From reseller price lists to the board report

Mandate

Build a growth and brand plan the new investors could measure, while keeping every client-facing claim within what the operations centres deliver.

Outcomes

• Launched a fixed-fee NIS2 readiness review: 236 completed and 71 monitoring contracts by September 2025
• Rebuilt client references on written consent, from 14 logos in 2022 to 26 in 2025
• Refocused detection marketing on firms of 100 to 2,000 staff; average new contract value from €38,000 to €61,000
• Introduced quarterly publication of response-time and AI-triage figures

Decisions in context

The investment in March 2022 changed the questions I was asked. The board now included two fund directors and two independent directors, and each quarter I present a growth and brand report alongside the chief executive. The fund fairly wanted comparable measures, so I introduced cost per qualified opportunity and partner-sourced contract value. I also added measures the board had not requested: first-year renewal by campaign source, scope disputes and the share of claims in our library that operations had verified that quarter. My four heads manage day-to-day work. I spend most of my time on partner terms, the claims we make about regulation and AI, and the board's view of where growth should come from. All three cases on this site began as disagreements in this role, and each required a cost colleagues saw more easily than the benefit.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking a first compatible non-executive appointment alongside it.

Mandate

Combine marketing with the partner programme and grow the indirect channel without diluting service standards.

Outcomes

• Grew the partner network from 38 to 77 certified partners
• Introduced partner certification linking funds to trained presales staff
• Supported entry into Ticino with Swiss franc pricing and German-language material
• Raised partner-sourced share of new contract value from 22 to 39 per cent

Decisions in context

Combining marketing and partner management made me responsible for what other companies said about us. Before 2019 partners were recruited by sales managers and supported, loosely, by marketing. I introduced a certification with three levels, each requiring trained presales staff and agreement to use approved service descriptions. Some established partners resented the new conditions, and two left. The network still doubled over three years, mainly with managed service providers that already looked after factory networks. The pandemic in 2020 moved our events online and changed buyers' concerns, as remote access became the most common weakness we found in testing. We opened the Verona centre that year and the Lugano office in 2021. I worked with our Swiss colleagues on pricing in francs and on material for German-speaking clients. I attended board meetings when channel matters were discussed, which prepared me for the regular board reporting that followed.

Reason for the move

Appointed chief marketing officer when the private-equity investment reconstituted the executive committee.

Mandate

Create the company's first marketing function and explain technical services to buyers outside IT.

Outcomes

• Replaced product-led brochures with service descriptions approved by the operations centre
• Started the quarterly night-shift practice for marketing staff
• Built the first partner programme, from 12 to 38 partners
• Introduced a client newsletter on incidents seen in local industry

Decisions in context

Scudalpe's founders hired me with reservations. They had seen security marketing built on fear and wanted none of it. My first months were spent listening to analysts and penetration testers, then rewriting the company's material so that a plant manager or finance director could understand what each service did. Every description was approved by the person who ran the service. I began sitting through a night shift each quarter and asked my team to do the same. The founders noticed that the material became more cautious and, oddly, more persuasive. I built a small team and the first partner programme, recruiting resellers already trusted by manufacturers. Revenue nearly doubled during these years, mainly through referrals and partners. In 2016 I completed a part-time postgraduate certificate in information-security governance, because I needed to follow analysts' reasoning rather than translate it secondhand.

Reason for the move

Asked to combine marketing with responsibility for the partner channel.

Mandate

Build demand for managed backup among firms that had always kept their own tapes and disks.

Outcomes

• Rewrote all service descriptions with operations after a 31-hour restore
• Introduced published recovery-time ranges by service tier
• Grew managed-service clients from about 420 to 690

Decisions in context

Custovale was my first services company, and it taught me how a marketing claim becomes a service obligation. In 2011 a client's restore took 31 hours. Our brochure, which I had approved, implied recovery within the working day; the contract described a range that depended on data volumes. The client's managing director was entitled to his anger. I sat with the operations manager for three weeks and rewrote every description, adding recovery ranges by tier and the conditions that lengthened them. Sales feared the ranges would deter buyers. Enquiries fell briefly, then recovered, and complaints about recovery times fell by more than half over the following year. I also learnt that owners of small companies decide quickly and remember every disappointment. When the family sold the business in 2014, the buyer moved marketing to Milan and I looked for a security company that needed its first marketing function.

Reason for the move

The acquiring group centralised marketing in Milan; I wanted to stay in services and move closer to security.

Mandate

Turn manufacturers' co-marketing money into reseller activity that produced measurable orders.

Outcomes

• Introduced proof-of-activity rules for co-marketing claims
• Ran training days reaching about 650 resellers each year
• Created reseller-ready claim sheets checked with manufacturers

Decisions in context

Returning to Italy, I joined a distributor that sat between global manufacturers and about 650 resellers. My job was to turn co-marketing funds into activity that produced orders, and to make sure resellers described products in ways the manufacturers would accept. I found that much of the fund paid for events with no measurable result, and I introduced proof-of-activity rules that annoyed several large resellers. I also produced claim sheets, short statements that resellers could repeat without stretching. The work showed me how far a message travels from its source, and how little control the originator has once it reaches the customer. By 2009 I wanted to work for a company that delivered what it sold. A distributor's promises ended at the warehouse door, while the consequences arrived at the reseller's customer, and I had begun to find that separation uncomfortable.

Reason for the move

Wanted to move from distributing products to marketing services delivered by the company itself.

Mandate

Prepare price lists, reseller campaigns and partner events, and later manage co-marketing for forty resellers.

Outcomes

• Coordinated the annual reseller conference for about 300 attendees
• Managed co-marketing plans for forty resellers from 2002
• Produced Swedish and Italian material for a manufacturer's Italian launch

Decisions in context

I went to Stockholm two months after graduating, partly to know my father's country and partly because a Swedish distributor needed someone who could also work in Italian with one of its manufacturers. I began with price lists, event logistics and campaign material for resellers across three countries. From 2002 I managed co-marketing plans for forty resellers. The reseller managers were patient teachers. They showed me that a partner repeats the part of a message that helps it close an order, and that any condition left in small print will be lost. The Nordic habit of plain, modest claims also stayed with me; a reseller in Bergen once returned our brochure with every adjective crossed out. After four years I wanted to bring what I had learnt to the Italian channel, where I understood the language and the business customs better than anyone in Stockholm.

Reason for the move

Returned to Italy to develop channel marketing in the Italian market.