AI is revolutionizing business and changing the way sales professionals work. But is this enough to replace the human factor? In today’s episode, Ray Makela, GM of Sales Training at SRG, a Part of SBI, sits down with Alfred Ojukwu, a senior sales professional at Microsoft and co-chair of Blacks at Microsoft. They discuss the role of AI in sales, particularly the Microsoft tools Copilot and Bing Chat. They also explore the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in sales teams. --   About Us: SRG, a part of SBI, serves as the benchmark in sales training and growth adviso ..read more

Today, the Sales Readiness Group’s General Manager, Ray Makela, sits down with Craig Hanson, the Senior Director of Marketing Strategy at Gong. Gong has been trusted by thousands of companies worldwide to support their go-to-market strategies and grow revenue efficiently through a single, integrated platform.  In the episode, they cover how AI will transform the work of frontline sales managers and their teams as we enter 2024. They also cover the implications for organizations and the industry as a whole, along with some best practices to help you fully leverage the solutions available ..read more

Get actionable SKO insights, real-world examples, and a sprinkle of planning tips to set you up for a winning year. Featured in this episode: Ray Makela, CEO of the Sales Readiness Group, and Sam Herring, Vice President and General Manager at Intrepid. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/salesreadiness/message ..read more

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with John Pierce, the Senior Director of Human Resources for the Americas Region and Global Sales & Marketing team at Motorola, about recruiting strategies he has implemented to attract the best talent in the market. In our first segment, John dives into recruitment and selection strategies with defining how to find the talent pools you need, where they're needed and the numbers that are required. We also learn about a single-page document that helps summarize the talent acquired and further analyze them in three categories: compet ..read more

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jack Whalen, VP of Marketing at Phillips 66, about marketing strategy development. In our first segment, Jack identifies the difference between B2B and B2C marketing objectives, why investing in a lead generation program will support your marketing strategy and how compelling content can catapult your strategy to the next level. Next, Jack shares his experience in experimenting with a lead development team and what the first phase of results looked like. Jack then delves into data tracking and how trends in numbers help tell a sto ..read more

In this podcast, find out how a CEO defied the odds of economic instability and grew a $600 million company with a customer-focused sales strategy. This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Chris Cole, CEO of Intelligrated, about the role the CEO plays in the development of the sales strategy. In our first segment, Chris shares how he managed to gain success and revenue with his company during a difficult economic cycle by listening to customers and crafting products and services that helped his customers succeed. He also discusses how strategically aligning your sales st ..read more

Learn how to successfully implement sales strategy transformation in one quarter. This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Jeff White, chief revenue officer of Extreme Networks, about designing a new sales strategy within the first 90 days of a new job. In our first segment, Jeff describes how to become intimately knowledgeable of your business and how to properly analyze an organization in order to pinpoint where the transformative work needs to happen for a new sales plan. Next, Lee walks us through Extreme Network’s corporate strategy, which focuses on being a product ..read more

How to implement a new organizational structure to a long standing enterprise? This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Samir Joglekar, EVP of sales at Renaissance Learning, about how to lay out a new organizational structure for a company. In our first segment, Samir shares the first things you should evaluate when looking at your organizational design in order to reconstruct the way your departments are currently set up. Next, Samir offers guidance on how to incorporate a new channel to a long standing enterprise in order to gain a deeper connection and build better re ..read more

Discover how new CEOs can align product, marketing and sales teams for optimal results. This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Joel Trammell, CEO of Khorus, about his corporate strategy approach detailed in his book, “The CEO Tightrope,” which describes how to keep your product, marketing and sales teams aligned. In our first segment, Joel discusses what inspired him to write his book and lays out the five core responsibilities of a CEO required to build a corporate level strategy, including owning the vision, providing proper resources, building culture, making decisi ..read more

This week on the SBI Sales and Marketing podcast, we spoke with Dave Rennyson, EVP and GM of the Cloud division at Genesys, about how to scale a SaaS company from SMB to enterprise using corporate strategy. In our first segment, Dave discusses how he and his team successfully moved their average deal size from $10,000 to $80,000 with sales management, product focus and strong network security. In our second segment, we talk with Dave about how strategic alignment across all departments is necessary to help grow your company from a small- or mid-sized business to an enterprise, something many ..read more