At our upcoming Technology Services World conference this May, we’re going to be sharing a lot of insights following our theme, “Blending Service and Sales Motions.” Though our conference is called Technology Services World, the content we present relates to many roles within today’s technology companies. While Services, Sales, and Marketing leaders will absolutely benefit from this unique learning opportunity, I wanted to talk about 4 specific C-suite and executive titles that will benefit by attending and taking in all of the valuable lessons and insights from this event.
About Blending Service and Sales Motions
First, I want to briefly explain why it’s so important that there’s cross-communication between teams, especially in today’s market. Sales sells and Services delivers, right? The reality is, your Service teams interact with customers between 5-15 times more than Sales, building valuable relationship equity that puts them in the unique position of trusted advisor. This is exactly the dynamic your Sales team needs for successful cross-sell and upsell, and is why successful technology and industrial businesses are bringing their Services teams into pre-sales activities.
But, this collaboration between organizational functions requires a delicate touch, and your entire company must share the common goal of doing what they truly believe will help the customer. As we said in our book Complexity Avalanche, “Helping will sell. Selling won’t help.” So, how do you find the right blend of Sales and Service to apply to each stage along the customer journey, helping them achieve outcomes and unlocking new opportunities for revenue growth?
As we do with all of our conference themes, we consult members of our advisory boards to really get the pulse of what’s happening in the industry and which topics are of utmost importance to today’s tech organizations. Based on their feedback, we chose the theme of “Blending Service and Sales Motions” for TSW San Diego 2018 in the spirit of sharing just how important it is for Services and Sales teams to not only reach across the aisle, but also bring people in from other departments within the company to get on the same team and working towards a common goal.
Which Roles Will Benefit The Most from TSW San Diego 2018 Content?
We encourage tech leaders of all kinds to attend TSW conferences. If you’re in tech, you belong here, from Services leaders (customer success, education services, field services, managed services, professional services, support services, etc.), Sales leaders looking for ways to re-engineer selling motions and cost-effectively land and expand customers, to Marketing leaders focused on demand generation for new customers, as well as upsell and cross-sell opportunities. In addition to these roles, here are some specific titles that I highly recommend attend this conference:
Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
The chief revenue officer (CRO) is responsible for looking at all the ways that a company can monetize their products and services in the marketplace. From our Service Revenue Generation content and industry experts who will be sharing their successes in finding new paths to monetization, there are definitely plenty of great learning opportunities that a CRO will find valuable and relevant to their role.
Chief Customer Officer (CCO)
The chief customer officer (CCO) has a similar challenge to the CRO, but is really looking at the entire customer experience for mainly these SaaS cloud companies. Once somebody has landed on their platform, they focus on ensuring their entire experience through adopt, expand, and renew stages of the customer journey (which relates to TSIA’s LAER customer engagement model) are positive and running smoothly. So, I would say both the CRO and/or the CCO should come to San Diego, especially if you’re a cloud-oriented business.
Sales Operations (Sales Ops)
As a function that primarily focuses on the people, process, and technology side of the sales effort, Sales Operations plans for and around sales activities, is in charge of the tools (such as the CRM systems that the Sales team uses), and is responsible for sales enablement, giving their people the training and tools required as well as implementing the right processes. Because we’ll be talking primarily about blending Service and Sales motions, the Sales Operations folks are really integrally involved in looking at those processes, which will be a huge focus of this conference.
Marketing Lead Generation
Related to many of the topics that our VP of expand selling research, Steve Frost, has written about, Services teams are now working more closely with Marketing teams. Marketing organizations hold the responsibility for lead generation, and we know that Services-generated sales leads from existing customers are a fraction of the cost of Marketing-generated leads, are more qualified, and close faster. For Services, Sales, and Marketing to get on the same page, Marketing leaders absolutely need to be part of this larger conversation.
Register for TSW Today to Learn How to Get Everyone in Your Tech Organization on One Team
We have a great event planned, so we hope you’ll join us in San Diego, May 7-9, for unparalleled learning opportunities that will impact your entire organization. For a quick overview of what you can look forward to by attending that you’d like to share with your colleagues, check out this SlideShare of our attendee guide.
If you’d like to look at the specific topics we’ll be covering, view our conference schedule online. Be sure to check back, though, as we’ll have even more details and specifics as we get closer to the event.
So, gather your team and register for TSW San Diego 2018 today to save your spot at the premier learning and networking event of the technology and services industry. Even better, the more people you send, the more you’ll be able to save on registration, as we offer team discounts. See you in San Diego!
Read more posts in the "Blending Service and Sales Motions" blog series: