Sales And Marketing – Executive Success In 2020

Jul 30, 2020

In the first half of 2020, ON Partners consultants completed several high-level sales and marketing executive placements for a wide range of organizations including Micro Focus, Poly, Tableau, ServiceNow, Zemax, and more.

We have proven results placing go-to-market sales and marketing leaders across a range of industries, such as technology, software, consumer services, and industrial. The innovative leaders we place build out commercial capabilities to drive top line revenue, improve sales process and structure and implement new GTM strategies. Our experienced consultants offer go-to-market searches for a broad range of clients, including VC-backed growth companies, private equity and large, global organizations.

 


First Half 2020 Sales and Marketing Executive Placements

 

We believe a better executive search experience matters, and that experience starts with expert, tenured specialists. We’ve been closely tracking shifts in leadership demand as it relates to sales and marketing roles during the pandemic, and our team of consultants has made a significant number of recent placements in the space, including:

A10 Networks SVP, Global Sales

ON consultants: Jeff Hocking and Tim Conti

A10 Networks (NYSE: ATEN) is a leading provider of secure application services and solutions, with a range of high-performance application networking solutions that help organizations ensure that their data center applications and networks remain highly available, accelerated and secure. 

Anju Software  VP, Product Management – Clinical

ON consultant: Seth Harris

Anju Software is a private equity backed (ABRY Partners), high growth life sciences software company. 

AppViewX CRO

ON consultants: Aaron Clark and Jake Espenlaub

AppViewX is a pioneer and leader in modular, low-code IT automation and orchestration for NetOps and DevSecOps.

Ciena Corporation VP, Global Sales; VP, Services Product Management; VP, Strategic Account Sales (3)

ON consultant: Seth Harris

Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is a networking systems, services and software company that provides solutions to help customers create the Adaptive NetworkTM in response to the constantly changing demands of their end-users. 

ETQ CRO

ON consultant: Lenny Vairo

ETQ is the leading provider of quality, EHS and compliance management software, trusted by the world’s strongest brands.

Information Builders CMO

ON consultant: Lenny Vairo

Information Builders provides the industry’s most scalable software solutions for data management and analytics. 

Jobvite CMO

ON consultants: Tim Conti and Jake Espenlaub

Jobvite is leading the next wave of talent acquisition innovation with a candidate-centric recruiting model that helps companies engage candidates with meaningful experiences at the right time, in the right way, from first look to first day. 

LiveActionSVP Marketing

ON consultants: Danny Bolger and Jake Espenlaub

LiveAction, Inc., is the leader in network performance management and backed by Insight Venture Partners.

LogitechHead of Global Video Collaboration, Sales and Marketing

ON consultant: Bryan Buck

Logitech International (Nasdaq: LOGI), is a multi-brand company designing products that bring people together through music, gaming, video, and computing.

Micro Focus President, North America Sales; Head of Global Security Sales (2)

ON consultant: Aaron Clark

Micro Focus is a global software company that helps enterprises transform their digital business with enterprise application software across DevOps, hybrid IT management, security and predictive analytics.

PolySVP, Americas

ON consultants: Aaron Clark and Bryan Buck

Plantronics, Inc. (“Poly” – formerly Plantronics and Polycom) (NYSE: PLT), is a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration.

Proofpoint –  SVP, Americas

ON consultants: Aaron Clark and Jeff Hocking

Proofpoint, Inc., (NASDAQ: PFPT), is a leading cybersecurity and compliance company.

ServiceNow –  VP, Global Sales Enablement

ON consultants:  Jeff Hocking and John Morrow

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is making the world of work, work better for people with a cloud‑based platform and solutions that deliver digital workflows to create great experiences and unlock productivity for employees and the enterprise. 

Tableau –  Sr. Director of Global Events Marketing

ON consultant: Seth Harris

Tableau helps people see and understand data. Tableau’s self-service analytics platform empowers people of any skill level to work with data. 

VIAVI Solutions –  VP, Worldwide Sales

ON consultant: Alex Pelak

Viavi Solutions Inc. (VIAVI) (NASDAQ: VIAV), is a global provider of network test, monitoring and assurance solutions for communications service providers, enterprises, network equipment manufacturers, government and avionics.

Zemax –  CRO

ON consultants: Jeff Hocking and John Morrow

Zemax’s industry-leading optical product design software, OpticStudio®, OpticsViewer™ and OpticsBuilder™, helps optical and product engineering teams turn their ideas into reality through virtual prototyping, which reduces design iterations and repeated prototypes, speeding time to market and reducing development costs.

 


Predictions for the Future 

 

The emphasis on sales operations continues to grow into a much broader and strategic role, and some companies are now referring to these jobs as “go to market operations” and/or “sales productivity.” While this has traditionally been the responsibility of finance, we are now seeing this as much more of a business partner to the chief revenue officer, moving from revenue measurement to setting up the metrics, better sales compensation systems and being one of the key drivers in predicting revenue on a quarterly/yearly basis.

Notes ON’s Jeff Hocking, “Given the changes COVID-19 has placed on the traditional in person software sales process, many companies are shifting to a more leveraged model with inside sales being a key driver of revenue. Because of the unique nature of inside sales – higher cadence, different measurements, different skill sets – this has further increased the demand for experienced, strategic sales operations executives.”

Adds ON Partners’ John Morrow, “I think the nature of software sales models evolving to a more user-oriented and high velocity model has been accelerated due to COVID-19 given the logistics challenges that hinders the traditional field models. Additionally, the demands placed on today’s sales and digital marketing teams are much different than before and therefore the need to lead, measure, and train teams more comprehensively and with more granularity is at the top of every executive’s mind.

For more of ON’s view on the evolving demand for leadership post pandemic, visit the ON Viewpoint series.

Download The Series

Learn more about our sales and marketing executive search services here.

 


About ON Partners

 

ON Partners propels an organization’s mission by building C-level and board leadership teams. Founded in 2006 by like-minded consultants as a values-driven alternative to the multi-service global firms they were leaving behind, ON delivers a better executive search experience. Named by Forbes as one of America’s Best Executive Recruiting Firms and to the Inc. 500/5000 Lists six times, the firm is consistently ranked among the top 20 retained executive search firms in the U.S. For more information, see our results here.

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Find our related successful placements of leading executives here.

About ON Partners

Since 2006, ON Partners is the only pure-play executive search firm building diverse C-level and board leadership teams. We rebuilt the institution of executive search for the way you work. Our approach includes present partners who engage with their clients from the first brief to the final decision, individually crafted solutions that are unique to each client, and an easier experience all around. Named by Forbes as one of America’s Best Executive Recruiting Firms and to the Inc. 500/5000 Lists nine times, ON Partners is consistently ranked among the top 20 retained executive search firms in the U.S.

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