Phil Fernandez

Marketo

Phil is a 26-year Silicon Valley veteran and has the scars (and a couple of successful IPOs) to prove it. Prior to Marketo, he was President and COO of Epiphany, a public enterprise software company known for its visionary marketing products.

Using RPM to Manage and Optimize the Entire ‘Customer Lifecycle’

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Posted on 2012-05-17

Revenue Performance Management (RPM) is much more than improving the effectiveness and efficiency of sales and marketing. In fact, RPM is today enabling organizations – from major health systems and global consumer product companies to web 3.0 start-ups – to transform their revenue processes and realize significant increases in performance and results.

But, I would argue that RPM is even bigger than that. We are increasingly seeing marketing automation and RPM on the front lines of creating new ways of thinking about, and ultimately creating, business excellence. RPM is helping companies to drive business-building change in a world that is changing faster than many of us would ever have thought...

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Strong Growth Starts With Great Leadership

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Posted on 2012-04-11

Across the globe, senior corporate executives (including boards of directors) are pretty obsessed with one thing: growth. It’s the business imperative that consistently trumps every other goal.

In recent years this growth imperative has been amplified because of the post-recession economic challenges with which we’ve all had to grapple. Companies are doing everything they can to re-ignite their revenue-building capacities, like implementing marketing automation for example. They are also using strategies including tapping overseas markets, driving innovation, investing in new talent, and exploring M&A opportunities.

It seems, to me, that corporations have under-emphasized one key dimension as they aggressively pursue more growth: Leadership. The...

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What Does ‘Big Data’ Really Mean to Revenue Performance?

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Posted on 2012-03-29

So how big is big data? And why is it important to all of us involved with deploying marketing automation and Revenue Performance Management (RPM) to drive profitable, sustainable growth? On the bigness question, consider this: Cisco has forecast that by 2013, the amount of traffic flowing over the internet annually will reach 667 exabytes. Just to put that in perspective, one exabyte of data is the equivalent of more than 4,000 times the information stored in the US Library of Congress.

What really has pushed big data into the business spotlight is the growing accessibility of powerful data analytics that enable marketing and sales departments (i.e., everyone at your company concerned with growing revenue) to really make sense of all of that information. And to use it to...

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Collaboration Isn’t Some New Kind of “Kumbaya” – It’s the Key to Revenue Acceleration

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Posted on 2012-03-15

An oft discussed subject here at Marketo and throughout the broader Revenue Performance Management (RPM) sector is sales and marketing alignment. Collaboration surely is not just about having a “kumbaya” moment with your colleagues over in marketing and sales – or, for that matter, in IT, product development, finance, or customer support. In a recent video blog post, I discussed how open, honest and fact-based communication is a big part of the Marketo business and operating culture. We take this same philosophy when working with our customers. For example, as part of the marketing automation and RPM...

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The Buyer Really Doesn’t Care

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Posted on 2012-02-28

Sales is from Mars and Marketing is from Venus. Historically that is how it’s been. Today’s buyer doesn’t really care where the walls and boundaries exist between sales and marketing. As I explain in this video, if you have those teams working at cross-purposes, they are guaranteed to produce inefficiencies. This in turn opens opportunities for competitors to take revenue from your company. When you break down the walls and align marketing and sales throughout the revenue cycle, you create phenomenal efficiency and outsized growth.

Want to see how you stack up? Compare your...

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B2B Marketers Need to Get on Board with Social Media… NOW!

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Posted on 2012-02-09

For B2B marketers to be competitive and grow in 2012, it’s essential that they not only realize the value of social media, but make a commitment to improved execution. An eMarketer article recently reported on a new Accenture study, which saw a huge gap between “knowing” and “doing” when it comes to social media in the B2B Marketers survey group. The report found that almost two-thirds of B2B marketing executives view social media as an “important” channel to interact with customers, partners, and stakeholders. The problem is that only 7 percent of the survey group felt that their organization was leveraging social media very heavily. Even more telling, the survey found that 9 percent – nearly a tenth – of B2B marketers were not using...

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In Business, Going on the Offense is Usually the Best… Offense

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Posted on 2011-11-03

Have you ever worked in a business climate that moves as rapidly and unpredictably as the one we are now experiencing? The velocity of change that is roiling business, economics, and culture right now can make your head spin. It certainly focuses one’s attention.

I was asked recently about what is the best strategy for competing effectively – and winning – in today’s hyper-fast, massively competitive business world. The answer that kept coming back to me was simply this: You’ve got to stay on the offensive. In the current business and technology environment, the minute you get rocked back on your heels and find yourself on defense, you stand a good chance of losing. At the very least, you will lose critical momentum.

The recent World Series was a good illustration of this thesis. Leaving aside the fact that the St....

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IBM Global Survey: CMOs Need to Boost Influence in the Enterprise

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Posted on 2011-10-19
An article in last week’s Ad Age reports on the results of IBM’s first-ever global survey of CMOs. The IBM Institute for Business Values held face-to-face interviews for one hour or longer with more than 1,700 global CMOs, including 48 of the top 100 brands (as ranked by Interbrand’s latest annual list). Needless to say, this is some serious business research.

Here are some of the key findings from IBM’s global CMO survey:
- 78% of CMOs expect more complexity over the next five years, but only 48 percent are prepared to deal with that increased complexity
- 82 % of CMOs said they plan to increase their company’s use of social media
- 80 % of CMOs plan to increase mobile apps
- In answering the question of “what skills you personally need to succeed in...
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Reeling in the Revenue: What Are You Doing to ‘Catch More Fish’ and Grow?

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Posted on 2011-09-28

During the past year, I have written frequently on this blog about the increasingly urgent global imperative for businesses to grow. Corporate executives have cut about as far as they can in overhead and expenses. At the same time they have drastically improved productivity. The one thing left to do now is to drive growth. And that means reeling in more revenues – more efficiently and profitably.

I expanded on this critical theme in a recent commentary that was published at Forbes.com. In the piece, I made the case that even with the recent (and ongoing) turmoil in the financial markets and macro economy, there is real opportunity for organizations and business leaders that are willing and able to seize the moment.

In the article I discussed the radically altered buyer/...

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Five Tips for Building a Successful Start-up – And Creating Jobs

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Posted on 2011-09-15

Being based in Silicon Valley – which has continued to burnish its reputation as a hotbed of US entrepreneurial growth and excitement – I frequently get asked how one builds a successful start-up. This question is even more urgent on a macroeconomic level as the US struggles to re-energize its job creating capacity, which has all but sputtered out in the past year.

The importance of start-ups to our country’s (and the world’s) job creation is well-established fact. According to the US Small Business Administration, small firms represent 99.7 percent of all employer companies and employ half of all private-sector employees. These small companies generated 65 percent of the net-new jobs over the past 17 years.

The US economy overall is still suffering from weak consumer demand that stubbornly persists following the Great Recession. Without demand, companies don’t expand and hire, ensuring that unemployment...

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