Drive Revenue Growth

Skills Summary

Drive revenue growth by ensuring that sales teams are better prepared than the competition and by removing key barriers to revenue. Create Sales Journey of sales tools that maximize effectiveness of sales efforts. Understand and optimize both the buying cycle and the GTM process.

Scenario: Nokia had critical challenges that were impacting success: Low awareness / credibility for Nokia in cloud and security, being locked out of accounts, and a very long buying cycle. So, I addressed these three strategic needs with a multi-faceted plan:

Plan Overview

I created the approach (targeting CISO, CIO, and CFO personas) and wrote all content except for value-added OpenStack content that I outsourced to an industry influencer and an analyst brief for credibility. I also wrote the majority of the vertical (Financial Services) and general business collateral and web page content: https://networks.nokia.com/industries/financial-services

- Awareness / Education stage (loosen status quo / commit to change): Created awareness that there was an Open Source-friendly alternative to the major lock-in vendors. Content samples:

• Top 5 reasons for an Enterprise Cloud with OpenStack flyer: Easily tailored to address trends and test messages (available on request)
• Nokia enterprise cloud video: Tells entire story in a business-friendly way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8TZ-f6G2Pk

- Consideration / Solution stage (establish credibility and get on short list): Showed that it was feasible to consider and relatively straightforward to adopt

• Value-added OpenStack materials: Provided vendor neutral tips to plan and implement OpenStack properly across 2 podcasts and a white paper (see Financial Services page)
• Stairway to Cloud application note: Based on real-world customer implementations, provides an intuitive 9 step migration from legacy to hybrid cloud (available upon request)
• Use cases: Differentiable, replicable solutions that were proven to win customers from competition (available upon request)

- Decision / Selection stage (justify the decision / prioritize above competing vendors and projects): Demonstrated that the use case made sense from multiple perspectives

• IDC Spotlight: Highlights value of Nokia cloud architecture for credibility (not available)
• Architecture and TCO blogs: Evangelized Nokia clouds based on OpenStack – I was #11 in driving social media traffic across all of Nokia that year
• TCO White Paper: Shows that hybrid cloud based on OpenStack is at least 25% LESS than legacy as validated by IDC and endorsed by the OpenStack Foundation (available upon request)
• TCO Press Release with analysis promotion: Pulls entire story together with an analysis promotion: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nokia-analysis-demonstrates-significant-financial-140202112.html
• Case Study: Shows how a board-level mandate drove the requirement for cloud (available upon request)

Results

– Credible Thought Leadership: This approach built required thought leadership and credibility for Nokia in both the Open Source and Cloud communities and the highest growth in awareness across Nokia for my segment.

– Strong sales impact: This approach drove inroads into 80% of previously locked accounts, sales cycle reduction of up to 12 months, and revenue gains of 30% YoY across multiple years, composed entirely of competitive wins from Cisco, VMware, and Juniper.

– Pipeline growth: Impact includes a 300% increase in terms of active projects (qualified leads), improved screening for a 20% improvement in project quality, and 5% higher conversion rate than target.

Proof point: Helped achieve #1 market share while at multiple companies, with revenue growth of up to 30% QoQ,  campaign metrics of up to 300% over goal and 79% penetration into targeted accounts in one year.