Building Routes to Customers: Proven Strategies for Profitable Growth

Building Routes to Customers explains the powerful “Routes-to-Market” approach for driving profitable growth. World-class organizations including IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Hitachi, Adobe and Plantronics, and hundreds of smaller companies, have adopted RTM to develop and execute highly successful go-to-market strategies and tactics.

With a step-by-step approach and dozens of examples, the authors show how you can use RTM to: (1) Determine the optimal level of spending for each function in marketing, sales and customer service, for each market segment, product and service. (2) Optimize your marketing mix and sales and distribution channels to maximize revenue and profitability throughout the product life cycle. (3) Get everyone in product management, marketing, sales, customer service, and your distribution partners aligned and working together to maximize results. (4) Get the right products and services to the right customers at the right time. (5) Retain existing customers and create profitable new ones.

Peter Raulerson

Peter Raulerson is an expert in go-to-market strategies and tactics, and a Partner with The PARA Marketing Group, a management consulting firm. He has consulted extensively with executives of Adobe, Canon, Cisco, F5 Networks, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Symantec, and other technology companies including venture-backed start-ups. He has helped them increase corporate value by bringing new products and services to market, building new value chains and distribution channels, and improving the productivity of product development, marketing, sales and distribution. Prior to PARA Marketing, Peter was CEO of InterConnections, Inc., a privately-held developer of multivendor network software, founded in 1986 and acquired in 1990 by Emulex Corporation. From 1972 to 1986, Peter held engineering, sales, marketing and management positions with Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE Telenet and 3Com. Before receiving his BA in math from Harvard in 1972, he was a research associate in managerial economics and decision analysis at Harvard Business School. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Washington Technology Industry Association.

Jean-Claude Malraison

Jean-Claude Malraison is Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Solucom Group, a leading IT consulting firm in France, and a member of the board of Critical Eye, an executive leadership community headquartered in the United Kingdom. Prior to these roles, he was Managing Director of Plantronics EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) from 1999 to 2003, where he drove the highly successful launch of Plantronics' products into consumer electronics channels across Europe. From 1971 to 1999, Jean-Claude served in several leadership positions with IBM, most recently as a member of the Executive Committee of IBM EMEA. Jean-Claude initiated many advances that transformed IBM's marketing, sales and distribution. As the head of the IBM PC Division in France in 1989, he launched IBM's first retail PC channel, which increased IBM's market share after a severe drop. As General Manager of the newly-created UNIX Division of IBM EMEA in 1993, he took IBM from zero to 19% market share in two years by tapping new distribution channels. He initiated the development and worldwide roll-out of the Routes-to-Market methodology which restored IBM to profitable growth. After becoming Vice President of Distribution and General Business for IBM EMEA in 1996, Jean-Claude launched IBM's European call center organization and significantly expanded IBM's business with small and mid-sized enterprises.

Jean-Claude is a graduate of the Institut Supérieur d'Electronique du Nord.

Antoine Leboyer

Antoine Leboyer is the President and CEO of GSX, the worldwide leader in monitoring solutions for Communication Servers. Antoine has more than 20 years of experience in IT organizations in various international positions.

He started his professional career with IBM. He held positions in sales and marketing with IBM France, and then ran the distribution strategy for all of IBM Europe except PCs, where he led initiatives that achieved significant growth for IBM by leveraging European IT distributors. After 12 years with IBM, Antoine joined Candle Corporation where he started and ran the European indirect business. He was then General Manager for Hyperchannel France, a B2B marketplace for European IT distribution funded by General Electric Capital and Goldman Sachs. Subsequently, he was Senior Vice-President for Upaid Systems, a provider of software for real-time billing and mobile payment services, and Senior Vice-President for Baracoda, the leading producer of Bluetooth industrial devices, which he helped achieve record growth. Antoine holds a diploma of engineer from Ecole Superieure d'Electricité in France and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. He served on the Board of Directors of Akoura Biometrics, an emerging company in Information Security.