Power of Surge: Five Ways to Supercharge Your B2B Software Business and Unleash Hidden Value

by Holly Rollo

Overview

2025 AXIOM Business Book Awards Bronze - Business Technology
2024 North American Book Award Silver - Business Entrepreneurial
2024 Goody Business Book Awards - Gamechanger
2024 Goody Business Book Awards - Technology
2024 Best Book Award - Finalist

For CEOs and investors in small to midsize B2B software companies, this book provides a clear blueprint for transforming your marketing to unleash hidden value, especially leading up to a transaction or exit event.

Based on over thirty years of experience leading major technology company transformations, the author outlines a strategic approach to marketing using the Power of SURGE—Strategy, Unity, Reputation, Gains, and Efficiency. Learn how to develop a customer-centric strategy tailored to your unique business situation, achieve radical alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success, establish a compelling competitive market position and brand reputation with customers, unlock hidden revenue streams, and build a modern marketing engine for scale and ROI.

The book covers common disconnects between CEOs and CMOs that undermine execution, along with advice for finding and keeping the right marketing leader in a competitive talent market. You’ll discover proven methods for driving growth, lowering customer acquisition costs, shortening sales cycles, and boosting valuation. With practical advice from other industry leaders, this playbook provides the key steps to transform your marketing for a competitive advantage and transaction success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642258110
Publisher:	Advantage Media Group, Inc.
Publication date:	03/05/2024
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

HOLLY ROLLO is a B2B technology veteran with over three decades of experience leading major turnaround, transformations, and transactions. As a former CMO, she founded Surge Strategies, a strategic marketing advisory firm helping B2B software CEOs drive growth and scale. She is a passionate mentor to aspiring CMOs and women in technology. To learn more about Surge Strategies, visit www.surge-strategies.com.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Holly has written the definitive strategic marketing manifesto. She has shared the scar tissue you get only by living and breathing the ups and downs of building a business and has described those lessons in a straightforward, digestible, and fun read. As one who has reviewed thousands of business plans and hundreds of board plans, Holly nailed it. You must keep your eye on the horizon lest you go off course, but you better pay maniacal attention to the details that are driving to that horizon. Holly’s sage advice acts as a rudder and should be absorbed by every B2B CEO trying to balance their ship."

Ted Schlein
Former Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins; Founder Partner, Ballistic Ventures

"Rollo's advice is a lifeline for those preparing for a major transaction or going through a pivot. If you're ready to turbocharge your software business and find hidden value, Power of Surge is an indispensable guide."

David Lang
Partner, KKR

"Refreshing and powerful. Rollo's insights about how to use strategic marketing as a value driver are helpful and impactful. She not only diagnoses root causes hindering results but also offers actionable remedies that CEOs can put to work immediately. The framework she lays out in this book can help companies set themselves up for long-term success."

Betty Hung
Managing Director, Vista Equity Partners

"Holly Rollo’s new book is a must-read for any investor or CEO in the B2B software space. Her decades of marketing leadership success at important companies has given her the ideal perspective for crafting a tight, actionable framework for creating competitive advantage. All of this is combined with a highly accessible narrative style. What is not to like?"

Seksom Suriyapa
Partner, Upfront Ventures

"Today more so than ever, a B2B software CEO needs the skill to navigate sudden and unexpected changes in the business climate. Power of Surge offers actionable insights to leverage marketing as a source of strategic advantage and maximize the value of a business at exit. It is very clearly a practitioner’s rendition and presents this advice in a refreshingly relatable and compelling way. It’s a great addition to any CEO’s bookshelf!"

Rohit Ghai
CEO, RSA

"What a wonderful opportunity for CEOs to learn the uncensored truth about marketing in our uncertain roller coaster of a world. Holly Rollo generously shares her relentlessly practical, no-holds-barred experience as a CMO. She reveals how small businesses can avoid fumbling their fortune, achieve better results, and become resilient by capitalizing on how marketing really works."

Kathleen Schaub
Marketing Management Strategist; Former IDC CMO Advisory Practice Leader