Podcast: Talking SMB Sales with Cisco’s Jenn Allen
April 16, 2018 | Contributed by: Charles Laughlin
Jenn Allen believes most tech companies are getting it wrong when selling to “cloud native” small businesses. And getting it right is important, given we’re looking at a pretty rapid transition from older to younger business owners in the coming years as Baby Boomers set to hit retirement age at a 10,000 per day clip (give or take).
Allen is the latest guest on the Local Search Association’s On Target podcast. On the podcast Allen, whose title is go-to-market Lead for Cisco’s SMB segment, and I talked about “cloud natives” (largely millennial SMBs that start their businesses using cloud tools), product bundling and the prospect for the holy grail of sales — a self-service, guided selling platform.
“Cloud natives grew up living on apps that live in the cloud,” Allen said. “These millennials have huge aspirations. I read that 75% say they want to own their own businesses. They are very different from the boomers and my generation. They don’t want to go to work for large corporations.”