by Tony Palladino
I am enjoying an illustrious career as a sales revenue leader. I’ve been asked more than once, “If I had to pick one thing, what would I say is the best way to drive the most sales revenue?” It’s an easy question that has many possible answers, such as focus, hire the best, listen to your customers, executive alignment. My answer is simple, yet it encompasses all of these attributes: Think Big!
I’d like to share with you a couple of stories that will demonstrate how I “Think Big” to deliver stellar results. Perhaps these examples will help you to think differently as you contemplate your business opportunities.
AWS AI Success Story
McKinsey & Co is a global advisory consulting firm specializing in business transformation services. As a Sr Sales leader at AWS, we brought all of McKinsey’s global tech leaders to an executive briefing at our HQ and positioned our AI/ML services as the pivotal “game changing” topic in our agenda. We were able to gain alignment with McK’s leadership and were green-lighted to conduct a series of workshops that educated their team members on use cases and capabilities leveraging our AI/ML tools, including SageMaker.
Stellar Results: Soon after the AI/ML workshops, McKinsey became AWS’ largest consumer of SageMaker worldwide. Our partnership expanded quickly and McKinsey signed a $280M multi-year committed contract. Below is a link to a sample AI use case where McK’s client, Emirates Team New Zealand, won the most recent America’s Cup title by using SageMaker to create 50,000+ digital twins running as many virtual races: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/how-we-help-clients/flying-across-the-sea-propelled-by-ai
1010data Growth Success Story
1010data is a start-up based in NYC that was recently acquired by Symphony AI. As 1010’s SVP of Global Platform Sales, I was responsible for growing the revenue derived from our cloud analytics platform in a SaaS model. When I started, 1010data’s revenue was $52M ARR, derived from our hedge fund clients. I was able to grow our revenue by 54% to $80M in only 15-months through a new Retail/CPG revenue stream leveraging my prior experience at Teradata.
Here’s How: In my role as VP/GM at Teradata, I had witnessed similar use cases at both Wal-Mart and Anhueser Busch, where we had developed data products from their detailed supply and demand chain data, including inventory and POS sales data uploaded in near real-time. Our platform enabled Wal-Mart’s business model to proliferate, as they didn’t incur the cost of goods sold until the point of sale, in exchange for providing the CPG suppliers with the detailed data needed to replenish their inventory at each store. My idea was to replicate what we had done successfully at Teradata, but more cost effectively and with some modern features. At 1010data, we convinced several large retailers (Dollar General, Family Dollar, Sam’s Club) to sell their POS data to several hundreds CPG suppliers on a subscription basis through our cloud platform. We curated the data in a meaningful way for the CPG’s Category Managers and leadership team. I had hired a few outside sales reps to land the big retailers and a small inside sales team to focus on the many CPG suppliers. We invested in Account Based Marketing for a targeted approach, which really helped to accelerate the cycle.
Stellar Results: We were successful in acquiring several retailers, along with 500+ CPG logos averaging $100K ARR each. We split the revenue 50/50 with the retailers – a win/win for all parties. Our detailed POS data solution enabled the CPGs to not only replenish inventory quickly, but also to improve their pricing and promotions effectiveness, which was extremely valuable them. That’s how we grew 54% in 15 months.
I hope that you found these two success stories to be insightful and inspiring. While every company’s situation may be unique to them, there is always an opportunity to Think Big and deliver a greater impact.
I am happy to share more Think Big success stories. Feel free to reach out to me at tony@avalanchegrowthpartners.com.