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Q&A with Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation

Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation is an accomplished professional with over two decades of experience in Marketing, Consulting, and Product Evangelization. Erik focuses on helping companies drive expansion and growth by better aligning positions, responsibilities, and incentives.

Erik serves as a subject matter expert in the area of Sales Performance Management to ensure that Xactly’s marketing, sales and product teams have the necessary strategic input for industry leading messaging, positioning, and future direction.

MEDIA 7: When did you start working and what was it?
ERIK CHARLES:  In early 1980s, I wrote software on TRS-80 model II coded in BASIC to enable for computerized quotes for a life insurance agency. I was in middle school at the time, that was a contract work. My next job was at a software store back when software used to be bundled up into a cardboard box with inserted floppy disks and then it went on from there.

M7: You have an astounding experience of over two decades with industry pioneers like Apple, Sun Microsystems, Canon and recently Xactly Corporation. What has been the driving force behind your remarkable career?
EC: There are two things: as a marketer, I don’t believe in mistakes, I only believe in experiments and what we can learn from them, that has kept me moving forward. I keep on trying new things and seeing what works. I assume that just because it worked last week doesn’t mean it’s going to work tomorrow. So, I’ve never allowed myself to get into a rut. I have always been more than willing to find people who can provide excellent advice at critical moments, even on a specific direction. Finding someone that I can speak with, that can give me a few tips, tricks, hints, ideas, direction or path on moving on. So, I have never been afraid to ask just how could I do this better.


"Sales and marketing have to be best friends, they have to be fully aligned with each other, and they have to know what each other is doing at all times so they can partner. Companies that don’t do that cause themselves a lot of heartache."

M7: As the Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation, what are some of the challenges that you face and what has helped you in overcoming them?
EC: The biggest challenge I face – it is a changing marketplace out there. As we know, from a pure marketing perspective, there’s plenty of data sources out there. 60-70% of the buyer’s journey occurs without ever talking to the sales organization which puts more pressure on the marketing team.

Over the course of this interview I’ve already received two inbound phone calls that are unmarked/unlicensed or I don’t have in my directory. I just reject them automatically, they go straight to voice mail, I later read the transcribed voicemail and decide if I want to talk to them. So, cold-calling is not necessarily dead but it does take more work. I wake up every morning and delete approximately 50 cold emails, oftentimes from people who haven’t done any research on what my company does. They’ll hunt my name and my company but they don’t even realize what we do. So, I flip that to my own role in supporting Xactly and make sure that our voice is heard in an appropriate fashion.

The biggest challenge that I work on the most is in the area of thought leadership in terms of not ‘the same old all over again’ but actually being able to talk about what is going on in any given industry/market. I provide that advice backwards and set up Xactly and myself as the thought leaders and experts in the space, so customers have someone to turn to, to know where you should be going next.


"From a pure marketing perspective, there’s plenty of data sources out there. 60-70% of the buyer’s journey occurs without ever talking to the sales organization which puts more pressure on the marketing team."

M7: You’ve been in leadership roles for both sales and marketing functions, how do you think this alliance has evolved over the years and how significant is it for upcoming organizations to align both the departments?
EC: If you don’t have sales and marketing aligned, all you’re going to do is go through a revolving door of firing your CMO or firing your CRO every 18 or so months. Sales and marketing have to be best friends, they have to be fully aligned with each other, and they have to know what each other is doing at all times so they can partner. Companies that don’t do that cause themselves a lot of heartache. I believe that everybody should work in sales at some point in their lives. Even if it’s retail sales at the shopping mall, dealing with the general public, dealing with the challenges of a sales organization at minimum just doing ride-alongs with the sales organization to see what their life is like.

How on earth can you create a presentation deck for sales to use if you’ve never delivered it yourself or at least heard it being delivered in a customer or prospect facing situation. If you haven’t done that you get yourself into trouble very fast in my opinion. In smart organizations, the CMO and the CRO should be going out for coffee and cocktails whenever possible and talking about what’s working or not working in a non-threatening, not a senior staff offsite situation but more of a “Huh, we have this challenge how can we work together better?” But too often I’ve seen companies where marketing and sales are not in partnership. One of my advantages has been because I’ve been in sales, because I’ve carried a bag, because I’ve had a quota it has helped me significantly. So, when I’m talking to sales I can say, “Here’s a different way I might present this information, see if it works for you and if it does please let me know and we can share it out with the other members of the team”.

M7: You are a regular speaker at summits. Could you share some insights into being an industry thought leader?
EC: Yeah, don’t sell your product, provide information. Provide interesting, current, actionable information that is backed by both data but entertained with anecdotes. You have to remember things like the Ebbinghaus curve which gets into the fact that within 20 minutes how much people have forgotten and within 2 weeks how much more they have forgotten. I want people to walk out of my sessions and if somebody asks, “What did you learn in there?”, they should be able to list off almost bulletized format, three to five total things that they learned that they’re going to take away and act upon. And if they do that two weeks later, if they didn’t write it down, they’re still left with three of them and they’ll actually be able to get value out of my talk. I work very hard so that when people walk out they don’t think they’ve been sold to.


"In smart organizations, the CMO and the CRO should be going out for coffee and cocktails whenever possible and talking about what’s working or not working."

M7: According to you, what are the key marketing areas that industries will need to focus on in the coming 5 years?
EC: From a marketing perspective, one is to make sure you are adjusting your channels of communication to meet the next generation of employees. Millennials and the follow-on generation are taking over the workforce, and personally I welcome them. I think it’s magnificent, but note how they are communicating – people text as opposed to calling, they are using tools like Whatsapp to communicate. That is slowly shifting the communication medium and how people wish to absorb information on the business side as well. So, that’s going to be critical.

The other is people have gotten very good at detecting false narratives being used solely to sell product. People are looking to learn – constant learning is important for professionals but if you treat your outbound conversations also as constant learning people will respond positively. I had a customer at Xactly ask me, “Look, I’m a customer now, but can I still come to some of the talks and webinars and learn something?” And the answer is, “Of course!” That’s how they became a customer, they were interested in the education that we provided and that actually raised our profile as a company within the marketplace and it makes people want to do business with us.

M7: What have you learned from your experiences?
EC: You’re going to stumble and fall a lot, mistakes will be made, mistakes will happen. You will butt heads with opposing personality and you’ll have to learn to work with people with a variety of different interaction, styles, and skills, introverts and extroverts, people that go on the attack very quickly, etc. Understanding the personal side of the professional world is very important. People can claim that they can turn it off, I don’t think that’s true, especially now that it’s a 24/7 world.

I do international business so it’s always work time someplace on the globe for someplace that my company does business and I just have to accept that. So at the same time, I need to be able to accept that for my employees and for the people I’m talking to. They do have a personal life; unfortunately, personal life is blended into their professional life. Recognize it, accept it, work around it.

ABOUT XACTLY CORPORATION

Xactly delivers a scalable, enterprise platform for planning and incenting sales organizations, including sales quota and territory planning, incentive compensation management, and predictive analytics. Using this powerful sales performance management (SPM) portfolio, customers mitigate risk, accelerate sales performance, and increase business agility. Combined with Xactly Insights™-- the industry’s only empirical big data platform, Xactly empowers companies with real-time compensation insights and benchmarking data that maximize the bottom line. With an open, standards-based architecture, Xactly seamlessly integrates within an enterprise’s existing infrastructure, with the ability to work with any ERP, CRM, or HCM application, while meeting the highest enterprise standards in security, reliability, and privacy.

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CoTec Holdings Corp. and Mkango Resources Ltd. are pleased to announce that CoTec and Maginito Limited ("Maginito") have formed a 50/50 joint venture entity which will roll out HyProMag Limited’s (“HyProMag”) Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap (“HPMS”) recycling technology into the United States. The newly formed joint venture company, HyProMag USA, LLC (“HyProMag USA” or the “Joint Venture”), plans to develop a low cost, low carbon, sustainable rare earth magnet recycling and production business underpinned by HPMS. HyProMag has sublicenced the HPMS technology to HyProMag USA. HyProMag is 100 per cent owned by Maginito, which is owned on a 79.4/20.6 per cent basis by Mkango and CoTec, and is commercialising rare earth magnet recycling in the UK, Germany and United States. Revenue from the Joint Venture is targeted for 2025/2026. HyProMag USA will initially focus on completing a bankable feasibility study (“Feasibility Study”) through a hub and spoke model using three HPMS vessels and one magnet manufacturing hub (together the “US Project”). The Joint Venture has recently initiated a “Request for Proposal” process from leading Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (“EPCM”) providers and has ordered three HPMS reactors to expedite the development of the US Project. Following completion of the Feasibility Study, CoTec and Mkango will make a joint decision as to whether the Joint Venture will proceed with the construction of the US Project. Julian Treger, CoTec CEO commented: “HyProMag is supported by the Minerals Security Partnership1 and we are looking forward to working with leading EPCM providers to design and build these facilities using HyProMag’s considerable experience from the plants being developed in the UK and in Germany. CoTec and Mkango are focused on delivery and will be exploring US Government funding and strategic partnerships for feed supply and rare earth element (“REE”) magnet offtake in the first half of 2024. “We look forward to working and collaborating with local, state and federal stakeholders targeting the completion of the feasibility study”. Will Dawes, Mkango CEO commented: “We see the United States as a core component of our growth strategy and look forward to progressing the US feasibility study over the course of the year, in parallel with further development of operations in the UK, Germany and other jurisdictions. HyProMag’s recycling technology has major competitive advantages versus other recycling technologies and is a key enabler for cost effective and energy efficient separation, recycling and production of rare earth magnets with a significantly reduced carbon footprint. We are receiving strong interest for recycled magnets from potential customers and for recycling solutions from original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”), and automotive and recycling companies.” HPMS technology was developed at the University of Birmingham, underpinned by approximately US$100 million of research and development funding, and has major competitive advantages versus other rare earth magnet recycling technologies, which are largely focused on chemical processes but do not solve the challenges of liberating magnets from end-of-life scrap streams –HPMS provides the solution. Maginito Maginito is owned 79.4 per cent by Mkango and 20.6 per cent by CoTec. It is focused on developing green technology opportunities in the rare earths supply chain, encompassing neodymium (NdFeB) magnet recycling as well as innovative rare earth alloy, magnet, and separation technologies. Maginito holds a 100 per cent interest in HyProMag and a 90 per cent direct and indirect interest (assuming conversion of Maginito’s convertible loan) in HyProMag GmbH, focused on short loop rare earth magnet recycling in the UK and Germany, and a 100 per cent interest in Mkango Rare Earths UK Ltd (“Mkango UK”), a company focused on long loop rare earth magnet recycling in the UK via a chemical route. About Mkango Resources Ltd. Mkango's corporate strategy is to develop new sustainable sources of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium to supply accelerating demand from electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean technologies. In parallel with development of its mining assets, Mkango plans to become a market leader in the production of recycled rare earth magnets and alloys via its interest in Maginito. This integrated Mine, Refine, Recycle strategy differentiates Mkango from its peers, uniquely positioning the Company in the rare earths sector. Mkango is listed on the AIM and the TSX-V. Mkango is developing its flagship Songwe Hill rare earths project (“Songwe”) in Malawi with a Definitive Feasibility Study completed in July 2022 and an Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment approved by the Government of Malawi in January 2023. Discussions regarding the Mine Development Agreement (“MDA”) for Songwe Hill are ongoing with the Government of Malawi. In parallel, Mkango and Grupa Azoty PULAWY, Poland's leading chemical manufacturer have agreed to work together towards development of a rare earth separation plant at Pulawy in Poland (the Pulawy Separation Plant) to process the purified mixed rare earth carbonate produced at Songwe Hill. Mkango also has an extensive exploration portfolio in Malawi, including the Mchinji rutile exploration project, the Thambani uranium-tantalum-niobium-zircon project and Chimimbe nickel-cobalt project. About CoTec Holdings Corp. CoTec is a publicly traded investment issuer listed on the Toronto Venture Stock Exchange (“TSX- V”) and the OTCQB and trades under the symbol CTH and CTHCF respectively. CoTec is an environment, social, and governance (“ESG”)-focused company investing in innovative technologies that have the potential to fundamentally change the way metals and minerals can be extracted and processed for the purpose of applying those technologies to undervalued operating assets and recycling opportunities, as it transitions into a mid-tier mineral resource producer. CoTec is committed to supporting the transition to a lower carbon future for the extraction industry, a sector on the cusp of a green revolution as it embraces technology and innovation. It has made four investments to date and is actively pursuing operating opportunities where current technology investments could be deployed.

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Emerging Technology

Domino Data Lab Lends AI Expertise to Atlantic Council's Commission on Software-Defined Warfare

PR Newswire | January 23, 2024

Domino Data Lab, provider of the leading Enterprise AI platform trusted by over 20% of the Fortune 100, today announced it has joined the Atlantic Council's newly-formed Commission on Software-Defined Warfare, where Domino President of Public Sector Joel Meyer will represent the company to help ensure the U.S. and its allies can effectively leverage software, particularly AI platforms at scale, to enhance defense capabilities. Co-chaired by 27th U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, Former Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox, and President of Purdue University Mung Chiang, the Commission will develop a framework to enhance U.S. and allied forces through emergent digital capabilities. The commission will leverage insights from a prestigious and diverse group of subject matter experts, including former government officials, and industry leaders who will offer a wealth of valuable perspectives. The continued proliferation of advanced commercial technology, including infrastructure and tooling to support artificial intelligence, is transforming the battlefield and changing its dynamics in ways that could alter existing military balances of power. Meyer will work with the Commission to help recognize and recommend scalable, governable, and cost-effective AI approaches and solutions to ensure U.S. competitiveness amidst this paradigm shift. "To ensure the U.S. maintains its global leadership in today's technology-driven security environment, the DoD must modernize its approach to acquiring and leveraging digital capabilities," said Meyer. "I'm honored to assist the Atlantic Council's critical work to enable the DoD to leverage responsible AI-driven capabilities for data-driven decisions at the speed of battle, and support our long-term national security." This new commission is the latest of the Atlantic Council's efforts to recommend modern software practices the DoD can implement to optimize or improve defense capabilities. "Cutting-edge technology companies like Domino are crucial to closing the yawning gap in current capabilities for advancing national defense," said Stephen Rodriguez, commission director and senior advisor, at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and its Forward Defense program. "The expertise that Joel Meyer brings from his prior senior national security and technology roles will help cement the Commission's ability to drive change that supports American and allied security." The Commission's work will culminate in a framework for the U.S. legislative and executive branches, defense prime contractors and tech start-ups, and U.S. allies and partners to holistically approach software capability development and integration with military hardware. Domino for Government: Secure & Governed Mission-Driven AI Domino's Enterprise AI and MLOps Platform helps government agencies integrate AI into their missions rapidly, safely, and cost-effectively. Domino makes it easy for federal agencies to build, deploy, and manage AI at scale, on a unified platform without risking their AI intellectual property. Agency data scientists, contractors, and collaborators can securely access on-demand compute infrastructure and their choice of commercial and open-source data, tools, models, and projects—across any on-prem, GovCloud, and hybrid/multi-cloud environments. With Domino, agencies can improve collaboration and governance while establishing AI standards and best practices that accelerate their missions. "The DoD needs to continue to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence into its mission sets to more effectively deter, deny, and if necessary, defeat our nation's adversaries," said Brigadier General and Domino advisor Bobby Kinney. "Domino's open, API-driven architecture ensures flexibility and freedom for users while offering control and built-in governance for platform and security owners — a critical role in how the DoD and its allies and partners modernize in the scaling of much-needed AI tooling and infrastructure." About Domino Data Lab Domino Data Lab empowers the largest AI-driven enterprises to build and operate AI at scale. Domino's Enterprise AI platform unifies the flexibility AI teams want with the visibility and control the enterprise requires. Domino enables a repeatable and agile ML lifecycle for faster, responsible AI impact with lower costs. With Domino, global enterprises can develop better medicines, grow more productive crops, develop more competitive products, and more. Founded in 2013, Domino is backed by Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, NVIDIA, Snowflake, and other leading investors.

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Government Business

Kratos & Rancher Gov Solutions Partner for Easy Deployment of Virtual Ground Systems with OpenSpace

GlobeNewswire | January 05, 2024

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., a technology company in Defense, National Security and Global Markets and Rancher Government Solutions (RGS), the leading provider of enterprise Kubernetes management solutions to the U.S. Government, announced today a strategic partnership to enable customers to seamlessly deploy and scale virtual ground systems using Kratos’ software-based OpenSpace® Platform. With increasingly complex and dynamic satcom and Earth Observation missions, satellite operators and government agencies are transitioning from fixed and proprietary hardware to flexible and scalable generic compute-based cloud environments. This enables a virtualized and software-defined ground system like Kratos OpenSpace Platform to more cost effectively and securely support multiple missions simultaneously, deliver services faster and streamline operations. Today, customers leverage a range of computing environments from bare metal, virtual machines to the cloud, making the deployment of software-based ground systems more complex and time consuming. Working together, Kratos and Rancher Government Solutions have enhanced the ability of the OpenSpace Platform, the first commercially available, fully virtualized and software-defined satellite ground system to be deployed more easily across customer environments. “With Rancher, the OpenSpace Platform deploys its virtual functions including modems, channelizers, combiners, and more, as Kubernetes-based containerized software applications that act as independent and portable computing environments that can run and scale on any infrastructure,” said Brandon Gulla, Chief Technology Officer at RGS. “We are proud to be working with Kratos to support this truly transformational platform that will free satellite operators from proprietary hardware architectures and move to software-defined, flexible and extensible virtual platforms.” By the nature of it being software-defined and containerized, the OpenSpace Platform is already much faster, and more flexible to deploy than traditional hardware-based satellite ground systems. As customer demands grow, the software-based OpenSpace Platform can reconfigure on the fly and deploy new services automatically and cost effectively in minutes. Software containers can be spun up and down and scaled on demand elastically using a single management interface from the Rancher Platform. “Rancher serves as the Kubernetes management technology that supports the OpenSpace Platform’s ability to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of our containerized workloads,” said Anthony Semiao, Chief Solutions Architect of the OpenSpace Platform. “The combined technologies support hybrid and multi-cloud environments enabling OpenSpace customers to run in the data center and cloud environment of their choice such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft and to easily switch from one cloud provider to another.” About Kratos OpenSpace Kratos’ OpenSpace family of solutions enables the digital transformation of satellite ground systems to become a more dynamic and powerful part of the space network. OpenSpace® is the industry’s only commercially available digital transformation solution that enables operators of satellites, Ground Systems-as-a-Service (GSaaS) providers, teleports and others in the satellite services supply chain to capitalize on dynamic ground capabilities. The OpenSpace family consists of three product lines: OpenSpace SpectralNet for converting satellite RF signals to be used in digital environments; OpenSpace quantum products, which are virtual versions of traditional hardware components; and the OpenSpace Platform, the first commercially available, fully orchestrated, software-defined ground system. These three OpenSpace lines enable satellite operators and other service providers to implement digital operations at their own pace and in ways that meet their unique mission goals and business models. About Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. is a technology, products, system and software company addressing the defense, national security, and commercial markets. Kratos makes true internally funded research, development, capital and other investments, to rapidly develop, produce and field solutions that address our customers’ mission critical needs and requirements. At Kratos, affordability is a technology, and we utilize proven, leading edge approaches and technology, not unproven bleeding edge approaches or technology, with Kratos’ approach reducing cost, schedule and risk, and enabling us to be first to market with cost effective solutions. Kratos is known as the innovative disruptive change agent in the industry, a company that is an expert in designing products and systems up front for successful rapid, large quantity, low cost future manufacturing and as a competitive differentiator to our large traditional prime system integrator partners and also to our government and commercial customers. Kratos’ primary business areas include, virtualized ground systems for satellites and space vehicles including software for command & control (C2) and telemetry, tracking and control (TT&C), jet powered unmanned aerial drone systems, hypersonic vehicles and rocket systems, propulsion systems for drones, missiles, loitering munitions, supersonic systems, space craft and launch systems, C5ISR and microwave electronic products for missile, radar, missile defense, space, satellite, counter UAS, directed energy, communication and other systems, and virtual & augmented reality training systems for the warfighter. About Ranger Rancher Government Solutions (RGS) is specifically designed to address the unique security and operational needs of the U.S. Government and military as it relates to application modernization, containers, and Kubernetes. Rancher is a complete open source software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters at scale, while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads. RGS supports all Rancher products with U.S. based American citizens who are currently supporting programs across the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies.

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Xactly Corp

Xactly Corp

Xactly delivers a scalable, enterprise platform for planning and incenting sales organizations, including sales quota and territory planning, incentive compensation management, and predictive analytics. Using this powerful sales performance management (SPM) portfolio, customers mitigate risk, accele...

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