Overview
The VP of Sales and Marketing at this computer flat-screen powerhouse explains the secrets to an effective sales and marketing strategy.
A View into Tomorrow
When it comes to changing industry paradigms and evolving technologies, New England is without a doubt one of the centers of innovation in the world that has evoked tremendous change. With a dense population of technology based organizations from biotechnology to computer technology, New England has played a key role in the growth of many technical industries and technological achievements that have changed the course of history for the entire world.
PixelVision, which is located in Acton, Massachusetts, is a company that is ushering in a new era of computer related technology by attempting to change the way the world looks at their computers and interacts with them. PixelVision is the leading company in designing and producing flat panel computer monitors that offer high quality, multi-functional capabilities in monitors that are only several inches thick. Founded in 1991 this company has grown from creating unique and special order products in small lots to steering towards the mass market and more universal applications of their technology to have its sales bloom from $400K in 1992 to $14MM in 1995. PixelVision’s most significant achievement in selling its product to date was the sale of 1,000 panels to the New York Stock Exchange as part of the Exchange’s re-engineered trading system. Now every time one looks at CNN to see the NYSE trading floor from a bird’s eye view, the monitors suspended from booms and seen within the trading floor infrastructure are all PixelVision monitors.
With such monumental growth and ambitions of being the first organization to offer this alternative technology to the current and extremely large traditional CRT (cathode ray tube) computer monitor installed base, PixelVision is striving to develop their organization to capture this opportunity and become the dominant company in this market place. The EM visited with Jeff Schiebe the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for PixelVision who has the responsibility of positioning the company and its products into this new mass market place. Jeff’s years of experience in the high tech industries and in sales and marketing have resulted in a core set of philosophies of strategy and planning for creating successful sales and marketing elements within organizations. He is employing these philosophies in PixelVision now and shared them with the EM emphasizing how they are critical key components of sales and marketing planning for an organization in any type of industry.
History and Current Status
Jeff Schiebe has a long history in technology environments and engineering starting from his Electrical Engineering degree earned from the University of Minnesota. Having moved to Massachusetts in 1970 Jeff came into the computer industry where he developed his professional experience in engineering, marketing and manufacturing in the computer industry. The bulk of his experience came from the mainframe segment, and then in 1990 Jeff moved into the video conferencing business by joining PictureTel which is a leading video teleconferencing technology provider. He was brought into PictureTel to establish the company’s international sales as they were experiencing rapid growth and in need of developing new markets.
Jeff joined PixelVision in January of this year to establish the company’s sales and marketing functions to embrace the new markets the growing company had targeted. The challenge Jeff has faced is to define the company’s product family to organize the overall offering the company intends to promote, educate the marketplace of the existence of the flat panel technology, promote and successful sell the product to new clients and users, and establish a distribution channel to facilitate the product’s release and integration into the marketplace.
PixelVision’s need to perform these activities were driven by its success and desire to move into the marketplace that its products would thrive in for the future, “We needed to transition from that single product or idea and get it into the market. It was important for us to get out of the niche market, custom product because there is less opportunity for it to grow.” In achieving these goals, Jeff described his three phase strategy that embodies all of the activities and efforts his sales and marketing team designs and undertakes to set-up this 55 employee organization to become a leading technology corporation in the future. The three areas are planning, executing and results.
Planning – The 60 Second Elevator Ride
“I don’t care what you’re doing, you need a plan. You have to develop a corporate mission not matter what stage you are at.” This corporate mission strategy is a critical tool in Jeff’s efforts for a company to be able to succinctly state what it does, what its overall goal is in what it does, and how it intends to accomplish its goals. Within the mission strategy all facets of the company’s operation are addressed to have all the pistons pumping in a cohesive effort: channels, process, product, customer, market and service. “One chart can be developed that clearly and effectively tells the viewer a lot about the company in a brief moment.” This refers to the mission statement slide Jeff feels is an important piece of the entire mission strategy. “At PixelVision all of this information existed in one place or another, and it took just a little effort to tie it into one slide and have all the critical information available in one neat package.”
What is the reason for all this information being tied together in a concise little package? Here is a favorite analogy from Jeff that articulates the benefits of having completed this effort, “Imagine you’re in an elevator with the president of the company you are about to visit for a sales call. This person has the power to make all of the decisions including whether or not to start a relationship with your company. In the time it takes the elevator to ride up to the client’s floor, you have those 60 seconds to explain your product, your company, your service, and your idea to this person standing next to you.” Think this is an unlikely scenario? Coming from Jeff who has a made a career out of marketing and selling, “I know this… I’ve done this!” The moral, having thought hard beforehand to define all these critical elements of your company’s products and services and business operations will make for extreme efficiency and effectiveness in communicating them to potential clients.