Luck is not what takes a company from 70 employees to a thousand — it’s the hard work and good marketing that’s behind the success. And Sales Development plays a huge role in achieving that.
In this episode, David shares the mic with Maria Pergolino, Apttus’ senior vice-president in global marketing and sales development (now with Anaplan). She is one of the key persons who helped grow Apttus to its current size with over 1,100 employees. Listen as Maria shares her insights and stories how they grew Apttus, some tips, tools, and tactics to effectively reach your customers, and why people should consider getting into sales development if they want to be in marketing.
3 Key Points:
1. Have yourself responsible for bringing insights to your team.
2. Sales Development is NOT a subset for sales or marketing — this department plays a role in every business.
3. Use tools to leverage and manage the tasks in your teams and in your business.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:00 – Talk to the experts at Inside Sales Team for all your sales development needs
- 00:44 – David welcomes Maria to the show
- 01:22 – Maria has been in Apttus for 5 years now
- 01:52 – Prior to being in Apttus, Maria worked for Marketo
- 03:01 – When Maria joined Apttus, they had about 70 employees — now they have 1,100
- 03:37 – Their success came from marketing
- 04:46 – “Be with the winners”
- 05:56 – Founders tend to paint the picture of the future but at the start, you have a quota and a pipeline to hit
- 07:17 – Businesses should be able to create clear messaging for their marketing personas
- 07:58 – Some companies are “too early” in the industry that it may take time for success
- 09:12 – Employees tend to count on their bosses to set a company culture
- 09:54 – Maria encourages everyone to stop waiting and bring in ideas to their teams
- 10:43 – “Take personal responsibility for yourself and the vibe you’re creating for the team”
- 12:29 – Sales development is NOT a subset of sales nor a subset of marketing
- 14:03 – Sales development needs a voice in a company and the sales development team should know how they’re running their business
- 15:03 – Sales teams usually tries to take sales development teams as their subordinates
- 15:46 – Marketing teams bring a process to help create continuity with sales development teams
- 17:11 – The pipelines, both quantity and quality, of Apttus have been very successful because of the alignment to marketing
- 17:57 – It’s a tricky balance for sales development and marketing departments
- 19:20 – Maria shares how they hit their numbers at Apttus
- 20:45 – For outbound sales, sales development team members are aligned to reps to work around a plan
- 22:20 – Maria uses events as a way of urgency for outbound accounts
- 24:11 – Apttus uses Salesforce, Microsoft, Marketo, EverString, Engagio, and InsideSales
- 25:00 – Apttus is big on leverage technology
- 26:02 – Maria shares more about Engagio
- 28:10 – Even if Engagio is awesome, “We have to invest more time (in knowing and reaching personas)”
- 29:10 – Know who you really want to sell to and make connections
- 30:27 – Maria shares a humorous example about wrong consumer targeting
- 31:31 – The sales development reps at Marketo would send themselves emails so they get a higher return rate
- 32:57 – Maria thinks sales development will go to marketing in 5 years
- 34:17 – Teams grow because of the efficiency from sales development
- 35:16 – Maria talks about how they measure success in creating relevant conversations
- 36:04 – The actual computation is based on opportunities, pipeline created and the different portions of competence based on where the opportunity lands
- 37:56 – “The sales development team has pipeline goals where they can make impact”
- 39:51 – Maria’s advice for people who want to get into marketing is to “start in sales development”
- 40:41 – “Marketing and sales have the same goal”
- 41:38 – Consider marketing if you’re in sales development
- 43:26 – Subscribe to our show on YouTube and review us on iTunes
- 43:33 – Contact us to discuss your sales development needs
Resources Mentioned:
- Apttus – Company where Maria worked during podcast recording. She’s now with www.anaplan.com/
- Marketo – Company where Maria worked for prior to Apttus
- Salesforce, Microsoft, Marketo, EverString, Engagio, and InsideSales – Tools that Apttus use in their company
