Standing out in the marketing worldBeth Bernhardt

Success stories

Challenge: Lack of tools and training meant sales reps had no sell-against materials to effectively sell HP supplies. There was a critical knowledge gap and little ammunition against the competition in selling situations. The legal team would not approve anything that mentioned competitors, tying the hands of sales reps. Engagement and confidence was low; frustration was high.

Action: Create a website as a one-stop-shop where sales reps and employees could easily download information. Weekly e-newsletters were sent announcing the latest. The site was populated with over 100 sales tools including sell-against, Why Buy/Why Sell, presentations, positioning, test results, training tools, competitive intelligence and more. In addition, a comprehensive field training program was launched.

Result: A rating system for documents was devised which satisfied legal. The reps went from being uninformed to being much more knowledgeable and confident selling HP products. The trainings were so valuable that the reps wanted more. The program had a measurable positive effect on employee morale, sales and closed deals. One suite of third party testing tools alone led to over $10 million in sales.

Sales engagement and training program from scratch

Success stories

Challenge: Accelerate the adoption of home photo printing in Mexico, an emerging market at least 5 years behind North America. The product lines had been unmanaged for 6 months, there was an underlying lack of awareness and customer pull, the sales force was not comped to sell them and the merchandising in-store was very ineffective.

Action: Within one year, we revitalized the deteriorating product lines by visiting accounts, launching promotions, product bundles, advertising, partner programs and other initiatives to increase customer awareness, preference and trial. Sales quota and market development funds were reinstated. A training program for sales reps and store associates was launched. We also ran a points-based promotion with top resellers to stimulate sales.

Result: With quota reinstated, the were more motivated to sell product. Training and close monitoring of sales and quota performance kept the reps focused. Demand generation increased awareness and customer pull, and in-store presentation improved. Bundling with other products helped to move product in clubs and mass retailers, culminating in winning the Walmart account.

Developing a new market

Success stories

Challenge: Rapid release of new printers required near constant new product introductions (NPI) of compatible inks and papers, and rolls of existing ink packaging to reflect new printer compatibility. NPIs were carefully coordinated to ensure the supplies were in store at time of printer launch. This required detailed launch plans involving several departments. Adding to the complexity was that a single ink was available in several packaging configurations, “exploding” the number of SKUs required. Printer schedules often changed, and accounts wanted product early, requiring effort, flexibility and focused attention to detail.

Action: As a product manager I documented and optimized the NPI process, consolidated the product line and limited the number of special configurations required. I authored a detailed NPI checklist and streamlined the artwork roll process, minimizing non-essential work and increasing the accuracy of packaging copy.

Result: More than 70 new products were launched in less than 2 years– on time and on budget. The NPI process was documented and improved, unnecessary work was eliminated, and errors were reduced.

70 new products launched

Success stories

Challenge: HP’s enterprise software division did not have a customer database, so could not identify or communicate with customers. This represented a major lost opportunity in terms of customer insight, segmentation, direct marketing opportunities, loyalty programs, up sell and cross sell and gaining referrals.

Action: 18 months were spent developing a 25 field customer database. Scope spanned needs assessment, definition, architecture, records and data acquisition, testing and ongoing segmentation, analysis and hygiene. The project involved a cross-functional team of key stakeholders including IT, marketing, engineering, management and outside agencies.

Result: Over 30 direct marketing campaigns to run to increase customer loyalty, acquire new customers and up sell and cross sell additional products. Many campaigns exceeded anticipated results, achieving response rates of up to 11%. The program generated several thousand qualified sales leads, and one award-winning campaign led to a sales funnel of over $70 million.

Customer database leads to LEADS!

Success stories

Challenge: $5M per quarter print and online advertising campaign for PCs and laptops was underperforming. Time was wasted focusing on tactics rather than strategy, and the urgency to meet placements left little time for productive planning. Product managers were over-involved; frustration was high and results were low.

Action: An advertising manager was assigned to get the program on track and implement metrics to measure response. The planning horizon changed from next tactic to next quarter, a timeline was created to allow analysis of past activities, development and testing of several creative concepts, and research of competitor programs. Roles were clarified, teamwork increased, and activities became proactive vs. reactive.

Result: A more effective ad strategy was put in place and response to various concepts were measured. Cost per impression was reduced by 5x and order performance increased by 10%. This transformed a failing program into and award-winning one with lower costs and higher response, and break throughs in effectiveness and results.

Saving a faltering advertising campaign

Success stories

Challenge: Sales reps were having trouble getting the attention of Fortune 100 IT decision makers for a highly technical and complex product line with a long sales cycle and aggressive competitors.

Action: As a field marketing manager I designed a focused and high return campaign designed to book sales calls with target accounts. This highly choreographed campaign required spot on tracking and collaboration between sales and marketing. Reps provided contact information for 5 decision-makers they wanted to meet with. Half a gift (the lid of a picnic basket) was sent to them. Prospects were intrigued enough to book a sales call, at which time the HP rep delivered the bottom half of the basket filled with picnic goodies.

Result: This low volume high return campaign netted a 45% return-on-sales-call-ratio. 60% of the target customers responded, and 45% booked sales meeting, leading to several million dollars in new business.

Life’s a picnic for enterprise sales team

Success stories

Challenge: A high profile event targeting large B to B customers and prospects was planned, whose objective was to obtain new customers and referrals, increase customer loyalty and advance business opportunities. An aggressive attendance goal of 100 companies was set, meaning that 200 had to be registered and confirmed (assuming a 50% no show factor).

Action: As marketing manager I was in responsible for filling the seats, and upper management expected a full house. Despite using every outbound recruiting tactic available, registrations were lagging. It was clear that the sales reps needed to take an active role in the recruitment process. A grid was devised assigning reps a certain number of registrations based on weeks to event, size of sales territory and other factors. Registrations were published weekly, capitalizing on their natural competitive spirit, and prizes were awarded based on meeting goals.

Result: The unprecedented collaboration between sales and marketing, the visibility and detailed tracking of registrations, the outbound recruiting efforts, and the excellent follow up to ensure attendance led to almost double the number of companies attending. The first HP “Universe Event” was a tremendous success with a packed house of over 200 tier one customers and prospects attending.

Standing room only at big customer event

Success stories

Challenge: New product introduction process from factory hub to regional business centers was lengthy, inefficient and unduly complicated. Our cross-functional team performed a rapid and focused process improvement exercise to dramatically improve the way new products were launched at our factory hub. Experts from the factory, engineering, marketing, finance, operations, channel analysis and order processing participated in the project.

Action: Team members spent a full week scrutinizing the current process, looking for redundancies, wasted time and effort (read: money) and areas to streamline. The team was empowered to make real time changes in a +500 SKU, multi-billion dollar product line.

Result: Process improvements led to a 70% reduction in product set up time (34 days down to 10), reduced set up time from 4 weeks to 5 days, and eliminated 63 poor performing SKUs. Seven documents were reduced to one. The project saved $1.2 million per year in manufacturing costs.

Process improvement saves $$

Promotional history

BitDefender, LLC CONSUMER MARKETING MANAGER – Security Software (2009)

Hewlett-Packard Company BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT and PRODUCT MANAGER LATIN AMERICA – Printing

Supplies (2007 – 2009) BRAND MANAGER NORTH AMERICA – Printing Supplies (2005 - 2007) COMMUNICATIONS and TRAINING MANAGER – Printing Supplies (2003 - 2005) ADVERTISING MANAGER – PCs, Laptops, Notebooks, Servers, Networking Hardware

(2000 - 2003) DIRECT MARKETING MANAGER -- Network Management Software (1997 - 2000) MARKETING PROGRAM MANAGER – Network Management Software (1993 - 1997) CHANNEL MARKETING MANAGER – Network Management Software (1992 - 1993) PRESS AND ANALYST RELATIONS MANAGER, MARKET RESEARCH MANAGER,

COMPETITIVE ANALYST -- data storage devices (1990 - 1992)

Accomplished marketing and communications professional

Awards and affiliations MASA Award Leading the Way Award Marketing Prowess Award Marcom Prowess Award (2) National Honor's Society Impact 500 Award

Member FL Direct Marketing Association (and former board member)

Member FL Interactive Marketing Association Member American Marketing Association Member ITWomen.org

Certifications and applications Certified Toastmaster Certified Web Master Master’s Certificate in Internet Marketing Certificate in Social Media for Business Certificate in Advertising

Microsoft Office Suite Adobe Acrobat Photoshop Dreamweaver / CSS HTML InDesign Java Script Flash

What this means for your business An accomplished marketing and communications

manager who rolls up her sleeves to:

Develop and implement marketing programs and initiatives across regions, target audiences and market segments to increase awareness, demand and revenue growth for business and consumer products.

Demand generation

Promotions

Customer loyalty

Advertising

Web marketing SEM/SEO

Partner and reseller

marketing

Awareness, preference, trial

Market research

Up sell cross sell

Events

Sales collateralBusiness development

Branding

Go to Market

Messaging and

positioning

Direct marketing

Retention

Referral

Segmentation

Competitive Analysis

Consumer packaging

Next Steps

Hire Beth!