Exec Interview: Larry Fleischman, Televerde

Featuring Larry Fleischman, Practice Director, Branding and Go-to-Market Strategies & Solutions, Televerde

As part of our Sales & Marketing Executive Insight Series, Televerde is please to publish the following interview with Larry Fleischman, Practice Director, Branding and Go-to-Market Strategies & Solutions, Televerde. Based in Phoenix, Televerde is a strategic outsourced provider of sales demand creation, conversion and acceleration solutions for B2B companies with a specialty in the high-tech market. The company has 15 years of experience with the biggest names in IT – software, hardware, services. There are 22 people in Televerde’s sales and marketing organization who are directly involved in generating new business for the company. Larry has been with Televerde for three years.

What company do you admire most (besides your own) and why?

Apple has always impressed and inspired me. They’re the epitomy of innovation. The Steve Jobs comeback followed by the Apple comeback is an intriguing story to follow and demonstrates the power and value of strong, focused leadership. The Apple brand conjures clear images of innovation, customer-centric thinking and market focus.

When customers and prospects consider your brand and the key value proposition of your products and services, what is that you want to come to their minds and resonate?

Highly productive demand creation and demand discovery coordinated through unequalled human touch techniques by an amazing group of people. The socially responsible aspect of our business makes us unique (I like to think of it as a positive form of co-dependency) and if my Televerde dreams come true our uniqueness would be well-recognized, understood and accepted by all as a major driver of the results we produce.  

What are the three most important topics of discussion currently taking place within your sales and marketing organization and why?

Lead nurturing followed by data, data, data. The onset of marketing automation fascinates us. And by fascinating I don’t mean we necessarily think it’s the answer to all marketing prayers like some marketers do, but rather we want to see what it can do and where it’s best applied in the mix. The underlying marketing automation concept of applying the relevant message at the right time makes perfect sense. Having said that, we’re cautious adopters and plan to carefully observe while deploying so we can advise our clients appropriately. In terms of data, every conversation we have internally and with clients includes a direct or indirect reference to it. If there was a Televerde flag, the stripes would be represented by our staff and the stars would be represented by our data. We’re in a constant state of self-improvement and examination. How can we enrich the data? What is the data telling us? How can we use it more effectively? How can we make the point about data more strongly to clients? The answers to these questions aren’t static, so we keep asking and keep talking.

What are the most important metrics that your sales and marketing organization cares about and why?

Depends on who you ask. Definitely Inquiry to Closed/Won Business but also all the pipeline conversion metrics in between. Customer sat metrics are equally critical. Our 90% c-sat metrics are good but they’re not 100% and they waiver, so we have work to do. The other metrics are, unashamedly, revenue and profit. We’re a socially responsible business but we’re also a for-profit enterprise business. The profits enable us serve more of all of our audiences in better ways.

Recognizing that all sales and marketing organizations occasionally have “relationship issues,” how are you overcoming them?

Voluntary interventions! At Televerde Sales and Marketing is one unit. With the exception of a few remote staff, the sales & marketing unit resides in about 1,500 square feet of office space. So we’re in each other’s space and face all the time. When an issue comes up we can’t avoid it, so it bubbles up quickly and tends to get resolved just as fast. It also helps that because of the business we’re in we are keenly aware of sales and marketing gaps and the problems they can cause, so we have a vested interest in closing them to prove to others they can be closed. I believe we’ve resolved some of the more common sales-marketing issues like lead definition, what is an MQL vs. SQL, lead leakage, does the potential client fit our brand, etc.

What are some of the practices you’re using that are effectively enabling a stronger flow of better quality leads for your sales organization?

We keep the inside sales team’s activities flowing by deploying multiple marketing campaigns, transferring knowledge to the sales team so they can have more productive conversations with their prospects that lead to more qualified leads quicker, and leverage clients for referrals, penetrate deep and wide within our targeted account base to forge more meaningful relationships. And it goes without saying that human contact is a main outreach channel for us.

What is the biggest impact you’re seeing from your social media activities?

Hmmm, that it consumes a lot of my mind space and probably not enough of my actual time implementing. There are so many social media ‘things’ to keep track of. It really is a little mind-boggling. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube and monitoring activities in those places. Are we getting a ton of traction from social media? No, not yet. Do I remain hopeful? Yes. Do I think it’ll generate an abundance of new leads for Televerde? I am a bit of a skeptic at this point but my mind is open and I’m willing to experiment more. What do I really think its impact will be? A great tool for reputation management. I’m about to activate a trial of a tool called Radian6 to help me keep me pulse on what our markets are talking about. I’ll keep you posted.

What are some of the biggest changes that have taken place in your sales and marketing organization over the past three years and why have these changes occurred?

Must greater focus on targeted accounts because these are companies that can be game-changers for Televerde when they become clients. A lot more knowledge access and knowledge transfer because we have to be smarter than our clients. Emphasis on new and enriched products because we have to retain our market leadership position and meet our clients’ demands to do more, better, faster (a Televerde mantra). More value proposition training because we have to differentiate and resonate. Taking more of a consultative approach with our clients because we know the right things to do and want our clients to do those things. And of course a much greater emphasis on data strategies and nurturing opportunities.

With increasing industry attention on marketing automation and social media tools, do you feel that the impact of and need for traditional human dialogues between vendors and their customers and prospects will diminish?

No! The vendor-customer and vendor-prospect relationship requires clear and ongoing communication in all of its forms. Digital is only one dimension of the communication process. To ignore or diminish voice-to-voice and face-to-face human touch limits the conversation, minimizes the value of the relationship, and reduces the possibilities. If anything we need to more focused on human contact and dialogue than ever before because our communication skills will be the reality check on digital behavior.

What book are you reading now or have you recently read that you would recommend to others?

“Focus” by Al Ries. I’ve been trying to make my way through it for the last three weeks but I tend to get distracted.

Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Connect to us on LinkedIn
Subscribe to us on YouTube