Latest News from Ken Rutsky

Mind the Gap - Three Gaps to High Velocity Pipeline and How to Cross Them

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:45:00 EDT

When I used to go to London often and ride the Underground, the constant refrain seen was "Mind The Gap". Mind the Gap or you could suffer some unmentionable and clearly gruesome fate. As Online software service providers of all flavors try to create high velocity sales and marketing businesses, they would do well to mind these three gaps: The "It's Not Your Time" gap The "It's Not My Job" gap The "Window Shopping" gap 1) The "It's Not Your Time" gap 2) The "It's Not My Job" gap 3) The "Window Shopping" gap

Five Reasons We Overvalue Value in Cloud Sales and Marketing

Sun, 06 May 2012 15:00:00 EDT

Value Propositions and elevator pitches live in the rarefied air of marketing speak. They are almost seen as mystical accomplishments reachable by only the anointed among us. "But what's the elevator pitch" we hear time and time again....Give me the 30 second attention grabber, etc, etc. While I agree that Value matters, and actually matters a lot, I think as sales and marketing professionals, we've worshiped at this alter for so long, we've lost sight of the end goal. We've become Value snobs.

Breakthrough Cloud Marketing Revolution

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:00:00 EDT

Today's buyer is information overloaded, bandwidth constrained and fiercely independent. A recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board reported that 57% of the new B2B sales cycle is DONE before the buyer's first formal contact to the selected vendor. Understanding that simple fact requires a radical rethink of go to market strategies and tactics across sales and marketing. Those who react, can see dramatic increases in Marketing ROI and significant compression of sales pipelines. This can drop real dollars into the bottom line.

Viewpoint Sets the Stage at Cirque

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:00:00 EDT

In its 25th year of thrilling audiences, Cirque Du Soleil has mastered the art, among many others, of creating a world view, or viewpoint, that transports audiences to new worlds, making them ready to be thrilled. By the time the show opens, you are already a raving fan. What does this mean for Cloud marketers? Walking across the Santa Monica pier, my senses rose to an unusually high level. The misty cool evening woke me up after a dinner with great food, new friends and fine wine. As we approached the lit up big top, I was immediately transported to the thrilling milieu of the circus. Thoughts of lions, tigers, tight rope walkers and clowns immediately flashed through my mind. It was at once familiar as well as seductive.

Driving a High Velocity Cloud Pipeline

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:00:00 EDT

In today's market, it is critical to drive high velocity sales and marketing programs. Velocity is a function of Delivery, Engagement and Experience, simply V=D*Engagement*Experience. The HIGHEST velocity go-to-market programs, tailor their delivery to channel of communication and buyers place in the buying cycle. Content Rules, a popular book in marketing circles today, spends a lot of time focused on just this, and it is necessary and recommended reading and very good stuff. However, in my experience, Content Rules fails to take on the other 2 variables in the equation, Engagement and Experience. In order to drive Engagement, a strong Viewpoint and Value position must be staked out and communicated. Then, this must be married with Experience driven delivery.

Tilting the Clouds to Abundance - Beating Your Competition with Value

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST

When we Apply Steven Covey's Abundance Mindset to our Cloud Go To Market Positioning, Messaging and execution, we begin to see our opportunities in a whole new way, and drive an execution that can surprise even our most optimistic expectations. In my Viewpoint, Value, Velocity or V3 High Impact Go To MarketModel, Value is the articulation of our winning business benefits that we use to move potential customers from awareness to purchase ready. Once we get their attention with our Viewpoint, we need to rapidly move to captivating them with our communication of our Unique Value. This article outlines 3 steps to doing just that.

Finding Your Cloud Go-to-Market Viewpoint - Follow the Cash Cow!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:19:00 EST

In my last article, I called on providers to find a unique Viewpoint, "Viewpoint is a framing of the market in the context of your uniqueness. The uniqueness of your team, your capabilities, and your vision. Some call viewpoint thought leadership, some vision with a capital V, and some brand." While there are many frameworks and techniques to capturing Viewpoint, however defined, one of the simplest and most effective way I have, and one the first I usually pull out of my toolset, is to simple create an X and Y set of axis and coordinate labels for the market. A simple 2x2 matrix which will then set your view firmly in one corner of the world, the best one! and I called on providers to set a unique and compelling viewpoint to create breakthrough for their marketing efforts. While there are many frameworks and techniques to capturing Viewpoint, however defined, one of the simplest and most effective way I have, and one the first I usually pull out of my toolset, is to simple create an X and Y set of axis and coordinate labels for the market. A simple 2x2 matrix which will then set your view firmly in one corner of the world, the best one!

Don't Punt - Winning the Cloud Marketing Battle

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

Coach Kevin Kelley has figured it out, don't punt. Since 2007, he's won three Arkansas State Championships and over 90% of his games, and he's never punted. Every day, sales and marketing teams in Cloud organizations, that could easily move the trial or experience to the front of the marketing and sales cycle, hang on to conventional wisdom, hiding or gating the actual product experience. Whether this is because of fear of failure or simple rejection of the new, or concern over investor or CEO second guessing, those in the old product mindset are punting away opportunity every day.

High Impact Cloud Marketing - A Formula for Success

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:45:00 EST

Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing. While they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing. And while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there. With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science. Hidden behind the dashboards and metrics lies a more fundamental problem. In today's hyper competitive, global, instantaneous market, where buyers and consumers have nearly unlimited access to information and each other, the fight for attention and share has become a treadmill of constantly faster speed. With this high velocity market, we need a new HIGH IMPACT marketing formula to feed the machine.

Why Experience Will Be Key to 2012 Cloud Sales and Marketing

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

B2B technology sales and marketing is being transformed, as we move from products to services, we must move from traditional evaluation based product sales to experienced based service sales, this is true in SaaS models but in many other places too. Why is it then that many SaaS providers continue to hide their experiences in the equivalent of a locked glass cabinet, behind weeks of qualification and sales calls that make a customer "prove" that they should be able to give it a go? Why not put the experience (trial, freemium, demo instance, whatever) front and center in your go to market?

It's Not Just the Cloud - The Re-invention of Everything

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:45:00 EST

Look around and be amazed, everything is being re-invented. From the tablet computer to the thermostat, from cars to enterprise software, from incubators to light-bulbs. We are living in an amazing time. Opportunities abound to capitalize on the biggest industrial change since electricity. We are at the the convergence of 6 megatrends, some new, some old, that when taken together create this incredible rush of innovation and opportunity.

How to Build Cloud Brand and Demand

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EDT

Walk into just about any Cloud marketing team today, and you will see a very large focus on marketing automation. This is the tip of the iceberg that has been building since the dawn of Google and Direct email, or for about a decade. Let's call that time AG for After Google. That AG iceberg is the maniacal focus on demand over brand, on lead generation over messaging, on revenue over valuation. This focus makes a lot of sense, especially in a crowded and newly developing market, marketing MUST drive revenue, because revenue drive valuation, growth and access to capital, and feeds on itself in a virtuous cycle of success.

The 4th C - How the Cloud Changes Everything in B2B Marketing

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:00:00 EDT

"The Cloud Changes Everything" is heard so often that it is a cliché. But then again, distributed energy production and transmission enabled our 20th century manufacturing revolution and the interstate highway systems changed our society. Those of us who practice B2B technology marketing are living in the most interesting time of our careers. Not only is social media changing our communications channels faster than our ability to manage them, but cloud economics and delivery is changing our products and our customers. In order to thrive and succeed in cloudy times, we must be disciplined and innovative, focused yet adaptable, agile and efficient. No easy task. We must re-invent every aspect of our marketing mix, from our very notion of our product, to pricing and promotion, to our channels, understanding of our customer and view of our competition. So now, instead of 3C and 4Ps, I officially anoint the Cloud as the 4th C of B2B tech marketing.

Poking Through the Clouds

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:35:33 EDT

As cloud computing goes mainstream, ISV, hosters, and other service providers can no longer depend on the previously successful, "We are X category, but as SaaS" like early pioneers such as Salesforce.com did. To truly STAND OUT and poke above the clouds, these three strategies offer proven paths to success. 1) 1+1=3 or Market Consolidation - Simply put, this is a strategy of adding together existing, adjacent capabilities in order to consolidate markets. KJR client Nimsoft (now a division of CA) changed the IT monitoring market early on in the "Cloud era" by providing one product to consolidate the monitoring of a datacenter, service provider and cloud infrastructure, as I have blogged about extensively in this space. Market consolidation is an effective differentiation strategy because it provides clear value to the end buyer in cost savings and operational efficiencies. Embrace and Extend - Next Generation X - The strategy of having competitive parity to existing capabilities and adding high value new ones. Palo Alto Networks has created very rapid growth and disruption in the mature firewall space by embracing and extending the mature enterprise firewall market with their "Next Generation Firewall," not only consolidating the firewall and IPS markets with their positioning, but redefining the very essence of an enterprise firewall to be application and user centric, not port and protocol based. Their new app-ID and user-ID technologies changed the firewall market dramatically, and gained them real first mover advantage over the incumbents. Embrace and Extend is effective because while disruptive, it goes after existing category dollars.

Glider Bikes to SaaS Success

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EDT

Training wheels are out, glider bikes are in! By learning balance first, kids now make easy transitions to bicycling, saving parents' backs and patience. ISVs making transitions to SaaS should find their glider bikes to success, things they do today that can help them to more quickly succeed. Owen, my youngest, is a typical 3 1/2 year old boy, energetic, physical and fearless. He's been riding on a glider bike for the last year, and loves to blast down hills with his feet in the air, scaring the daylights out of his Dad.

Are You Experienced? - Transforming SaaS Go to Market

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:15:00 EDT

Many ISVs are making dramatic shifts to become SaaS providers. This requires a shift in mindset from product to service and in organization from linear to circular. Once these shifts are under way, in order to succeed and stand out, ISVs we must now bridge their go-to-market strategy, objectives and tactics from Evaluation to Experience. Today's customer has little patience for white papers, datasheets, detailed feature function product specs and the like. They may attend a webinar, but the next step is experience. Even for large organizations with complex buying behavior, the expectation of SaaS is an easy, accessible and meaningful experience of the service, either through demonstration instances, trial or freemium models.

Organizing for SaaS Success: Surround the Customer

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:45:00 EDT

For ISVs and others attempting to offer SaaS services to the market, organizational structure and approach represents one of the largest hurdles to success. In order to achieve success as a service provider, organizations must change my organizational approach from linear to circular, surrounding the customer throughout the service relationship lifecycle, reducing barriers to adoption, and ensuring long-term customer retention. Today's typical ISV organization and its interaction with customers are linear with sporadic customer contact. Product managers may gather requirements from early or beta customers, but other than those few, the first real contact is from marketing. The customer is passed from marketing to sales. Sales implements an orchestrated sales process that, when successful, hands the customer to a services or implementation team. Once completed, the implementation team hands the customer over to the support organization. The product mindset is spikey and transaction-oriented, and the organization's linear structure is perfect to support this mindset.

Getting Your Head Around the SaaS Mindset

Sat, 21 May 2011 15:15:00 EDT

For organizations who are launching, building or in market with SaaS offerings, success varies widely. Many of these organizations and the people in them have roots in the software, appliance or hardware PRODUCT businesses. To succeed as a SaaS provider, you have to build a great service, that’s a given. But equally important, but you must transition from a product to a service mindset. If you have a product mindset in a service business, you will be blind to many of the issues that matter, and risk making poor organizational and execution strategic and tactical decisions.

Bridging to SaaS Success: A Basic Business Blueprint

Wed, 18 May 2011 09:00:00 EDT

Established and new ISVs, telcos, hosters and other tech providers are launching SaaS services at an ever-increasing pace, and that's great. However, many of these initiatives fail to attract leads and customers in the volume expected, resulting in management, market and shareholder disappointment. Why is this? While organizations spend a LOT of time understanding the technical transformation required to build a SaaS service, they fail to understand that this is just the anchor of the transitional bridging they must do. In order to gain share and revenues they must deal with the remaining pieces of the bridge-to-service success, which are mindset, organizational structure and go-to-market tactics.

Mind The Gap - 3 Gaps to High Velocity Pipeline and How to Cross Them

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

When I used to go to London often and ride the Underground, the constant refrain seen was "Mind The Gap". Mind the Gap or you could suffer some unmentionable and clearly gruesome fate. As Online software service providers of all flavors try to create high velocity sales and marketing businesses, they would do well to mind these 3 gaps: 1) The "It's Not Your Time" gap 2) The "It's Not My Job" gap 3) The "Window Shopping" gap