Author: Bryan Semple
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How Customer Value Drives Go-To-Market Strategy and Tactics
Companies utilize a go-to-market strategy with everything from high-touch enterprise sales models to low-touch/no-touch transactional motions. SAP and Oracle are great examples of enterprise motions. Atlassian Jira is an excellent example of a no-touch product. How do you know which go-to-market strategy model is suitable for you? The main element to differentiate the model is…
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Eight Ideas for Successful Product/Feature Launches
Product launches, whether you are doing frequent SaaS updates or more significant launches, always add stress to an organization. The regular cadence of new features can put marketing in a forever scramble mode. Unrealistic expectations about a new feature’s buzz can further pressure the marketing team. Here are some ideas for a product launch strategy…
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Product Launch Checklist – Key Milestones
Many teams managing product launches use a classic date-based system for launching products. If the product team says the product will be ready on May 1, then launch activities are all backed up based on that date. The problem with this approach is that the date nearly always changes, the management overhead for the required Gantt…
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16 Lessons From Scaling a Marketing Org
I was invited to address a top NY tech company in 2022 on a subject of my choice. The CMO was on my team earlier in his career, and since they were in a period of rapid growth, we thought talking about scaling would be appropriate. The address is the basis for this blog. Below…
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The Essential List of 12 Data Elements for Marketing Budgets
Marketing budgeting is a challenging task. Boards are always asking challenging questions and unfortunately, the standard finance systems can’t help. Combine this with a budget that has literally thousands of purchase orders spread across many marketers and the reporting and forecasting gets that much tougher. A CMO who can’t answer basic budgeting questions will raise…
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“Ultimate” Product Positioning Template
In a prior post, “Six Practical Positioning Frameworks “, we discussed how to combine the best of product positioning frameworks. This post contains the completed template. The template combines learnings and experience from Job Theory, Brand Story Telling, Solution Selling, and other positioning frameworks. While it looks deceivingly simple, completing the template successfully takes some effort.…
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Sales Stages for a Departmental, Trial-Driven SaaS Process
The sales process for SaaS products with trials differs significantly from traditional sales cycles. Prospects can do most of the sales cycle with a free product available without engaging a sales team. The burden shifts dramatically to the selling organization to provide value at every process step. BANTing someone isn’t the right approach. Instead, sales…
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Twelve Signs Your Marketing Organization Might Have a Spending Problem
If you are new to the CMO role, understanding the organization and spending is one of your first jobs. Given today’s economic climate, ensuring your team maximizes every budget dollar is vital. Check the list below for the 12 indications of a spending problem in your organization. #1 – You are missing the targets for…
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A Guide to Adding Roles to a Marketing Team – Roadmap to the 25 Core Marketing Skills
Startups start with a single marketer. They can get a lot done. These first marketers feel empowered to do anything to drive revenue, from email marketing to paid advertising to content marketing. What is the right second hire? Or third? Or fourth? Here is a list of nine suggestions for building your marketing organization. #1) Hire…
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Reducing Unnecessary CRO and CMO Turnover – Six Alignment Checks to Troubleshoot Go-To-Market Issues
Introduction The list of soundbite issues that cause CRO and CMO replacement is long: We have all heard these issues either directly when a recruiter calls or when we get an explanation for why an executive has been replaced. The problem with these sound bites, and the problem with acting on these soundbites, is that…