication behaviors of digital natives.  Today Tina is focusing her attention on educators, providing a platform that empowers them and their students to be knowledge leaders.  

From the silver age of on-prem software companies like SAP and Siebel Systems to the golden age of enterprise software-as-a-service, we're now seeing an explosion of data. All types, all sizes, and all over the place. And much of it is a sort of industrial "data exhaust", where companies aren't quite sure what question to ask of the data but are being bombarded with data due to the variety of data sources available today -- from websites to sensors (and therefore data capture) everywhere. Before there is even a signal in the noise. So how do you solve a problem like this-Data? Beyond requiring new types of plumbing and integrations, enterprises now expect -- given the age of mobile, web, cloud, and heck, let's add millennials to the mix too -- self service. To be able to ask, get, fit (curve-fit), predict. To take back the enterprise from the patchwork of integration and number of vendors we all have to deal with -- the scope of which most companies in fact are not truly aware of. It's about the lifecycle of data in the enterprise, argues Snaplogic founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon in this episode of the a16z Podcast, in conversation with Scott Kupor. It's in fact about the evolution of data overall -- from data warehouses to "data lakes": in stages, from purification (like wrangling data) to bottling (prepping for consumption by data scientists) to making sense of streams and streams of data! The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

Michael C. Maibach, Managing Director and Trustee at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, gave this lecture on "Virtues of Commerce and a Commercial Republic" at The Institute of World Politics on September 12, 2016. Mr. Maibach is a seasoned professional in global business diplomacy, with successful careers at the European-American Business Council, Siebel Systems, Intel, and Caterpillar. Mr. Maibach formerly served as Vice President of Global Government Affairs for Intel Corporation and is a Fellow of the International Academy of Management. He is a member of IWP's Class of 2013.

Catheryne Nicholson is CEO and Co-founder of BlockCypher, a Blockchain-as-a-Service company. BlockCypher's blockchain-agnostic infrastructure exposes simple web APIs for developers to easily build reliable blockchain applications. BlockCypher runs multiple open and private blockchains at-scale on their same infrastructure. Catheryne is an engineer, entrepreneur, mother, and former U.S. Naval Officer. She has built large-scale software platforms in education, energy and emissions management, CRM, and defense systems for companies such as MommaZoo, C3, Siebel Systems, and Northrop-Grumman. She graduated from the U.S Naval Academy and Stanford University and holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering, a MS in Environmental Engineering, a MBA, and is a registered PE in Mechanical Engineering. https://www.blockcypher.com/