Hardy Poppinga, vice president of volume and ecosystem marketing EMEA and India at SAP is steadfast, methodical and relentless when it comes to driving innovation and customer centricity. Victoria Paley reports
Hardy Poppinga, vice president of volume and ecosystem marketing EMEA and India at SAP, is exactly as you might imagine a successful German businessman – astute, analytical and forward thinking. He’s come well prepared to the interview – having clearly given quite a bit of thought as to what he wants to discuss in advance. Throughout the interview, Poppinga returns time and time again to the theme of progress. He’s got a clear vision of what the B2B marketing industry needs to do to advance itself, and this shapes the way he leads his team.
He comments, “I can very quickly analyse things, build visions around that and then help my teams to go after that vision. That’s what leadership is all about – to analyse market situations, look at trends and then create visions. Once you’ve done that, you need to rally the team behind that vision so they sign up for it, and then go off and not only build a mission around it, but also think about how they become innovative.”
Poppinga explains that he encourages innovation by telling his team to think outside the box and use any failures as an opportunity to learn. His industrious attitude to driving innovation forward, combined with a sharp analytical mind, are no doubt valuable components within the SAP organisation.
The customer experience
Along with his sturdy leadership technique, Poppinga attributes his success at SAP to his personal experience of both sales and marketing.
“I’ve done both sales and marketing roles so I know how customers think, how they consume information but also how they buy,” he reveals.
Poppinga’s holistic view of the customer or “customer centricity” as he repeatedly calls it, regularly crops up during the interview. He’s convinced that if a business can accomplish “the ultimate customer experience” then it cannot fail to outsmart the competition. He places the Apple brand on a pedestal – drawing attention to the way it not only creates aesthetically appealing products (“It makes something cool, paints it white and sticks an apple on it”) but also the way it engages its customers in a 360-degree way via email, the web, social media, video etc, to create “one customer experience”. It’s an approach that Poppinga heralds and tries to champion as much as possible at SAP.
He explains, “Too many marketers fail to approach marketing in a customer centric way. They try to sell their products just because their products are there but they don’t look at the need of the customer. They should ask themselves, ‘What do we need to do to deliver real value and benefit to customers?”
The next big thing
Poppinga’s unyielding focus on the customer no doubt influences his belief that inbound marketing will prove even more of an important trend in the future. “The next big thing is for companies to get their heads around ‘How do I create my inbound marketing machine?”
He concedes that the attitude of the new B2B buyer is changing the way that marketers need to communicate with customers. In light of this, he suggests that marketers must think about new tactics because push marketing (with the exception of branding) “will eventually become neglectable”.
He adds, “The customer is becoming more informed. They are proactively searching for information in order to stay on top of the competition and grow their business. They are looking for you even before you know they are looking for you. As a business customer yourself, you know that. You can’t just sit there and wait for a marketing campaign to land on your desk, and say ‘Oh right, now I understand what I have to do. That’s too late and you’d be out of business if you did.”
In discussing the evolution of the business buyer, he goes on to point out the increasing similarities between the business and consumer worlds – something he’s able to appreciate owing to his B2B and B2C background. He makes reference to “the business consumer” – highlighting how previously exclusive B2C channels, such as social media and video, are becoming more prevalent ways to engage a business audience. He suggests it is because these channels promote openness, “The business consumer needs to get a very transparent view of the value that you as a company can deliver to them to become the best in business.”
Throughout the interview, Poppinga has much to say on a wide range of marketing topics – from how he manages teams across multi-territories to creating the best sales pipelines and nurturing channel partner relationships.
His strategies for each are as robust as SAP’s reputation as a “big old German engineering company”, which just goes to emphasise his strengths as a well-oiled marketing machine, continually and reassuringly churning away.
