Gary Tubridy, interviews Klaus Hofmann, 
VP, Sales & Services Operations at Citrix

Gary Tubridy: The numbers sales organizations are being given in 2010 are aggressive. Further, many sales organizations are not rebuilding head count as quickly as they are trying to rebuild the top line. How does 2010 look for you in terms of the growth expectations?
Klaus Hofmann: Yes, I definitely see some of the same trends that you just described. I think that most of us here on the sales team think that our growth goals for 2010 are pretty aggressive. I can tell you that we are looking for double-digit growth across the board; in some cases, for certain product lines, fairly significant double-digit growth. 

We had a very strong finish to our fourth quarter in 2009, which gives us a lot of confidence. On the other hand, we are not exactly convinced that that is the start of a trend. There might have been some pent up demand and some last minute budget that got freed up at the end of the calendar year. So we see 2010 as a challenge. 

We have tried to find a growth target working with our partners in Finance that is reasonable and at the same time aggressive. We ended up with a number that is a stretch. We think we can get there. The challenge is that the bulk of that growth is expected to come from increased productivity as opposed to increased investment.

Gary Tubridy: How is this year going so far?
Klaus Hofmann: We had our sales kick-off event in January. We actually had four different kick-offs in our four different geographies. 

Gary Tubridy: How did they go?
Klaus Hofmann: They went really, really well. We have a great story to tell. We feel like we are in a very high profile, high growth market in terms of virtualized desktops. We saw some of the future promise come to fruition in our Q4. So we recently announced some new products in desktop virtualization and have had a lot of traction with them. 

We ended the year with a lot of momentum from a product perspective, and also from a sales performance perspective. A lot of guys did very well in Q4. It is a question of how do you build on it. We used the sales kick-off to do that. 
We had a lot of great success stories from an individual contributor perspective, from an account perspective and from a product perspective. We did a lot of celebrating to reinforce the success that we enjoyed at the end of the year. 

From our CEO on down, we had a number of senior executives present their view of the market opportunity and why there was reason for great optimism. So it is really a question of seizing the momentum that you have and then tying that to the future opportunity and understanding that it is not going to be easy but we are in the fight together and we have a better arsenal than the competition. 

If you look at the product portfolio, the solution portfolio that we now have to take to the market, it is a much stronger story than the story we started with in 2009. And still we finished 2009 in relatively good shape thanks to a really, really positive Q4. So we have reason to be optimistic.

Gary Tubridy: You mentioned the CEO. Does your CEO play a role in catalyzing the sales organization to get them focused and excited?
Klaus Hofmann: Yes, he does. He is very engaged with the sales team. We often refer to him as our chief marketing officer and our chief cheerleader. He really is passionate about what we do. 

He is very, very sincere, very dynamic, and he really does have the ability to fire up the crowd. He had us in a pretty good frenzy getting excited about the opportunity ahead.

Gary Tubridy: Looking at 2010, are there any particular challenges that you see on the horizon?
Klaus Hofmann: I think our biggest challenge is around focus. We have so many things that we could go after and we have limited resources. It is really a question of zeroing in on the one or two key value propositions and one or two key markets that we want to target. 

The story that we can tell today is a much bigger and better story than we had even 12 months ago. That is good news but it also means you are tempted to try to tell everybody. We cannot. We cannot afford to take sort of a shotgun approach. We still need to use a rifle approach, to pinpoint our targets and then go after them in a very systematic fashion. 

So I think focusing our sales reps on the right targets with the right stories is challenge number one. Challenge number two remains engaging the channel partners to make sure that they also understand the value prop, tell the same story, and have the same targeted approach to the market place. 

I think if we can do those two things we will have a very successful year.

Gary Tubridy: Focus is a gamble in so far as you have got to choose the right targets. If you’ve got to grow and you do not have the resources to throw at the whole market that is a gamble you have to take. 
Klaus Hofmann: Oh I think it is. If you gamble on a focus point and pick the wrong point, you lose and that is a shame. But if you do not focus, I am sure you are going to lose. Focus is the only chance we have to succeed.

Gary Tubridy: When you talked about the kick-off meetings, I liked the vocabulary you used to describe “celebrating success.” That has a lot of value in motivating the sales force. Could you expand on that a little bit?
Klaus Hofmann:  We have a number of different ways that we reward and recognize salespeople. The most obvious one is the commission check. That is the report card that matters most to people and we have a fairly aggressive compensation plan with lots of upside. So as you overachieve, multipliers kick in and it can be lucrative. 

There is recognition at the events for who had the highest quota attainment, who had the single largest deal, who had the highest growth over last year, and a number of other categories. I call it creating heroes. For the people who did not achieve hero status, they can aspire to it.

We also have sales clubs. We have two different versions of sales clubs. One is for the highest percent quota attainers throughout the company, which is a global event. The top 10-percent of salespeople get to go to a very exclusive and very high-end event. We also have, for each of the geos, a 100-percent club, which is a little bit lower key but still celebrates the success of anyone who achieves their quota. I think you would agree in 2009, anyone who achieved quota for the year had monumental achievement. 

We also recognize teams. For instance, in 2009 one of our geos had a record booking quarter. No region ever booked more in any quarter in the history of the company than they did in Q4 of 2009. They were recognized for this. We find different ways to recognize individuals, and teams. 

Sales is very much an individual endeavor, but there is also a team aspect to it. I think that, as a salesperson, the opportunity to be included with the winning team, to be recognized, to go to an event, to socialize with the CEO and to socialize with the SVP of Sales is a big motivator. It is hard to measure the value of that but I know, in my gut, that there is a big return on that investment.

Gary Tubridy: There is a balance that you have to make between exclusivity and ability to participate which, when done right helps you establish a culture of winners.
Klaus Hofmann: I agree. I think our approach is a little bit unique in that we have two of these things. One of them is ultra difficult to get into. The only problem I see with that approach is that you never really know if you are going to get in because your final performance is dependent on what other people do. You can have a phenomenal year and still not crack the top 10-percent. 

So the fact that we augment that with a second club, based purely on goal attainment is a nice balance. It seems to work for us. 

To sum up, I think that we are all looking at 2010 as a challenging year. We have got an aggressive growth number that we have to hit but I think we are coming off a very successful close to 2009, and I think there is a lot of momentum. 

I think there is a great opportunity for us. I think we have made the investments through the sales kick-offs and through the recognition clubs to maintain that momentum and build on it. Hopefully we will deliver another great year in 2010.

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