Independent Research

Rity Upadhyaya
A discussion of the role of marketing and sales in high tech companies and proposed best practices for their solution based sales.

Carnegie Mellon University

Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................... 3 Corporate Strategy Connected to Marketing and Sales ................................... 3 Leveraging Customer Relationship Management Process in Sales ................ 6 Solution Based Selling .................................................................................. 7 Why do companies stumble while offering solutions to their customers? .... 8 General Issues of Solution Based Selling Activities and Best Practices for Managing Them ............................................................................................... 8 Proposed Metrics Table ................................................................................. 13 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 13 Appendix ........................................................................................................ 14 Works Cited .................................................................................................... 17

2 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

Introduction
Many high tech companies have arrived at different strategies on sales and marketing of their software solutions. Indeed, some of the companies have grown so large that internally, they have implemented different such strategies that best fit their unique products. However, there are commonalities among the companies in the strategies that they have acquired for their marketing and solution selling activities. This paper discusses existing problems with solution based selling while also highlighting best practices on how to deal with the issues and applying metrics to monitor and implement changes to those activities.

Corporate Strategy Connected to Marketing and Sales

Michael Porters theory on corporate strategy where he defined five forces that affect an organization greatly impacted how companies are run. Porter provided a structural framework for understanding the five fundamental forces of competition in an industry (Porter, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors 1980). His concepts provided companies with clarity on how they should compete in their respective markets to attain and maintain competitive advantage. Additionally, another important concept of value innovation where instead of focusing on beating the competition, companies focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space (Kim and Mauborgne 2005) seems to have resonated with many high tech companies that have created blue oceans for themselves. These two theories helped corporations build their businesses with better strategic focus and direction. High technology companies behave no differently when trying to attain a strategic advantage in their businesses by putting equal emphasis on value and innovation. In a dynamic market of high tech, companies have to constantly revisit their strategy to keep up with, if not be leaders in their respective markets. High technology companies can gain competitive advantage by improving strategic or operational effectiveness. Gaining strategic effectiveness means that they have to perform activities that are different from their competitors or perform similar activities better than their competitors. On the other hand, operational effectiveness includes having optimized business processes. Companies can achieve this by better utilizing their functional units. This paper discusses sales and marketing activities that the company can undertake to achieve strategic and operational effectiveness1.

Marketing
Marketings role in a company involves connecting a customer to a product or service delivery (Moorman and Rust 1999). When discussing marketing activities, a business must have a strong go-to-market strategy. There are four ways that a company can perform effective marketing strategies (Dahl 2012):

Additional areas that a company can improve its effectiveness but is outside the scope of this paper include research and development, operations, supply chain, pricing, service delivery, and financing. 3 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

1. Market penetration: An activity where a company chooses to sell more of its own product to its current customers. 2. Market development: An activity where a company sells more of its product line to adjacent markets. The company is also involved in activities where it offers its products to other markets in other states. 3. Alternate channels: This marketing strategy aligns with pursuing customers in a different way such as selling your products online. 4. Product development: A company can build a strong marketing strategy by developing new products to sell to its existing customers as well as to new ones. If given a choice, a company can adopt a less risky strategy by selling its products to existing customers rather than having to learn a new product and market at the same time. In high technology companies, marketing organizations are responsible for providing a balanced assessment of the promises and perils of new technologies. Marketing is responsible for informing the development of the commercialization effort of their company. This role enables marketing to enhance the odds that the new technologies will deliver on their promise and avoid downside risks. Large companies such as Microsoft and Intel, despite being perceived as sophisticated marketers, have expressed publicly that they are not sufficiently market driven. The reason for this admittance could be due to the fact that failure rates of more innovative products are at least 50% higher, (Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer 2006) (Kovac, Ledingham and Weinger 2012)than failure rates of products in general. This is an important factor to consider while marketing the high tech products since the volatility of the business and consumer adoption can risk the survival of their business if the marketing is not performed effectively. Unfortunately, marketing activities are sometimes an afterthought in high tech companies. The misalignment of cross-functional collaboration between engineers and marketers is a challenging one for a company to tackle. In a high tech company, technological superiority alone is insufficient for ensuring the success of its products. These companies must complement their technological prowess with a set of marketing competencies in order to maximize their odds of success. One important marketing competency is to think beyond the technology itself and to gain insights about the customers who will adopt and use the technology (Mohr, Sengupta and Slater 2010). Many cutting edge products have failed to do well in the market place simply because the product wasnt built to sell and the leaders of the businesses involved lacked the foresight to put customer needs and wants first. Andy Grove, Intels CEO, said to successfully market technology solutions, high tech companies must have an intimate understanding of their customers underlying needs and problems, their customers ways of doing business, and their customers environments and mind sets. In a high tech industry, the margin of error in decision-making is likely smaller than for conventional markets. Hence, it becomes imperative for a marketer to develop competencies in selecting a target market, communicate clearly the benefits the innovation offers relative to other solutions, design an effective and efficient distribution channel, and develop solid relationships and alliances. Adapting marketing principles to the nuances of the complex high tech environment necessitates modifications in marketing strategies and
4 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

tools to successfully design and implement best practices in the high tech environment. Hence, focusing the scope of marketing activities into dimensions such as (Mohr, Sengupta and Slater 2010): Strategic activities Functional activities: 4Ps product, price, promotion, and place Tactical activities

A competent go-to-market strategy in companies involves building an adaptable and repeatable daily operation. The everyday struggle for keeping up with shifting customer wants and needs creates turbulence in a high technology company that can sabotage its long-term growth. A good go-to-market strategy is the distinguishing factor between companies that succeed and the ones that fail. It enables companies to blur competitive boundaries that undermine established business models and shorten product lifecycle (Kovac, Ledingham and Weinger 2012). These companies are able to make quick decisions without bumping into functional silos that helps them respond quickly to changes in the marketplace. Also, perfecting the art of delivering exceptional customer service earns loyalty and advocacy among the companys customer base. The missing link of a companys strategy between decisions on where to compete and how to win is the exceptional customer experience that leads the company to the path to success. A company can take the following three steps to take while coming up with a world-class goto market system (Kovac, Ledingham and Weinger 2012): 1. Staying in sync with the changing shifts along marketing and strategic requirements. 2. Focusing on few and a handful of capabilities that are truly best in class 3. Fostering integration and clear decision making activities should be lead by the companys leaders that ripples across all functional units and channels within their business 4. Often, while coming up with a strong go-to-market strategy, there appears to be a disconnect between sales channels understanding of the strategy and the product/service that it is asked to sell. This needs to be changed in companies by showing front line sales the value of the marketing strategy and their role in the business strategy. Just as marketing strategies define the survival of a company, sales strategies also have to be modified per the need of the marketplace. The sales force in companies are changed over time, but it is also imperative for a company to manage its sales force with a focus on adapting their sales force over the lifecycle of a product or a business. This shift in sales force is necessary if a company wants to keep winning the race for customers.

5 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

The most important four factors in helping companies win the race are (Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer 2006): 1. Roles that the sales-force and sales partners play 2. The size of the sales-force 3. The sales-forces degree of specialization 4. How salespeople apportion their efforts among different customers, products, and activities These four factors are important because they determine how quickly sale forces respond to market opportunities. They also influence sales forces performance, thus directly affecting a companys revenues, costs, and profitability (Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer 2006). A high-tech companys marketing function involves attracting and retaining customers. In order to instill market orientation, a firm must enable its marketing entities to influence or manage business processes that drive customer value. Key activities that a company can be involved in are creating product development management (PDM), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) entities (Srivastava Shervani 1999). In Business-to-Business (B2B) relationships in high tech firms, success relies on most influential drivers of sales experience, relationship building, and the perceptions of customers of sales force. It becomes necessary for a business to nurture a strong CRM process.

Leveraging Customer Relationship Management Process in Sales

The sales force is more of a strategic entity in business today than it has been in the past. The fundamental change that has occurred in high tech firms is the adoption of a customeroriented perspective that has been adopted as a whole. Having this perspective fuels dramatic shift in a company where a sales strategy comprises of customer knowledge, access, and relationships. Today, the customer is at the center of the business, where the organizations that are interested in becoming more customer oriented are more likely to build a customer centric organizational culture and adopt a structure organized around customers, rather than brands and products (Leigh and Marshall 2001). Selling as a core business process involves adopting a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology and customizing their system to select, train, and reward employees who deliver customer value and profitability. Systematic attention to the role of selling function in a customer centric organization is needed for business to grow and retain its market share (Leigh and Marshall 2001). Customer Relationship Management (CRM) process becomes a strategic process as well as a financial asset of a high technology firm. This process can involve identifying and selecting customers to learning and performing needs assessment of the customers. Additionally, developing and executing market communication and services activities can help companies to develop and execute marketing communication and services program. A company can build customer trust and loyalty by leveraging the relationship by cross selling to increasing margins via upselling and leveraging sales effectiveness teams and marketing, solution maturity and communicating key differentials of the product. We need to view selling as a
6 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

business process to ensure that the selling function itself has a contribution to make it a market driven firm (Moorman and Rust 1999).

Solution Based Selling

Large and aggressively growing tech companies have adopted a solution based selling model where they create various bundles of their offerings customized to the customers needs. The customer derives a lot of value when a company adopts a solution based selling model. Namely, customers can leverage potential for price reduction while making purchase decisions of the products that they are buying. When solutions of a high-technology company are bundled together, the company opens itself to many opportunities of interoperability, technical integration, and customizability of their functional processes (Johansson, Krishnamurthy and Schlissberg 2003). The solution selling is performed by a generalist account executive or a product specialist based in different models of selling such as: Multiple independent sales teams Quarterback model

In a quarterback model, the sales people dont have to cross sell all the elements of their solution individually, which allows for variability in economics of product bundles. Whereas, as the name implies, a company with multiple independent sales teams allows their sales people to perform selling activity independently. Compensation plans also vary based on the models and so do the motivations of sales people based on the plans. A companys investment of solution based selling pays off in more ways than one. The company is able to generate higher margins, create additional value for customers, and create longer lasting and profitable relationships with customers. The solution based selling model also opens doors for its company to new markets, the possible uniqueness of solution sales helps reduce or eliminate competition and ultimately, de-commoditize the sales process. The fundamental basis of sales strategy comprises of giving specific attention to value chain and issues related to relationships within the customers and sales personnel. Stressing these factors proves beneficial to a company because these factors are how market driven firms define their competitive playing field and how they come up with their desired customer relationship typology. This makes it important for the company to come up with a requisite set of value offerings and selling models (Leigh and Marshall 2001).

7 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

Why do companies stumble while offering solutions to their customers?

Even in B2B sales, selling is a human based effort that cannot be regulated to implicitly understand the human behavior that causes a sale. The core of the solution based selling effort lies in the fact that a company needs to understand its own offerings and the customers problems. Otherwise, they will be unable to generate new markets or get higher margins or disaggregation of components can pose the selling company many problems of managing varying sources of components. The company also will have a tough time handling longer sales cycles because too many product lines handled by many too many sales representatives involves longer processes and lower compensations do not help motivate the personnel responsible for sales. Most importantly, companies have failed in their sales efforts if they dont understand their own solutions. They have to know how to sell a solution versus a product, and this requires deeper technical knowledge of the product and ability to relay that to the customer. Another stumbling block for a company is to be able to acknowledge that their products have become a commodity. The components may have already moved to a commodity level, but if the company is not in touch with its own offerings, it will not be able to understand how to find a customer relevant to the product lifecycle. Although at a commodity level, the selling efforts of representatives may not be too difficult due to lower prices that the commodity product commands, but lower prices also do not help generate favorable revenues for the company. On the other hand, a solution offerings also command a larger premium which is a drawback to the customer due to additional value that the solutions provide which also come with higher margins. This may also cause difficulties in selling the product due to higher priced products.

General Issues of Solution Based Selling Activities and Best Practices for Managing Them
Figure1 below shows evolving sales-force structure that a company faces throughout its business life cycle that brings in many challenges during solution based selling. This paper focuses on the growth and maturity phases of the companys business cycle.
Startup phase Making the right moves early DIY or outsource? Size of salesstaff? Growth Phase Need to specialize Getting the size right Maturity Quest for effectiveness and efficiency Account manager is important Decline Is turn around likely? If turn around isnt likely

Figure1. Stages in salesforce structure as it relates to a business life cycle (credit: Zoltners, Sinha, and Lorimer)

This section discusses general issues that come up while selling a multi-product solution to a customer along with best practices that can help alleviate the discussed problems. Some
8 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

metrics have been proposed, where applicable, to help implement and monitor changes that could be brought about by paying attention to problematic aspects of the selling process. 1. Companies may not always have clear roads mapped out to market and sell their products. a. Best practices: Having a coverage model in a company helps organize its resources. A company can ask several questions while establishing a coverage model such as: i. Are the products all a part of a logical portfolio in the eyes of a customer? ii. How much of the products is the company selling? iii. Are the products distinct and do the markets provide clarity on selling via channel versus direct selling activities? iv. If the sales have to occur globally, are the product offerings diverse enough to represent the needs of customers across the global markets? v. What is the best way to organize and compensate the resources performing sales activities? b. Metric proposed: M10 (see metrics table) 2. In a large and vastly growing high tech company, it is not always clear account executive to bring in during specific selling activities. Multi-products companies perform selling with difficulty and dont always know how to operate their sales without over extending their sales personnel. There is ambiguity regarding the process of allocating account executive versus account representative to projects. a. Best practices: i. Assessing multiple customer needs and motivations allows a company to analyze their resources. One of the ways this can happen is by recognizing value driven solutions by keeping clients involved in gathering feedback. ii. Having a keen knowledge of the product and figuring out the cost of sales helps a company to recognize key sales account executives that can mitigate future issues caused by irrelevant account executives. iii. Personality management is necessary while interacting with account executives since salespeople exhibit personality traits that can be generalized. Managing emotional aspects of the sales peoples job helps a manager traverse through the tight ropes of account allocation. b. Metrics: M2, M4, M6 3. Sales territory allocation is a complicated process with many moving parts.
9 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

a. Best practices: The best way of optimizing sales territory allocation is to utilize effective sales software that provides analytics to help identify sales opportunities. The software allows you to discipline processes and produce forecasts for your business potential. This activity enables a company to negotiate expertise that helps them broker complex deals. Sales territory design software package simplified and accelerates the planning, implementation, and monitoring process for creating effective sales force deployment plans (Fogel, et al. 2012). b. Metrics: M7, M10 4. Compensating the sales people effectively and fairly is a vague process for a maturing and rapidly growing business. Additionally, organizing compensation plans is also an issue. a. Best practice: Looking at a sales persons track record and level of effort that she is putting into making and closing deals will provide a good guide towards coming up with a fair compensation plan. In some companies, compensation plans are reviewed either quarterly or annually. It is important to come up with a plan based on the companys policies and business life cycle that it is in currently. b. Metrics: M7, M8, M11, M12 5. The quarterback model is overbearing on the account executive where one person is responsible for the sales whereas the direct reports just get the share of the quarterbacks sales. Other sales people could be free riding off of one persons work. a. Best practice: Monitoring the rest of the sales peoples progress is important in making sure that the quarterback is not over burdened. Although a bit radical, in some companies this model has been entirely removed to support an independent model where each salesperson is responsible for her own sale and hence no one is riding other teammates success fosters a more independent culture. b. Metrics: M5, M15 6. A company faces issues while driving behavior of joint account planning and collaboration and their strategy of differentiated complete offering has to be clarified. a. Best practice: This is deeply rooted in the company culture and how it views management of salespeople. Fostering a team approach to sales and revisiting the organizational structure to make it more of a cross-functional one is important. b. Metrics: M1, M16

10 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

7. When a company is big enough, it can win in the market place because of scale but it still loses market because of lack of innovation. a. Best practice: Large companies have the advantage of reaching out to customers because of the sheer large scale of their businesses provides them to have greater access to customers. This is when the company should put procedures and policies in place to keep customer as the number one priority. It is important to bring in those sales representatives that are at the center of the customer activity and has a deeper knowledge of the customer, irrespective of his rank in the company. Re-building an overriding goal of the firm to be a market driven firm to inculcate a performance driven culture that is focused on satisfying customers is important. The company should set a broad agenda in the companys strategy to focus on customer driven issues and best practices of industry that it plays in (Leigh and Marshall 2001). b. Metrics: There is no one metric to measure this stage in business; however, paying attention to internal actions becomes imperative to the success of the business. If internal leaders are drowning in activities such as budget discussions or approvals required from senior management to carry out menial tasks, then it is a sign that the company is going to lose because the focus on innovation has been lost. Shifting the role of selling from selling products to selling increased customer productivity through customer topline revenue or cost advantage determines how market driven firms rationalize their customer relationship model to fit desired or organizational futures is essential. 8. Operational control model must be in place for strategy and ultimately sales to be effective. a. Best practices: Taking an end-to-end view of the processes and functions that operate across the organizational lines. A company should focus on transactional support, structural support, strategy and reporting, and projects as areas at large that could cause issues with processes and functions. When these areas are taken in totality, a company can minimize a lot of waste and redundancy within the company related to organizational hand off and complexities, one size fits none, silo-ed nature of organizations, and parochial functional boundaries (Stevenson and Nottebohm 2012). b. Metrics: M2, M10 (see metrics table) 9. How are large accounts with many solutions managed effectively? a. Best practices: Focusing on one solution at a time helps retain a high level of customization and integration of a companys solution. This can be expensive and troublesome but the expenses have to make up for demand of the product and seeking out flagship customer to tailor beta versions of the product can help with fixed cost issues of the company. Companies with
11 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

these issues can ask themselves whether customization allows them to charge a premium, generation additional business and larger deals, or create a platform that can be sold to others. Additionally, outsourcing logistics also helps with minimizing costs incurred by this recommendation (Johansson, Krishnamurthy and Schlissberg 2003). b. Metrics: M14, M3, M4 10. Knowing the importance of product vs. customer based selling is not always underpinned. a. Best practices: Looking at the customers business metrics to understand the customers business helps a company focus its results to a broader customer base. Where the company moves from a product oriented view to a customer oriented view and creating a single representative or a team to communicate solution value to customer is highly desired. The company can replaces upto of sales reps with by product specialists and shifting the focus to the business value to the customer. The company can also focus on the entire team behind the solutions effort and the pricing can be value based rather than cost plus pricing. b. Metrics: M13 11. How does a company make sales effective in terms of allocation, customer effectiveness, and closure effectiveness? a. Best practice: The sales persons ability to determine whether the customer can make the purchase. After this stage, focusing on the stages of the sale where a customer moves from awareness to purchase is important. These stages (below) helps sales people understand what the customer needs inorder to make a purchase decision and also helps align the sales force with market and technology that is effective. Customers willing to build relation with supplies believe that administered solutions will provide more value and lower costs. As a consequence, market driven firms must segment their markets according to how their customers prefer to buy.
Awareness Consideration Interest Trial Purchase

b. Metrics: M2, M6, M7, M10, M5, M13-16 12. There may be friction between sales account executives and sales representative a. Best practice: Optimal alignment of sales territories to balance workload and minimize travel b. Metrics: M17, M18, M6, M9

12 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

Proposed Metrics Table

Metrics Description M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12 M13 M14 M15 M16 M17 M18 Optimal size of sales force workload buildup Closure rate Direct to indirect sales Revenue production level per sales person Discount gap Gap time between average sales person versus a high performing sales person Market penetration rate # Of appointments that the salesperson made with potential customers (executives) Review proportion relative to revenue, bookings, and margin Coverage model: Sales people/# of channels # Of RFPs submitted Attendance at conferences Price margins Gain in market share Sales growth % Of new product sales Optimal Salesforce sizing Optimal allocation of sales call effort to increase sales or profit response from customers and prospects

Conclusion
Although sales and marketing functions can be a complicated process in high tech companies, mapping out a clear go-to-market strategy and aligning sales processes with those strategies can help companies tread through complicated situations. There are many issues with solution based selling approach but focusing on best practices and implementing relevant metrics will help companies maneuver the tough business of solution based selling in high-tech companies.
13 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

Appendix
1. Further research areas that are very important to consider for improving business performance but could not be covered by this paper have been introduced in this section. a. Conceptual translation of the meaning of customer centric or market-driven into the role of the selling function, the sales force and the sales person (Leigh and Marshall 2001). b. Specification of when and how market orientation as a culture translates into a selling function role that is also market driven, not merely customer-friendly (Leigh and Marshall 2001). c. Strategic Dynamics and its application to sales (Burgelman and Grove 2005): i. Strategy and strategic dynamics involves gaining, sustaining or regaining profitable growth in the face of various types of strategic dynamics ii. In a rapidly changing environment between stated strategy and strategic action, how can companies regain such alignment iii. Industry level change inevitably requires a company to fundamentally rethink its strategy and business model. Transform it in what it does and how it does it. d. 3 games of strategic thinking (Laseter and Sarasvathy 2012) i. Means driven rather than goal oriented action ii. Begin with effectual reasoning 1. Who they are 2. What they know 3. Then engage in their network of potential stakeholders, seeking opportunities to collaborate iii. Vision doesnt drive the process but means opportunities, and stakeholders do iv. Affordable loss approach to evaluating opportunity, rather than an approach based on expected value v. Make use of an effectual mindset where a business should be able to make sure of surprises rather than avoiding them. vi. Surround stakeholders such as investors, customers, suppliers, employees work together to co-create the venture and its environment e. Chally groups best practices for sales strategy and practice is organized into 7 categories, which emphasize implementing a customer centric culture and could be studied in detail further. i. Market segmentation ii. Market adaptability iii. Information Technology iv. Sales, service and technology support systems v. Customer feedback and satisfaction vi. Selecting and developing sales personnel.

14 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

f.

The figure below highlights some emerging best practices in sales

15 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

2. The table below provides a snapshot of solution based sales model in various high tech companies and related pros and cons of those models as it relates to the companys product and service offerings.
Table 1. Solution based sales in high tech companies

Company A

Description Product focus

Sales Model Account executive is accountable for everything. Solution based selling. Account manager orchestrates all activities. Every transaction is separate

Pros Liability clauses HW/SW coverage model that balances competing priorities. Less expensive Narrow scope of products

Cons More expensive

Product focus

Model get revisited and pushed through after each annual meeting Focus is not customer satisfaction 50/50 leverage plan only get 50% of your OTE high barriers to exit

Design it right the first time.

Deep content knowledge of their product

Buying the implementation of the project, service focus

Hybrid solution and product focus Reps are not driven for margin, they are driven for revenue

Lot easier due to dominant market share

Generalist Unusual model Generalist

Able to compete with any competitors Compensation depends on installed base

Lose ability to cross sell PLA 50/50 based on commissions

16 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

Works Cited
1. Adamson, Brent, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman. "The end of solution sales." Harvard Business Review, 7 2012: 7. 2. Burgelman, Robert A., and Andrew S. Grove. Strategic Dynamics: Three Key Themes. 2096, Graduate School of Business, Palo Alto: Stanford University Graduate School of Business, 2005. 3. Dahl, Darren. How to Develop a Business Growth Strategy. 02 25, 2012. http://www.inc.com/guides/small-business-growth-strategies.html (accessed 07 07, 2012). 4. DeVincentis, John R., and Neil Rackman. "Breadth of a salesman." The McKinsey Quarterly (McGraw-Hill Companies), no. 4 (1998). 5. Doctorow, David, Matthew Lippert, and Vats N. Srivatsan. "Rethinking hightech distribution: Innovations in IT Management." McKinsey on Business Technology (McKinsey and Company) Winter 2008, no. 14 (2008). 6. Fogel, Suzanne, David Hoffmeister, Richard Rocco, and Daniel P. Strunk. "Teaching Sales." Harvard Business Review, July-Aug 2012: 5. 7. Johansson, Juliet E., Chandru Krishnamurthy, and Henry E. Schlissberg. Solving the solutions problem. Article, New York: The Mckinsey Quarterly, 2003. 8. Kim, W. Chan, and Renee Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2005. 9. Kovac, Mark, Dianne Ledingham, and Lewis Weinger. Creating an adaptive go-to-market system: How winners bring the front line into the heart of their strategy. Bain and Company, Inc., Bain and Company, Inc., 2012, 8. 10. Laseter, Tim, and Saras Sarasvathy. "Three games of strategic thinking." Strategy + Business Magazine (Booz & Company Inc.), 2012: 5. 11. Leigh, Thomas W., and Greg W. Marshall. "Research priorities in sales strategy and performance." The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management XXI (Spring 2001): 10. 12. Lovelock, Christopher, and Jochen Wirtz. Services Marketing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. 13. Mohr, Jakki, Sanjit Sengupta, and Stanley Slater. Marketing of HighTechnology Products and Innovations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 14. Moorman, Christine, and Roland T. Rust. "The role of marketing." Journal of Marketing (American Marketing Association), 1999: 18. 15. Nunn, Dana, James Lattin, and Mark Leslie. Implementing Sales Force Automation At Quantium Technology. Case M-311, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2005, 12. 16. Perlich, C, R Lawrence, S Rosset, I Khabibrakhmanov, S Mahatma, and S Weiss. "A Dara Mining Case Study: Analytics-driven solutions for customer targeting and sales force allocation." IBM Systems Journal, July 2007. 17. Pinals, David. Use or misuse of your most critical resource. TTG, Inc, 2001, 8.
17 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root

18. Porter, Michael E. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. New York: The Free Press, 1980. 19. Porter, Michael E. "What is Strategy?" Harvard Business Review (Harvard Business School Publishing), Nov-Dec 1996: 19. 20. Sinha, Prabhakant, and Andris A. Zoltners. "Sales-Force Decision Models: Insights from 25 years of implementation." INTERFACES (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences) 31, no. 3 (May-June 2001): 36. 21. Stevenson, Tom, and Olivia Nottebohm. "Sales Operations." McKinsey on High Tech Podcasts. NY: McKinsey and Company, 07 16, 2012. 22. Zoltners, Andris A., Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer. "Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle." Harvard Business Review, 07-08 2006: 11.

18 Rity Upadhyaya Independent Research Carnegie Mellon University Summer 2012 Instructor: Sheryl Root