ON Partners is proud to have collaborated with SmartBear in finding the organization’s Chief Revenue Officer.
Sales And Marketing – Executive Success In 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.
LiveAction – SVP Marketing
ON consultants: Danny Bolger and Jake Espenlaub
LiveAction, Inc., is the leader in network performance management and backed by Insight Venture Partners.
Logitech – Head 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.
Poly – SVP, 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.
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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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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