How much do you interface with the Sales team?

Wayne,

Typically, I get pretty deeply involved, as I'm typically the gate-keeper on 1) can we sign, and 2) does it book / pay. For these two reasons, sales actually wants to reach out to me as I'm a resource. I still have to do the forecast/quiz cycle, but that's actually the VP Sales's job, so they're doing the heavy lifting (as variance is their problem to explain).

Marketing is not dissimilar. There are the deals with third parties (in bound licenses, joint development), trademarks, pricing / TAM-SAM-SOM forecasts, product pitch strategy, etc etc.

Cheers,

KP

Keith - just curious, it seems execs frequently speak to available/addressable market and the numbers always strike me as pie in the sky. What processes do you undertake to get to a comfortable place? Does it come from external / independent data sources?

Actively. When I receive a proposed Marketing Budget, I review it and then go directly to the line of business (department head), to better understand the allocation of marketing dollars. The line is truly the experts that understand the inflows and outflows, as well as the conversion statistics. Marketing is an extremely important piece of any business, but I feel the responsible party is the line (department head). I have been in too many situations where a variance occurs and Marketing points to the department head and the department head points to Marketing. Start at the beginning and identify the responsible party; and have them acknowledge that they are the responsible party. This second piece is very important.

We get involved pre-bid on any contract to agree on the boundaries of the negotiation. We also offer our insights into the profitability of each contract after we start operating under it.

However that said I believe we should be much more involved than what we are now as we tend to give and take a lot in negotiations without really knowing its financial impact.