The article is reprinted from Authority Magazine.
The B2B marketing landscape is a complex and evolving space, with its unique challenges and opportunities. Navigating it effectively requires well-thought-out strategies and insightful tactics. With a myriad of digital channels available, what are the best ways to connect, engage, and convert potential business clients? As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Reese Gomez.
Reese Gomez is the Founder and CEO of SaleSparx LLC, a software and technology consultant, and a serial entrepreneur. His company, SalesSparx, LCC, is an international sales acceleration company that empowers high potential companies to become market leaders by helping them sell more, faster. Merging his industrial engineering expertise, performance improvement background, and over 10,000 hours of best sales practice research research, Reese and his team created The SalesSparx FUSE, a proven go-to-market and sales acceleration process that has helped more than 100 healthcare software, services, and technology companies.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your personal backstory with us?
I grew up in the mountains of Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. I graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. My first job was in healthcare, and from day one, I was hooked on the mission of making healthcare better. My entire career has been dedicated to applying technology to improve clinical and operational performance for healthcare and life sciences companies. I was fortunate to be involved in some very successful, high-growth situations. From these efforts, I learned a lot about how to quickly scale software and services company sales.
In late 2009, I joined maxIT Healthcare and started their management consulting division. My division went from $0 to $60M in three years, and the overall company grew from $50M to $250M over that period of time. We sold the company for $500M in 2012, a record valuation at the time, and the company won “Best In KLAS,” which is the award for the best customer service in our industry.
In 2014, I left SAIC to form my current company SalesSparx, LLC. We launched the company by conducting a 10,000+ hours research effort to answer a big question: Why do some B2B companies scale sales fast and others don’t? Our focus was on B2B companies with complex offerings (e.g. SaaS, consulting) that have already found product-market fit.
From this research, we developed the FUSE™ (Focus Unite Sell Expand) process to accelerate and continuously improve go-to-market (GTM) maturity. FUSE allows us to compare a B2B company to sales best practices to diagnose where the gaps are then rapidly develop a plan to close these gaps and accelerate sales performance. We identified over 250 marketing/sales best practices, and we found that companies that had a disciplined GTM planning and execution process grew 20–50% faster than those that didn’t.
FUSE is the only GTM continuous improvement approach in the industry that measures GTM Maturity, and what you can measure you can improve. Since FUSE was developed, it has been integrated into over 100 healthcare software, service, and technology companies to drive a cumulative $1B+ in sales. A key part of FUSE™ is Shared Vision Selling™, which is a sales process designed for B2B companies to drive collaboration and gain buyer trust and confidence. SVS drives over 40,000 sales opportunities per year and increases close rates, valuations, and deal size.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
When I was first promoted into a major sales leadership position, I went to meet with my new boss, Russ Rudish. Russ had headed up Ernst and Young’s Healthcare Consulting Group, and I was prepared to learn all the gritty details from Russ’ experience. He said to me: “Reese, sales success comes down to 3 things: cast a wide net, relentless pursuit, and no excuses.”
I think about these three things all the time. Not only are they great insights, but I learned that the most effective advice is kept simple. It is not easy to make it simple AND powerful, but when you do it, you can drive great outcomes.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“How you do anything is how you do everything.” The idea is to always focus on quality and pay attention to the details. It’s easy to try to slide by and do the bare minimum. Those who succeed are the ones who focus on the right things and do what it takes to get the desired outcome.
Can you share with us three strengths, skills, or characteristics that helped you to reach this place in your career? How can others actively build these areas within themselves?
I think there’s one thing that separates the successful: the focus on “getting things done.” To do this, you need to develop a plan and have the grit to stick to it, pushing through obstacles.
Which skills are you still trying to grow now?
My focus is always on how to help companies grow their sales more quickly. I’m always learning new ways to do this.
Let’s talk about B2B marketing. Can you share some insights into how you perceive the current landscape of B2B marketing?
To me, the primary objective of marketing is to “lay tracks for sales,” that is, to put in place messaging, lead generation, and sales enablement to sell more, faster. I often see a lot of marketing gimmicks that do not have a clear ROI. AI is a great example; with the right focus on the right sales metrics, AI can be a great tool. But just implementing AI-based technology without a clear plan and ROI is a waste of time and money.
How have recent market trends and changes influenced your approach to outperforming competitors?
We focus a lot more on inbound marketing, however, in our space, inbound without outbound does not work well. Inbound is like the Air Forces and outbound is like the Marines — you need both to beat the competition.
B2B buying cycles can often be lengthy and complex. How do you maintain engagement and nurture leads throughout the various stages of the buyer’s journey?
Only 10%–15% of your addressable market will buy from you now. So the key is to stay at the top of mind for those who are not ready to buy but may be in the future. The key is to always demonstrate value in your interactions. Tell your audience something they don’t know.
Personalization is gaining prominence in B2B marketing. What are some ways marketers can effectively leverage data to deliver personalized experiences?
True, personalization is still hard to do at scale. The key is to pick the top accounts you want to do business with and develop a clear, actionable plan that will engage them. One of the key areas we focus on is account planning. Many do account planning after a deal is signed. At SalesSparx, LLC, we also do it before — a clear plan of action is critical to personalizing your sales approach.
ABM has also gained traction for its personalized approach to targeting high-value accounts. What advice would you give to fellow B2B marketers looking to adopt this strategy?
Pick accounts based on whether they meet the 4 Rights. The Right Organization, Right Persona, Right Timing, and Right Pain Points. Focus on the accounts that are the best fit.
What are 5 Tips for Your B2B Marketing Strategy to Help You Beat Competitors?
1 . Focus a united sales and marketing process on the 3 Whys: Why Change, Why Now, and Why Your Company. If you can articulate your buyer’s pain points better than they can, then you instantly gain credibility. This is the key to helping clients understand why they need to change their current approach. Notice that the buyer’s situation is emphasized first before moving on to why your company has the answers. Too many companies are screaming “Look at me.” Buyers only care about their pain. We had a client whose home page started with “We are the Elite.” Of course, no one cared. When they started emphasizing their clients’ pain first, how they would solve it, and then their unique qualifications, they achieved much more traction.
2 . Pick accounts based on whether they meet the 4 Rights: the Right Organization, Right Persona, Right Timing, and Right Pain Points. Focus on the accounts that are the best fit. One of our clients actually scores their accounts based on their fit with the 4 Rights and then pursues those with the highest scores.
3 . Be interesting. Before you meet with a buyer, try to come up with unique insight about their business. Something we routinely do is leverage LinkedIn Analytics to help a buyer see how they compare to key competitors in terms of growth and sales. For most organizations, this type of insight is a surprise.
4 . Make sure marketing and sales are tightly aligned. What we do is create shared metrics that marketing and sales “own” together. In this way, there is tight alignment of both incentives and processes.
5 . For recurring revenue companies, make sure you understand your unit economics. The first thing an investor will want to understand is your customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), etc. We focus our clients early on their unit economics and ensure they have plans in place to drive improvement in the metrics over time.
How do you utilize data or AI to refine your B2B marketing approach, and what tools have been particularly impactful in gaining a competitive advantage?
The key is to get great data about your prospects. We have found ZoomInfo to have the most accurate company and contact data. It is not perfect for sure, but it is the best we have found. We also use ChatGPT to quickly analyze our target websites and develop specific hypotheses on how we can help them accelerate sales. The insights are amazing, accurate, and personalized.
Which digital channels have you found most effective in reaching your target audience, and how do you optimize your presence across these channels to outshine competitors?
We primarily use LinkedIn and email.
Are there any underrated skills or qualities that you encourage others not to overlook?
Focus on the outcome vs. style. There are lots of ways to achieve a result. It is especially easy to overlook the “quiet person,” but I have found still waters often run deep.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
While our FUSE™ sales acceleration process can work for any B2B company that sells complex offerings, our primary focus is to drive innovation in healthcare. Healthcare in the U.S. is on an unsustainable path. We believe that we can make a positive difference by helping healthcare software and services companies scale their innovations to drive out costs or improve the patient experience.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Warren Buffett. I would love to better understand his insights for picking amazing long-term companies and how he evaluates them — not from a numbers POV but from how he evaluates the leadership and culture of a company.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
