Sharon is the founder of SalesCraft, a sales thought leadership group based in Silicon Valley, and Director of Global Field Communications at VMware. Sharon is responsible for driving a broad range of communications initiatives on behalf of the executive field leadership team.  Her role includes acting as a liaison between the 3000-person field organization and the rest of VMware, while ensuring the field organization receives communication that is high-value, consumable and actionable.  Sharon’s work in field communications is inspired by more than 15 years working for companies including Hyperion, Cadence, and ASK.  She has in-depth experience in inside sales, sales operations, field marketing and lead generation.
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In my last blog, “It’s Not Me, It’s The Economy”: Customer Retention in 2010, I wrote about the risk of losing existing business due to the economic climate. This article will focus on Sales Enablement strategies proven to help retain and grow business, including what many clients call Quarterly Business Reviews or QBRs. We have worked with clients that execute on this extremely well, and internally we deploy some of the same methods here at SAVO.
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Walk around the halls at SAVO these days, and you can really feel the momentum and the energy. We’re coming off our best quarter ever – and our best year ever – in the company’s ten-year history. Despite what was a pretty challenging year in the macro-economic world, bookings for SAVO grew 40% in Q4 2009 compared to Q4 2008, and our 2009 subscriptions increased 30% over the year before. But while the numbers are great for business, we never forget that we’re in the business of enabling real people. This is why we’re extremely excited to bring the power of SAVO to nearly a dozen new customers in the coming weeks, including CVS Caremark, First Data, Spherion, Verisign, and Wellmark.
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At SAVO, we’re committed to our customers’ success, which is why we love hearing them talk about the results they’ve seen.  In this clip, Brad Rinklin, VP of Marketing at Akamai, talks about replacing an existing sales portal with SAVO, the resulting increase in sales productivity, and Akamai’s  incremental sales growth.
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The Conference Board is presenting their Senior Sales Executive Conference, February 23-24 here in Chicago. This year’s conference is entitled, “Sales Operations as a Strategic Revenue Growth Asset,” and the program looks fantastic. We’re also excited for it because SAVO customers from both ADP and Oakwood Worldwide are speaking. Ken Powell, Vice President of Sales Learning & Performance from ADP, is presenting on “Sales Learning: Development and Retention Strategies for Recovery and Growth.” Doug Ferreira, Senior Training Specialist, is sharing his presentation on “Sales Force Communication and Knowledge Management.” Good Luck Ken and Doug!
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