“It’s a short conversation if it’s all about product and price. It’s a long conversation if it’s about solutions.”

Joni Huffman is senior vice president of sales and marketing at Healthy Food Ingredients, LLC. She brings more than 20 years of experience in development of ingredient sales in previously held positions including director of specialty sales for Ardent Mills and director of business development at ConAgra Mills. She has spent her career working in complex matrixed organizations to develop a strategic vision for new and existing commercial ingredients. Her focus is helping leading food manufacturers to develop new products and apply Healthy Food Ingredients’ unique portfolio and technology to develop long term supply relationships. Her emphasis is on leading teams to think more strategically about opportunity development and execution. Along with this comes great facility with agreement negotiation as well as cross-functional team leadership.

Listen And Learn:

• Tips for productive communication with customers.
• Planning for disruption.
• How she embraces innovation while maintaining brand quality in an ever-changing marketplace.
• How to bridge the gap between sales and marketing.
• The importance of taking on a consultative mindset versus a sales mindset.
• The value of “the feedback loop between sales and marketing.”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HEALTHY FOOD INGREDIENTS, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND JONI HUFFMAN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Take your marketing and sales hat off and put your customer hat ON.”

Christopher Smith is the director of CloudLink & Wide Area Networks Product Marketing & Business Development for the Zayo Group. He is a technology leader with a passion for leading cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. Christopher specializes in a customer-focused approach to building strategic alliances, channel partnerships and enterprise services design, delivery through customer experience (NPS/CSAT). He has a unique background having navigated and excelled in larger more established organizations like EMC and launching a startup with VCE. During the latter, he co-founded the company and helped drive a $250 million business to become the fastest company in the history of high tech to reach a $1billion run rate while growing 42% year over year and achieving 50%+ market share.

Listen And Learn:

• How the sales channel changes for each persona.
• Aligning your messaging’s voice to your corporate brand and with what customers expect.
• The importance of developing audience personas, especially when launching a go-to-market product launch.
• Accelerating the customer journey.
• Why it’s important to not talk about what you do, but to talk about why you do it.
• Why brands shouldn’t get too technical too quickly.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ZAYO GROUP, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND CHRIS SMITH  ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Owning the entire customer experience is more important than the product itself.” 

As CEO of Brightpearl, Derek O’Carroll is responsible for the overall company strategy and for delivering on Brightpearl’s mission to automate retail. Brightpearl is a scalable cloud platform designed especially for high-growth multi-channel retailers wishing to automate and integrate their e-Commerce and accounting operations. He has spent his career developing a highly successful track record of creating value to IT companies in EMEA Specialties including building exceptional teams and creating winning environments, simple messaging, zero ambiguity, and a train for excellence. In 1994 he founded Adnet, Ireland’s first online advertising agency building database driven websites and offering SEO services. In 1999 he founded Vordel, which became a leading provider of XML security solutions and was sold to Axway in 2012.

Listen And Learn:

• Why 35% of shoppers say that they are less loyal to brands than they were a year ago.
• The perfect direct-to-consumer retail experience defined.
• Defining customer friction and how to avoid it.
• The secret to successful direct-to-consumer retail strategies.
• What gets buyers to return to a brand and spend more on their second visit?
• The importance of establishing empathy.
• Why the human element matters in direct-to-consumer retail marketing.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BRIGHTPEARL, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND DEREK O’CARROLL ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

“Rather than go against our competition, we have positioned the brand in a different way.” 

Stephanie Scapa is CEO and founder of WEYV, a platform that allows users to listen to music, read magazines, and soon, listen to podcasts – all in a single app experience. While competition is fierce with established brands like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon, Stephanie is on a mission to unite friends and family through shared access to all entertainment and quality content that binds them together. Not only is she leading efforts surrounding the development of the app, but she is also at the forefront of establishing deals with major record labels and publishing companies to offer their content to consumers via WEYV.

Listen And Learn:

• Shares her strategies for competing with the Goliaths in the industry.
• Why she chooses not to go head-to-head with the competition.
• How she focuses on messaging WEYV’s unique offerings.
• The importance of testing and scaling, and then adjusting strategy accordingly.
• The importance of broad and honest communication, both internally and externally.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WEYV, CLICK HERE.

TO FIND STEPHANIE SCAPA ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.