Shibumi, the world’s leading platform for managing and measuring strategic initiatives, just named a new CRO: Terry Dohrmann. Check out the full press release here, and get to know Terry in our interview below.
Welcome! You’re the new CRO. What will you be focused on in this role?
Welcome! You’re the new CRO. What will you be focused on in this role? Thank you for the warm welcome! As Shibumi’s new Chief Revenue Officer, my primary focus will be on driving software subscription and managed services growth and optimizing the company’s overall revenue strategy. To truly excel, my utmost concern is on how our clients and partners are using our platform to drive the right results, and how the business can support them now and in the future.
At a high level, I will be focused on our revenue strategy, including identifying new revenue streams, optimizing existing ones, and exploring potential partnerships or acquisitions to enhance our revenue potential. Key to this will be customer acquisition and retention, deepening our relationships and implementing initiatives to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
I will also be focused on sales and marketing alignment, revenue operations (e.g., sales forecasting, pipeline management, and revenue reporting), and team development–hiring and retaining top talent, providing ongoing training and coaching, and fostering an environment where people do the best work of their lives.
What drew you to Shibumi?
There’s an old adage about the predictors of success in sales being the “3 T’s”—timing, territory, and talent—and if you have strength in all of them, the ceiling is virtually limitless. With Shibumi I see that the timing is perfect, as nearly every business leader I’ve spoken with in the past year is consumed with managing the strategic initiatives in their organization. Identifying, defining, tracking, and delivering them is crucial to their survival, and the Shibumi platform delivers this better than any solution in the market. The territory in this case is literally the globe, where Shibumi has the ability to drive results for multinational businesses despite the unique challenges they face in their respective geographies. And finally, the talent of the team here is incredibly impressive where everyone, from the founders to new hires fresh out of college, are all highly capable and passionate about the success of our clients. Having all three of these elements is rare, and I knew that this was a business that I could help grow exponentially.
Tell us about your professional experience and how it has led you to Shibumi.
I’ve had a variety of leadership roles over the past 20 years, ranging from large Fortune 500 businesses to a startup where there were literally three of us in a room staring at each other wondering what to do next. My early career in telecommunications afforded me the ability to understand the needs of clients around the world. My “teenage” years found me in the advent of cloud providers where our world and our behaviors shifted—we now sought out mobility and instant access to information, with security always looming as a consideration. When I went to Salesforce, that marked the beginning of the age of leveraging data to both inform good decisions and predict outcomes. I consider that time getting my MBA in the SaaS marketplace.
I was able to take that experience and start a business where we had a great idea to bring technology to the legal market (one not known for technological prowess) and build something that was truly special. I also learned that for all that I knew, I really didn’t know much. Specifically, I lacked the ability to think like an owner—and to understand all the cascading effects of decisions that leaders make. Add in an unprecedented challenge like COVID-19, and I was forced to evolve and be much more thoughtful and able to address priorities. Thankfully, this all ended with a successful exit for the founders, and the business continues to thrive.
Throughout all of these, I was tasked with building revenue by hiring the right people, training the right way, and managing to the desired outcomes, regardless of headwinds like recessions and global pandemics.
I’ve learned that there are common threads of success in every business that include urgency, accountability, and flexibility. I see these attributes in Shibumi and am excited to lend my expertise and skill sets to this team.
How do you see Shibumi supporting businesses now and in the future?
An obvious answer to this question is helping clients leverage our product to understand and manage priorities within their enterprise, and while this is accurate, it is only half the answer. I see clients viewing Shibumi as an approach, not just a toolset. We support them by having the expertise to handle the demands these businesses face, like cost transformation and improvement/integration efforts. Our familiarity with similar clients and what we call the innovative lifecycle is a huge differentiator for Shibumi. We help them with their strategies, by defining the desired outcomes and gathering the best ideas from their team to address them. Our team guides them on how they prioritize, manage, and track these initiatives. It’s become clear that the days of setting static strategies are over, and leaders must adapt to an ever-changing set of demands. Having a knowledgeable partner, one whose sole focus is on future needs and adjusting clients accordingly, is table stakes now.
How does Shibumi’s ecosystem of advisory and OEM partners help differentiate it in the marketplace?
The quantity and quality of the advisory firms that have built practices around Shibumi is really astonishing for a business of our size. It speaks to our unique ability to assist highly demanding clients who are paying top dollar to optimize their resources and drive results with various initiatives. Partners such as Deloitte are leveraging Shibumi’s people and products on high-profile programs like cost takeout and operational improvements. The level of trust that has been built over the past 10 years, where the platform has helped deliver cost realization in the order of billions, is unmatched in the industry. Other products can certainly drive efficiencies, but the combination of industry prowess from the consultancies with Shibumi’s expertise certainly sets us apart.
Likewise, technology partners are embedding Shibumi’s product into their offerings and providing clients with an experience that outpaces standalone offerings and ensures user adoption. For example, Automation Anywhere’s mission is to mechanize processes and drive innovation for their clients, which pushes costs down and performance up. However, clients need to leverage their best resources (e.g., their own staff) to generate ideas on what should be automated and suggestions on how exactly to accomplish this. They needed Shibumi’s product to gather and stack-rank these ideas, and the results have been phenomenal. OEM partners look for those opportunities where 1+1=3; Shibumi can offer this where others cannot.
Read the full press release about Terry Dohrmann’s joining Shibumi here.