Matt Hendrickson

Lead marketing and product management for ConnectSolutions, a leading cloud-service provider of real-time collaboration solutions.

Market-leading platform service provider of cloud services to 700 local, state, and federal government agencies. Report to the President & CEO. Manage a team of 10 direct reports and run all of marketing and product management activities including product innovation, design, roadmaps, competitive analysis, pricing, leadgen, tradeshows, and launch strategies.

• Built a new product management division from the ground-up. Recruited, hired, trained, and led a new group to drive future innovation and produced new products that enabled the business to scale rapidly.
• Conducted market research, focus groups, and gathered client feedback. Developed product strategy, set roadmaps, defined feature sets, and articulated positioning.
• Worked closely with engineering teams to define strategy, write product requirements, and deliver pilot/public releases which created new revenue opportunities and grew our client base.
• Created compelling messaging, wrote website content, and positioned us to win against the competition. Delivered sales tools, product demos, sales presentations, brochures, and white papers.
• Wrote and implemented a two-year business plan with tracking metrics to measure product sales and demand generation programs. Managed a $500k marketing budget with P&L responsibility.
• Evaluated marketing expenses and balanced resource allocation to maximize results. Executed on webinar, lead nurturing, email, newsletter, tradeshow, blogs, viral/social, and Adwords programs.
• Architected a Client Success Program, touched by every department, which created sales momentum by word of mouth using case studies, client testimonials, and local media coverage.

Reported directly to the President. Directed all marketing activities and go-to-market strategies for the financial and expense management solutions of the Rearden Personal Assistant, the first enterprise platform for on-demand business services.

• Repositioned Rearden’s enterprise expense management solution (ExpenseWire)
down-market for expansion into mid-market and small-business segments (SMB).
• Researched competition and provided detailed competitive briefs that directed engineering efforts, positioned our solutions in the market, and promoted our strengths.
• Collected and categorized feature requests from the field to prioritize the roadmap, identify competitive feature gaps, and provide market requirement documents to development.
• Re-launched all sales collateral, product brochures, fact sheets, sales decks, webinars, and product demos with improved marketing, positioning, and unified messaging throughout the organization.
• Launched a new website, optimized for organic search, and initiated paid search programs for LeadGen which drove over $500k of new business into the sales pipeline within 4 months (SEO/SEM/Adwords).
• Planned and executed direct marketing, channel marketing, and reseller programs through our partner
ecosystem: Google Apps, Paychex, Orbitz for Business, SalesForce, Intuit, and travel service providers.
• Served as a panelists and webinar speaker for the travel and expense industry. Worked closely with Aberdeen, Gartner, and Forrester for reports on best practices and emerging trends in financial software.

Key executive and co-owner of Individual Software, a privately-held company and publisher of award-winning productivity, training, and educational software solutions. P&L responsibility for software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.

• Facilitated year-over-year growth across 10 software/web product lines and developed award-winning, best-selling brands, increasing annual revenue to $10M per year in a highly competitive environment.
• Oversaw all corporate marketing, product marketing, public relations, and partnerships. Directed a team of 8 including product management, marketing, creative services, and web design.
• Directed all inbound and outbound marketing activities and go-to-market strategies as a key member of the executive team reporting directly to the President & CEO.
• Researched markets and competition, provided insight on market trends and consumer-behavior, and gathered feedback from customers, sales, and developers to prioritize and roll-out new features.
• Orchestrated sales campaigns and delivered all collateral, white papers, sales tools, training material, websites, press materials, and channel support for product rollouts and ongoing sales efforts.
• Located market opportunities, planned product strategies, and deployed branding tactics to overcome competition, increase market share by 60%, penetrate new markets, and drive profits to record levels.
• Designed and launched hundreds of webinars, e-mail campaigns, newsletters, and white papers. Optimized websites for search engines and launched search marketing programs (SEO/SEM/Adwords).
• Developed and implemented overall product line strategy, feature set, product roadmaps, MRD’s/PRD’s, user-interface, and branding efforts to successfully position our software in the marketplace.
• Developed a partner ecosystem with Monster, CareerBuilder, SimplyHired, LinkedIn, ResumeRabbit, Right Management, Spherion, Lee Hecht & Harrison, CPIWorld, DBM, Adecco.

Established and built a new, self-sustaining business division from conception. Led efforts to design, pilot, implement, and launch the company’s first software-as-a-service solutions. Within two-years, generated millions in new, recurring revenue selling software-as-a-service solutions to vertical markets in the corporate, government, and education sectors. Managed a small business unit of product managers, software engineers, web designers, authors, and marketing and sales staff.