Editor's note: Last year we introduced the Bamboo Year in Review feature, kicking off with a note from the desk of the CEO and including in-depth Q&As with each of the Bamboo department heads. In keeping with the Bamboo commitment to transparency, we're going to make the Year in Review feature an annual Bamboo Nation tradition. In this installment, we check in with Emily Bien, who heads up the Bamboo Sales team.
Your team has doubled sales at Bamboo each of the past two years. How have you managed all this growth?
Well, we've sold a lot of Web Parts! My team has worked extremely hard this year. It's very basic stuff but they do it very well - engaging with our customers, listening to their needs, and then working with them to find out what the best solution is for their situation. We have great relationships with our customers, which means even in this bad economy they have turned to us to help them out.
Of course, we've also been fortunate to have great products. The release of Project Management Central (PM Central) has contributed significantly to our Ultimate and Project Management Suites being among our top sellers in 2009. Thanks to our Engineering team, we've also been able to deliver such highly anticipated products as Video Library and most recently, File Share Library.
You added two new staffers to your team this year, and are actively interviewing for additional positions. How many sales positions are you currently looking to fill?
I added two new people in 2009 and am looking to add even more in 2010. I'm looking for one or two additional Sales Technicians that will help with our trial customers as well as help out with the growing demand for demos and workshops. We'll also be adding to the Inside Sales team. We're getting so many people calling and emailing us every day that we need to get some people in here to focus on account management and outreach to both new and existing customers. So that will be our focus in the coming year.
This time last year, you mentioned that you had instituted a policy of placing a follow-up courtesy call to all downloaders of Bamboo products. Is this initiative still possible with the sales growth over the past year and, if not, is it one of the reasons you're interviewing for new positions?
The growth we've had this year has pretty much made it impossible for us to be able to follow up with our trial downloaders as much as we'd like. Basically our phones are ringing so much that we barely have any time to make outbound calls. We are very fortunate in that way. In 2010, we will be adding dedicated resources to allow us to continue to reach out to our customers who are trialing and purchasing our products. In this way, we'll help ensure customer satisfaction and make sure that we are doing everything we can to get people the solutions they need.
What's the status of your team's European presence, and the plan for 2010?
I'm very excited to announce that we've just hired Gina Kyriakopoulou, who will be our Account Manager for Europe. She has over twenty years of sales experience, working with companies such as Convergys/Cisco and Time Warner. She is based in Amsterdam and will be able to work with many of our European customers - and she speaks English, Dutch, and German fluently, so that's an added bonus!
Our EU customers will be able to meet Gina at the Microsoft SharePoint Connections 2010 conference in Amsterdam. Bamboo is a Gold Sponsor of the show, which takes place January 18-19.
What will your team being doing in 2010 to serve Bamboo customers better?
More resources will allow us to give our customers more personalized attention, as well as follow up with new customers. Our Support team is also adding resources that will allow us to get our customer's technical issues resolved even faster and more efficiently.
Of Bamboo's new product offerings in 2009, which is your favorite to sell, and why?
That's pretty easy - PM Central. We know how many customers are using SharePoint for collaboration and project management. I believe our tool really allows "serious" project managers more effectively do their job by using this product. It's amazing, the number of downloads we've seen already, and how quickly we were able to roll major new features into the latest release. I'm going to go ahead and predict it will be a top selling product in 2010.
What product or products did your team field the most questions about this year?
PM Central in the latter part of the year drew a lot of interest, as well as our Suites. In this economy, people are looking for bargains, and to get the most bang for their buck, so it makes sense that our customers are turning to our Suites, where you are able to save the most money and also receive a boatload of products.
Of course our perennial top sellers such as Calendar Plus and List Rollup continue to generate interest, as well as some of our newer products released in the Custom Column Pack.
With PM Central, Bamboo entered the applications market this year. How has the response been from our customers?
The response has been very positive - we have a lot of customers out there who are happy that there is now a product out on the market that is easy to use but gives the key functionality missing in SharePoint that is critical for successfully managing projects: KPI and dashboard capability, resource management, and the ability to sync with Project just to name a few!
As Bamboo continues to evolve, we're now on the verge of releasing the first of our hosted solutions with Bamboo Requirements Manager coming from Marc O'Brien's division. Will your team be taking on sales of the hosted offerings?
Marc's own group is going to be initially responsible for sales of our hosted applications. With over sixty on-premises products out there, it's more than enough to keep my team busy for quite a while! However, we will of course be working closely with Marc's group so as to give our customers the best options when choosing our products, whether it be hosted or installed on premises.
Bamboo continues to offer the suites you packaged for sale last year (Project Management, Administration, and Ultimate), all of which are on sale through the end of the year. Any plans for additional suite offerings in 2010?
At this time, no, though a lot of what we offer is based on customer demand, so we'll see what happens!
Read the entire 2009 Bamboo Year in Review package:
Posted
Dec 18 2009, 12:00 PM
by
EmilyBien
Please note that my head is not quite as large as the picture shows. I mean that literally. Figuratively, it may be quite right.