MarketStar Blog

My leadership philosophy is a combination of my own experience and that of watching and being mentored by key contributors at MarketStar. What have I learned? A sales leader is an individual who isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves to accomplish goals and lead their team to success. But we all know leadership takes more than barking orders!  I try to lead my teams with empathy, performance, and transparency as my guideposts. I don’t want to scare new hires away after their first week on the job!

Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, How Will You Measure Your Life?, and other landmark business publications, writes about disruptive innovation. This occurs when smaller companies root a product or service in simple applications at the bottom of a market and relentlessly move up a market, resulting in the displacement of bigger companies. He states that large companies are consistently disrupted by smaller, nimbler, and more aggressive companies that attack a niche—or possibly lower end—of the market.

As the sales industry continues its rapid evolution, sales reps will need a higher level of technical competency to sell complex products, services, and solutions. Technology has created a demand for sales teams to stay up to speed on the wants and needs of their customers and the pulse of their respective industries at large. Not only is technology changing how teams operate and interact with their customers, but products are becoming increasingly complex. This requires a rethinking of sales knowledge and skill sets.

Attracting partners to your channel is art blended with science. While channel teams can leverage tools and technology to facilitate the process, it ultimately depends on their ability to identify ideal partner segments, discover the best candidates, and create relationships that stand the test of time. Despite the fact that recruiting partners for your channel may take some finessing, there are some tricks to the process.

There is a general misconception that companies create their own brands. This simply is not true. A brand is created by the way others perceive your company, its products, and the services it offers. A brand becomes the way they feel and think about you. Even though companies don’t create their brand, they influence it by their actions.

To illustrate, let’s examine two examples, Volkswagen and Kia. Volkswagen launched the brand strategy “working with you” in 2013. Their goal was to establish the idea that they were meeting their customer’s needs. When news hit in 2015 that they had installed a cheat emissions devise in their U.S. vehicles, the once premium car manufacturer quickly lost credibility and confidence in consumers and their customers. Their customers no longer felt like Volkswagen was “working with them.” They perceive the brand as cheaters and dishonest. Not only have they experienced significant job cuts over the last few years, but they have lost revenue as a company. In 2016 sales in the United States dropped 8% in one year.

While most businesses believe that the risks of investing in emerging markets have increased over the past decade, just as many believe that the rewards have also increased, especially in markets that seem to have become saturated with existing customers and competition. In other words, businesses by and large believe that the risk and return ratio of investing in global markets is becoming increasingly favorable.

The AdTech industry is rife with fierce competition and  operates at a breakneck pace, but despite this, many companies have succeeded. How have they done it? For starters, many digital media companies have legacy media history, and as such, are movers and shakers. In the evolving industry, success often means going against the grain, and refusing to view perceived or legacy limitations as a barrier.

Sales organizations have an unprecedented amount of data available at their fingertips. While it’s easier than ever to access big data, the data itself can be overwhelming. In fact, 53 percent of sales managers say they feel overwhelmed by the volume of data, and 38 percent admit that they don’t know what to do with data once they get it.

Whether you’re ready to go to market or looking to extend your current capabilities, adding partner resellers can shorten and improve the process. Partners offer low upfront costs and bring established customer relationships to your organization.