Bill Finch, Marketo
Company: Marketo, San Mateo, CA
Company Description: Marketo provides B2B marketing automation software that translates marketing spending into revenue. The company’s lead management software features email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and closed-loop reporting capabilities to help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, and demonstrate marketing accountability. Nomination Category: Sales Awards Individual Categories Nomination Sub Category: Worldwide VP of Sales of the Year
Nomination Title: Bill Binch, VP Sales and Customer Success
Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
As the leader of Marketo’s sales and customer teams, Bill oversees the entire customer experience. Unlike typical sales organizations, Bill leads both the sales team and the post-sales enablement and customer management teams. “We created the position so the same leader overseeing sales commitments was also the same leader responsible for delivering on the commitments. We believe this model helps us focus on making customers successful,” says Bill. He credits this model with helping Marketo grow from 200 customers in July 2009 to over 750 active customers in October 2010. “We reinvented the Marketing Automation market with this model – our sales reps commit to getting our customers deeply using and absorbing our services faster than any other vendor because they know the enablement team will deliver the goods.”
Along with Marketo’s VP of Marketing, Bill crafted an integrated marketing and sales alignment process that gives them unprecedented insight into how their business is running. This model lets Bill consistently convert 60% of their in-profile leads to opportunities and 35% of opps into closed sales. “We need to lead the market at best-practice sales and marketing performance. We share our most intimate details of how we run the business -- average sales cycle, average sales price, win & loss rates etc., with our prospects and customers in the Marketo Secret Sauce webinar series,” says Bill.
In addition to sharing the most detailed aspects of their business model, Bill drove Marketo to be the most transparent vendor in the space. Marketo’s sales team is renowned for making it easy for customers to educate themselves. “We publish our entire price list on our website. We offer a free, 2 week trial to prospects. We have our uptime and deliverability rates on our site. We recognize buyers want to control their learning and buying cycle.”
The results from July 2009 to October 2010: -Growth from 200 customers to 750 -Increasing the average sales price from $18K ARR to $34K ARR -Building the sales team from 4 people to 26 people -Marketo earning a spot on Gartner’s magic quadrant after only 1 year in business -Becoming a frequent speaker at the Sales 2.0 shows, Revenue Masters series, and at Dreamforce
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://blog.marketo.com/blog/author/bill-binch
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:
Bill Binch leads Marketo’s sales and customer success activities and is a key architect of Marketo’s rapid sales growth. Prior to joining Marketo, Bill was VP and General Manager, Distribution, at AVOLENT, where he managed the team focused on the distribution market, small & medium businesses, and install base customers. Prior to AVOLENT, he developed his sales and operational experience at Oracle, PeopleSoft, and BEA Systems, where he built and managed direct, inside, and channel organizations and ran business units ranging from mid-market business customers to strategic accounts. Bill graduated from Arizona State
University with a BS in Marketing.