In this Fireside Chat from Vendavo’s Growth + Profitability Summit 2023 in Chicago, Matthew Kenneally, Vice President of Global Alliance at Vendavo, talks with Chris Sorrow, Managing Director at Blue Ridge Partners, about the importance of a larger ecosystem — including having the right technology solutions, architecture, tools, and skills — in creating lasting business success.
Matthew Kenneally: My name is Matthew Kenneally. I’m the Vice President of Global Alliance Partnerships at Vendavo. I’m here with Chris Sorrow from Blue Ridge Partners, and we’re in the wonderful city of Chicago at our Growth + Profitability Summit. And Chris, thank you so much for joining us and also sponsoring our Growth + Profitability Summit this year.
Chris Sorrow: Thank you.
Kenneally: So, talk to me a little bit about Blue Ridge Partners. What is it that your organization does?
Sorrow: Right. So Blue Ridge Partners is a management consulting firm focused on helping companies drive profitable revenue growth. That includes pricing as well as things like Salesforce effectiveness and go-to-market strategy. We have our pricing practices work with hundreds of companies and pricing across a number of industries, principally B2B, to help drive improvement. I think what makes us unique from a pricing perspective is that, because of the nature of what we do, we really understand the DNA of commercial organizations – and that matters when you’re trying to get results. We like to talk about going from PowerPoint to cash. You can do the best analytics and develop the best pricing in the world, but it doesn’t matter unless you can get the people on the frontline, the sales reps and the managers, to execute that, especially in a B2B organization. And our understanding of commercial organizations and how they think and operate really helps us drive that change management, starting at the very outset, to help companies get the results they need.
Kenneally: That’s fantastic. And talk a little bit about the Vendavo partnership. How is it that our organizations work together and the value that we bring to our joint clients?
Sorrow: Fantastic. Yeah, it’s been a great partnership, Matthew, and we’re excited to continue it. I think it’s a very complimentary offering. Vendavo has fantastic solutions and some great technology. If you think about the larger ecosystem of what it takes to succeed in pricing, it takes the right strategy. You’ve got to have the right architecture. You have to have the right tools and technology to operationalize that. You need incentives and, as we just talked about, throughout all of that, you’ve got to be driving change management. And I think we bring a very complimentary set of skills to help flesh that out and help companies really maximize the value of their investment in Vendavo. So, just to give a recent example where we worked together on, the same client: The client had asked Vendavo to try to operationalize what wasn’t a very good pricing architecture because they were struggling with the implementation of it. We were able to get involved and help them develop a much more fundamentally sound pricing architecture as well as help them get the buy-in from literally thousands of people on the front line to apply that new pricing. And, as a result, they’ve been getting huge ROI now with the new architecture from the Vendavo implementation.
Kenneally: That’s fantastic. So, Chris, I want to thank you for being here today at our Growth + Probability Summit. Thank you so much for the partnership. We really greatly appreciate it.
Sorrow: Thank you, Matthew.