Drive Strategic Business - Not Just Marketing - Goals
With broad cross-functional expertise, am able to accomplish business goals such as overall company perception, sales cycle reduction, and competitive lockout.
Skills Summary
Leverage experience and skills from Business Development, Open Source experience, and more, am able to tackle business barriers that impede the success of marketing initiatives. Thinking "outside the box" am able to create powerful strategies and effective tactics that change the game.
Scenario 1: Nokia was not viewed as an Open Source / OpenStack contributor - a dire sales inhibitor. Response:
– Joined OpenStack Foundation and contributed to team projects
– Created a Total Cost of Ownership model that showed an OpenStack cloud was at least 25% less expensive than the legacy environment.
- Issued a joint press release incluidng a major analyst (IDC) quote for validation.
– Key Metric: As "launch" of OpenStack went viral, turned around perception of Nokia within the Open Source community, thereby eliminating sales friction.
Scenario 2: Long (3-4 year) buying cycle due to organization failing with initial OpenStack implementation. Response:
– Leveraged a respected industry influencer to create value-add podcasts and a White Paper. Provided guidance for implementing OpenStack with networking (with any vendor including Nokia).
– Ensured that these materials were broadly distributed via channels such as TechTarget.
– Final influencer recommendation was to implement Nokia as the best networking approach.
– Key Metric: Reduced buying cycle by 6-12 months.
Scenario 3: Major "800 pound gorilla" competitor locked Nokia out of targeted accounts for a 4 year period. Response:
– Generated awareness content for Nokia overall and leveraged social media for visibility (was #11 across all of Nokia in social media). Example:
- Nokia enterprise cloud video: Tells entire story in a business-friendly way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8TZ-f6G2Pk
– Matched each use case to a major success story to drive credibility and urgency
– Key Metric: Content was effective as measured by engagement with 79% of targeted execs, thereby overcoming lockout.
Proof point: Overcame strategic business issues to increase competitive wins by 30% YoY across multiple years.