Thought Leaders In Sales 2.0: Kevin Suitor, VP Of Marketing, Exinda (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Sudhindra Chada

SM: So, you hook a customer into navigating your website. Probably another interesting question is, What is the hook? How are you getting customers to engage with the site?

KS: We use a variety of direct and indirect marketing campaigns. We use pay-per-click campaigns, we use Google AdWords of course, we use Facebook advertising to build a Facebook following, and from there we get click-through from Facebook Mentions and social marketing onto the website. We have used the new LinkedIn DirectAdS to generate pay-per-click. We have a full integration with Salesforce and ExactTarget, ExactTarget being the e-mail campaigning software package. So, we’ve got a full bidirectional product force between Salesforce and ExactTarget on which we run weekly e-mail campaigns virtually to drive traffic to the website, which we view as the entry point to the sender. Along with that, we have a telemarketing program, we have business development representatives in both North America and Asia who dial down on to the names that we have that have opted in to allow us to communicate with them, and we create demand generation in that way as well. Finally, there is a direct marketing campaign, which would be events, webinars, trade shows, seminars and conferences, things of that nature.

SM: What technology do you use for the webinars?

KS: We use the GoToWebinar platform, which again allows us to import campaigns to registrants very easily, and to track back, we can post from the archives of the webinars for viewing. We use e-mail campaigns for follow-on activity for people who perhaps registered for the webinar but didn’t view it live; they can go back on-demand and see those webinars. We track that information as well.

SM: With all of these lead generation activities that you do, are you selling directly to these customers? Because you mentioned at the beginning of the interview that you are using a channel to sell.

KS: Yes, we do what is classified as high touch, so we pre-qualify end user customers, validate their needs, and answer many of their initial questions. Then we transfer that qualified lead to an appropriate channel partner that is closest to the customer or most suited to supporting that customer’s absolute requirements.

SM: Would you help us to understand the structure of the deals? What is the average deal size? You said that you are selling a B2B solution, right?

KS: Yes. If we take a look, in 2008 the average deal size was around $4,000. We have grown over the past year; year over year we have increased the deal size from about $9,000 to about $21,000.

SM: Okay.

KS: So, $9,000 to $21,000, and if we look at net new product and take out the software renewal business, we actually increased the average sale to $35,000 a year, which is a significant improvement in the velocity of the deal size.

SM: What is the justification for selling this deal size through a channel partner? Does it require on-premise system integration or implementation services?

KS: Yes, this is a wide area network (WAN) product that sets a demarcation point between a carrier service from an operator, such as Verizon or AT&T, and the businesses’ internal local area networks (LAN). It requires a level of professional installation and configuration; hence, we use a local system integration partner. Currently, we have about 250 partners around the world that are qualified to sell our products.

SM: Basically, it is the on-premise service component that is driving the channel?

KS: Well, that and the fact that our internal marketing efforts are matched by our partners’ marketing efforts. When we look at the output of the program last year, we generated about half of our business activity, and our channel partners generated about half of our activity. As we started to use the communication elements of our program, they began to become enabled and they actually started to bring us business, which is where you get the leverage from the channel program.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders In Sales 2.0: Kevin Suitor, VP Of Marketing, Exinda
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