Building Routes to Customers: Proven Strategies for Profitable Growth

Peter Raulerson; Jean-Claude Malraison; Antoine Leboyer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0387799508 ISBN 13: 9780387799506

Publisher: Springer, 2009

Building Routes to Customers explains the powerful "Routes-to-Market" approach for driving profitable growth. World-class organizations including IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Hitachi, Adobe and Plantronics, and hundreds of smaller companies, have adopted RTM to develop and execute highly successful go-to-market strategies and tactics.

With a step-by-step approach and dozens of examples, the authors show how you can use RTM to: (1) Determine the optimal level of spending for each function in marketing, sales and customer service, for each market segment, product and service. (2) Optimize your marketing mix and sales and distribution channels to maximize revenue and profitability throughout the product life cycle. (3) Get everyone in product management, marketing, sales, customer service, and your distribution partners aligned and working together to maximize results. (4) Get the right products and services to the right customers at the right time. (5) Retain existing customers and create profitable new ones.

Review:

"A key challenge in dynamic and fast changing markets is getting marketing and sales aligned. This book shows how to do this effectively and drive tactical execution better to achieve a dramatic increase in marketing and sales productivity." -- Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation (India)

"Routes-to-Market came as a breakthrough for IBM at a very challenging time in our industry. It had a big impact on our bottom line by enabling us to grow sales with a much more cost-effective mix of selling resources. Many companies need to solve that challenge today, before their competitors do. This book shows how to do it." -- Ned Lautenbach, Partner, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, formerly Senior Vice President-Worldwide Sales & Services, IBM

"At Adobe we spent millions of dollars with consultants, both large and small. In most cases, a few months later, you couldn't remember the work they did. RTM was simple yet powerful and had lasting value to the company. It made it possible for each product manager to apply the correct resources and achieve an excellent ROI. Companies without this kind of methodology are flying blind." -- Kyle Mashima, VP of Strategic Development, Visible Measures Corp., formerly VP of Strategic Development, Adobe Systems Incorporated

"Technology innovation is not limited to the lab or the manufacturing process. Successfully marketing new technologies is about understanding change and helping customers adopt a new technology to create significant business value. RTM is a practical roadmap for maximizing revenue and profitability throughout the entire product life cycle. This book is a must read for anyone looking to drive technology adoption in today's evolving markets." -- Joan Jacobs, Executive Director of Itanium Solutions Alliance, formerly Global Alliance Director, Hewlett-Packard 

"Routes-to-Market is a great tool for driving expansion into new markets and distribution channels. It also gets all of the management team on the same agenda. RTM has had a very positive impact at Plantronics." -- Ken Kannappan, President & CEO of Plantronics

"Trying to go to market without a detailed route map is like driving cross-country with no directions – the motion feels good until you realize it's taking longer than you expected and the scenery looks familiar.   This book distills the authors' methodology and best practices and clarifies how marketing and sales can pivot from abstract segmentation and go-to-market planning to pragmatic and tangible implementation steps.  Big impact on marketing and sales productivity." -- Eugene Lee, CEO, Socialtext, Inc., formerly VP Worldwide Small/Medium Business Marketing, Cisco Systems, Inc.  

"This book helps solve the marketer's dilemma: How do you reach your prospects in the fastest, most cost-effective way? Getting it right creates market leaders; getting it wrong relegates good products to the discount bin. IBM and Adobe have already found that Routes-to-Market is critical to their bottom lines; now the rest of us can join the party." -- Amy Bermar, President, Corporate Ink, The Wall Street Journal 2007 "Top Small Workplaces" Winner

"Sound, practical advice on how to get marketing and sales aligned and performing at their peak." -- Buell Duncan, Vice President Marketing, IBM Software Group  

"Using the Routes-to-Market methodology step by step enabled us to achieve record growth and dramatically turn around Baracoda's US operations." -- Alex Guillot, formerly VP Baracoda Americas

"What investments should I make across the channel segments and geos that I am responsible for, to ensure consistently high revenue growth and increasing profitability? The simple but powerful management system presented here can provide the answers to these critical questions, in the midst of dynamic market conditions and shifting strategies. This tool is a requirement for sustaining success in today's hyper-competitive business environment." -- Terry Haas, VP International Sales, WatchGuard Technologies, Inc., and formerly CEO of Solera Networks

"Too many marketing professionals rely upon untested gut instincts and last-of-breed programs when it comes to reaching new prospects. At the end of the day they really don't know if they're imitating success or failure. Building Routes to Customers demonstrates the power of fact-based marketing to take the art of marketing to new levels, especially for technology marketers in fast-changing markets." -- Gregory L. Ness, Vice President - Marketing, Blue Lane Technologies Inc. 

"This book is immensely valuable read. It outlines practical and executable strategies to accelerate and deepen market penetration and success. Our company is seeing powerful results as we begin to implement them. The authors bring their experience and analysis to communicate very tangible steps toward capturing the customer and creating a market win. I highly recommend it." -- Michael Forney, President, Rosetta Solutions, Inc. 
 
"Most technology companies today seek the magic pill that engenders a productive partner ecosystem.  As no such pill exists, leadership must draw a map to the customer through means that are not always obvious. Building Routes to Customers illuminates the fundamentals for doing this, based on years of success creating some of today's most effective partner programs." -- Lee Finck, formerly VP of Channels at F5 Networks, Inc.

"The greatest need in many companies today is finding a way to maximize their return on investments in products, people and services. In today's global marketplace of intense competition this has become increasingly difficult to accomplish. Routes-to-Market is a very smart way to make key decisions in marketing and sales -- from packaging to demand generation to distribution -- to maximize revenue and profitability throughout the product life cycle. Use of a consistent, effective process like Routes-to-Market is key to delivering the revenue and profitability all companies strive to achieve. At HaloSource, we used this process to rework our SeaKlear line of Water Treatment Solutions and have seen consistent, stronger than industry growth in revenue, margins and overall profitability for the past three years." -- Rick Lockett, Vice President, Water Treatment, HaloSource, Inc. 

"We have conducted over 450 Routes-to-Market workshops over the last 10 years with companies of all sizes, from multinational giants to local technology solutions providers, application vendors and system integrators. RTM methodology and tools have been truly transformational for these companies and driven incremental revenues and profits for them. RTM has helped executives align their channels more effectively, interlock sales and marketing to recruit new customers productively, gain speed to market, and redirect their spending to the most qualified opportunities to generate sustainable growth. Building Routes to Customers explains how the RTM methodology works and translates into tactical actions that have driven measurable bottom line results." -- Dhun Zwirble & John Skinner, Co-Founders, Alliances & Channels, LLC

 

About the Author:

Peter Raulerson

Peter Raulerson is an expert in go-to-market strategies and tactics, and a Partner with The PARA Marketing Group, a management consulting firm. He has consulted extensively with executives of Adobe, Canon, Cisco, F5 Networks, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Symantec, and other technology companies including venture-backed start-ups. He has helped them increase corporate value by bringing new products and services to market, building new value chains and distribution channels, and improving the productivity of product development, marketing, sales and distribution. Prior to PARA Marketing, Peter was CEO of InterConnections, Inc., a privately-held developer of multivendor network software, founded in 1986 and acquired in 1990 by Emulex Corporation. From 1972 to 1986, Peter held engineering, sales, marketing and management positions with Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE Telenet and 3Com. Before receiving his BA in math from Harvard in 1972, he was a research associate in managerial economics and decision analysis at Harvard Business School. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Washington Technology Industry Association.

Jean-Claude Malraison

Jean-Claude Malraison is Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Solucom Group, a leading IT consulting firm in France, and a member of the board of Critical Eye, an executive leadership community headquartered in the United Kingdom. Prior to these roles, he was Managing Director of Plantronics EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) from 1999 to 2003, where he drove the highly successful launch of Plantronics' products into consumer electronics channels across Europe. From 1971 to 1999, Jean-Claude served in several leadership positions with IBM, most recently as a member of the Executive Committee of IBM EMEA. Jean-Claude initiated many advances that transformed IBM's marketing, sales and distribution. As the head of the IBM PC Division in France in 1989, he launched IBM's first retail PC channel, which increased IBM's market share after a severe drop. As General Manager of the newly-created UNIX Division of IBM EMEA in 1993, he took IBM from zero to 19% market share in two years by tapping new distribution channels. He initiated the development and worldwide roll-out of the Routes-to-Market methodology which restored IBM to profitable growth. After becoming Vice President of Distribution and General Business for IBM EMEA in 1996, Jean-Claude launched IBM's European call center organization and significantly expanded IBM's business with small and mid-sized enterprises.

Jean-Claude is a graduate of the Institut Supérieur d'Electronique du Nord.

Antoine Leboyer

Antoine Leboyer is the President and CEO of GSX, the worldwide leader in monitoring solutions for Communication Servers. Antoine has more than 20 years of experience in IT organizations in various international positions.

He started his professional career with IBM. He held positions in sales and marketing with IBM France, and then ran the distribution strategy for all of IBM Europe except PCs, where he led initiatives that achieved significant growth for IBM by leveraging European IT distributors. After 12 years with IBM, Antoine joined Candle Corporation where he started and ran the European indirect business. He was then General Manager for Hyperchannel France, a B2B marketplace for European IT distribution funded by General Electric Capital and Goldman Sachs. Subsequently, he was Senior Vice-President for Upaid Systems, a provider of software for real-time billing and mobile payment services, and Senior Vice-President for Baracoda, the leading producer of Bluetooth industrial devices, which he helped achieve record growth. Antoine holds a diploma of engineer from Ecole Superieure d'Electricité in France and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. He served on the Board of Directors of Akoura Biometrics, an emerging company in Information Security.