A History of Innovation, Prepared for Today’s Challenges
Since our inception in 1995, Market-Partners Inc. has been the original proponent of building revenue generation strategies around the Customer Buying Journey. Our guiding principle remains that lasting success comes from adopting practices based on how your customers are buying today. Not how they were buying 10 years ago. Not how you think they are buying. How they are actually buying, right now. While many trends and repackaged ideas have come and gone, we pride ourselves in providing clients a proven and direct path to swift, significant, and sustainable results.
From the first meeting, our engagements are always collaborative, participative, and aligned with your company’s culture and vision to ensure our work is not only accurate, but actionable for all customer-facing roles engaged in your market’s buying journey. Even our off-the-shelf trainings are configured to meet your unique set of challenges and opportunities. We never use tired, inflexible approaches that may or may not work for your business. Instead, we stand ready to provide you with over two decades worth of in-person and virtual delivery, market research, transformation, sales training, and technology-enablement experience – as much or as little is required of any of our resources and areas of expertise.
Based on 20+ years of research, Market-Partners Inc. brings the resources, expertise, and proven methods to optimize customer-facing roles, approaches, and technology to effectively engage across the entire buying journey lifecycle. Beginning from the Outside-In™, Market-Partners Inc. offers a proven process for organizations looking to transform their approach to revenue generation. We work with our clients to create a fully curated, coached, and consultative approach offering swift, significant, and sustainable results. Market-Partners Inc. also provides its services on an à la carte basis, offering as much or as little as it required to ensure client success.
Founded in 2009, 3GS, Market-Partners Inc.’s sister company, was an early leader in the design, development and delivery of live virtual learning experiences. Drawing heavily from the strategies used in broadcast media, 3GS brought a different philosophy and area of expertise to web-based selling. Upon its debut, 3GS earned the CLO’s Learning in Practice Gold Award for innovative training design, and was featured in case studies and white papers by Adobe, Citrix, and Forrester. While this intiative has since been brought under the Market-Partners Inc. umbrella, we still utilizing these practices in our virtual training sessions and workshops to this day.
Business from the Outside-In™
Our work and research have clearly shown that you may have the best product out there, with unquestionable value to your customer, but this alone does not lead to success. Revenue only comes when a customer buys something. Not from customers that are interested, or those that will buy one day, but those that fully navigate the complex journey that is required to move an organization from interest, through to commitment, and acquisition. Yet that journey, along with the buyer’s underlying needs and expectations, remains largely unknown by many organizations.
We find that most sales and marketing departments have become very adept at positioning their offerings, presenting value propositions that can pique a prospect’s interest. However, after gaining that interest, the buyer is left to navigate their journey on their own. Little consideration is given to how customer-facing roles, especially those outside sales and marketing, could more meaningfully support the prospect in their buying activities beyond reinforcing those same value propositions. As a result, many buyers either delay or see no reason at all to engage with your organization when making a purchase decision.
The good news is that our research also shows that buyers, within a particular market, buy in remarkably similar ways. Armed with a deep understanding of a market’s specific buying journey, all customer facing roles can be aligned to engage in, and stay engaged in, the entire buying journey lifecycle, delivering value and relevance each step of the way. We call this framework Outside-In Revenue Generation™ – looking beyond the internal view of how you sell, to the external reality of how your customers buy.
Key Insights
%
Customers do not reach out to sales until they are more than 50% of they way through their market's buying journey lifecycle
%
Organizations are involved in less than 10% of their market's buying journey lifecycle
Our Research
Over the past 15 years, Market-Partners Inc. has been researching how businesses and individuals actually go about buying. Our perspective on what constitutes a “buying decision” extends beyond deciding to issue a purchase order or pull out a credit card. In fact, it constitutes the entire lifecycle by which a business or individual becomes aware of an offering, develops interest in it, makes a commitment to acquire and then to adopt it. By taking a holistic perspective that spans this whole process, from awareness to adoption, we are able to develop a deep understanding of how markets function, including how alternatives are considered and why offerings may not end up being acquired and adopted, despite a clear value proposition.
In addition to in-depth interviews with over 3,800 individuals spanning 2,000 companies across the Americas, Europe and Asia, we have spent more than six years testing and validating hypotheses and observations which have allowed us to formulate multiple grounded assertions about how markets buy.
These assertions formulate a map of what we call “Customer Buying Journey DNA”. While the elements, or strands, of the Customer Buying Journey DNA are common to all buyers, the DNA itself is unique to a particular market. In fact, we would now argue that the very definition of a market should be a group of buyers with common Buyer DNA.
Meet the Executive Team
Our company leadership comprises highly experienced sales and marketing professionals. With broad backgrounds, ranging from successful start up launches to C-suite roles in global operations, each member shares a successful track record in business development. Even so, it is our belief that leadership should continue working with clients directly and take the time to understand each unique situation – no matter the seniority.
Martyn Lewis
CEO, Founder
Martyn founded Market-Partners Inc. in 1995. Since that time, he has worked with numerous selling teams across a broad-range of industries from start-ups to industry giants. Martyn has since developed a reputation as a dynamic speaker and authority on sales and marketing processes. Prior to Market-Partners Inc. he had extensive executive management, sales and marketing experience.
Beverly Lock
Principal, Revenue Strategy and Enablement Practice
Beverly brings deep experience in leading global revenue enablement teams and complex transformational initiatives. Previously with Market-Partners for 13 years, she led engagements for clients including Xilinx, Seagate, HP, and Cisco. During the mid-2010s, she served as the VP of Sales Enablement at Oracle and most recently the VP of Global Enablement at Salesforce.
Stu Schmidt
Principal, Technology Enabled Selling
Stu initially joined Market-Partners Inc. in the late ‘90s and spent 7 years developing sales processes and training sales professionals working with Martyn and his team. Stu went on to hold numerous executive roles with organizations such as WebEx and GoFundMe. His experience spans sales, marketing, services, channels and operations. He brings specific expertise in the application of technology to enable and scale revenue teams in B2B organizations.
Gord Hogg
Principal
For the past 30 years, Gord has sold technology products and solutions, contributing millions of dollars in revenue and profits for large enterprise software companies, hardware manufacturers, ecommerce suppliers, solution integrators and consultants and a few early SaaS startups. He has held positions in sales, channels, consulting and marketing and executive roles as GM, VP, EVP and CEO.
Jeff Fiedler
Director, Alliances
Jeff brings over 25 years of experience in helping organizations grow their revenue by increasing the effectiveness of a company’s direct and indirect sales channels and sales support organizations, using sales methodologies and tools. In roles as GM, VP of Sales, and VP of Channels he has managed global accounts and sales teams in the US, EMEA, and APJ. He is responsible for leading Market-Partners Inc.’s partnership with Seismic.
Jon Buchwald
Director, Customer Research
Jon brings over 10 years of sales and marketing consulting expertise to Market-Partners Inc. His sales and marketing background spans multiple vertical markets including healthcare, high tech, aerospace and defense, financial services, and entertainment. Since joining Market-Partners Inc. in 2007, he has led client engagements as well as managed and developed custom training programs.
Jim Cooper
Senior Consultant
Jim has over 30 years of experience in organizational leadership, strategic planning, sales and marketing program development, project management, and total quality programs for defense, telecommunications, and high tech organizations. He brings leadership, sales management experience and an abiding belief in the power of coaching to Market-Partners Inc.
Sandra Kiker
Senior Consultant
Sandra brings over 20 years of experience in Medical Device Sales to Market Partners. She has successfully worked for a diverse range of Medical Device companies from start-ups bringing innovative products and services to the market, to the established market leader in a specific technology. In each, she surpassed sales goals and expanded market share.