The need for the marketing and sales departments to be in complete lockstep has only increased over the years and it’s the marketing engine that is supposed to be the fuel that starts the whole sales journey shares Sergio Bea of Accedian in this interview. Catch the whole story for some interesting thoughts on how technology sales is changing with time.
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Can you tell us a little about yourself Sergio? How has your journey at Accedian been? What are some of the top highlights (and top challenges) on a typical work day for you?
I was born and raised in Argentina, have been married for 22 years to an amazing woman whom I met in college, and I am the father of 17-year old triplet girls. In short, my life is a lot of fun! I’ve always worked in the tech business, starting as an intern at IBM and spending a few years with Accenture. I moved to the US in 2004 and since then have worked for a variety of great companies. I joined Accedian in January of 2018 and it has been a great experience. I was tasked with building the Global Enterprise business for the company, including a comprehensive go-to market (GTM) plan. It’s hard to pinpoint a challenge or highlight on any given day, but I can say that the biggest challenge has been to ramp up the whole team while making the Accedian brand known in our space. There are several highlights worth mentioning, from being able to attract great talent to executing our plans successfully to adding great new customers to our family.
How have you seen Marketing and Sales evolve in the B2B/Tech marketplace over the years? What are some of the most crucial skills that you’d say are critical to the success of today’s marketer or salesperson?
The need for the marketing and sales departments to be in complete lockstep has only increased over the years. The marketing engine is the fuel that starts the whole sales journey. It is critical for both teams to deeply understand the customer’s buying journey, but most importantly, the challenges as well.
Read More: Our TecHRseries Interview with Carlo Fidanza, Chief People Officer at Accedian
What are some of the ways in which you’ve driven better alignment between Marketing and Sales in your journey so far?
When we shifted our sales strategy, we ended up having to completely retool our marketing strategy as well, and bring in new talent to drive this. The team needed new skill sets that matched how the company was evolving and could execute this new strategy direction. To continue ensuring alignment across teams, we hold monthly operational reviews and we track a variety of KPIs, in order to ensure we are delivering what the business needs in lockstep.
What according to you are some of the best (and maybe most successful ways, from your time in the industry) that have helped drive better channel partnerships?
I have worked with channels, partners and alliances for most of my career. They are essential to any B2B go-to market plan. Partnerships are strong if you are able to secure some key ingredients: relevancy, clear rules of engagement, absolute trust and empowerment.
If a partnership is built with these in mind, the likelihood of success increases dramatically.
When it comes to Enterprise Sales – what are the critical aspects that come to mind that help enable better outcomes?
For a successful enterprise sales strategy, you need to focus not on selling features, but selling the outcome – and moreover, how that outcome translates into business value. It all starts by understanding deeply what is the customer challenge and then convert your key features into capabilities that address those challenges and provides the desired outcome.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview With Adam Maine, Head Of Asia, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
What are some of the key insights you’d like to share when it comes to choosing/adopting a martech/salestech stack to enable a better overall sales process?
There’s definitely not a one-size-fit-all recommendation here. Process and automation are very important, but different companies will be able to afford different types of solutions. The key here is that the end-to-end process is clearly documented and everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.
Tag (mention/write about) the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read or with whom you’d like to have a podcast episode!
Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon!
Your favorite Sales/SalesTech quote and sales leadership books you’d suggest everyone in Sales and Marketing reads
There are a lot of good quotes, it really depends on the context (time and place of the journey). I’ll share the ones I gave my team during our annual Sales Kick-off meeting in 2020:
Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” — Steve Jobs
All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” — Michael John Bobak
Tell us about some of the top sales/salestech/martech/fintech/ other events that you’ll be participating in (as a speaker or guest!) in 2020!
I was looking forward to attending Cisco Live this year, but that has moved to a virtual event. However, I am looking forward to hosting our Accedian Skylight Summit in Paris during the fall. That is a wonderful opportunity to hear from and create connections with our customers, partners and prospects.
We’d love to know a little about your future plans!
We just announced our new integrated Cloud-based Analytics platform and I’m eager to present it to all of our customers and new prospects. We will continue to build a strong ecosystem of partners to achieve our goal of scaling our business and reaching out to more and more customers across the globe. We know we can help them tremendously and we are eager to show it!
Catch the latest episode of the SalesStar Podcast where we had Bud McGann, Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Reltio share some insights!
Accedian is a leader in performance analytics and end user experience solutions, dedicated to providing customers with the ability to assure their digital infrastructure, while helping them to unlock the full productivity of their users.
Sergio Bea is Vice President Global Enterprise and Channels at Accedian. He draws on more than two decades of telecom industry experience in his role directing Accedian’s enterprise and global channel strategy. He has worked for Fortune 500 global corporations in key strategic roles throughout his career, with prior roles across various disciplines including sales, business development, strategy, consulting, and services. Before joining Accedian, Sergio led the development and implementation of Viavi Solutions’ channel strategy and managed the NPMD business.