Aaron Videtto
Product Management Executive
Senior Vice President
I am an award-winning product management leader who excels at growing profitable revenue through the use of common-sense leadership, through both direct and indirect reporting channels, up-leveling the product management discipline across the organization, and putting customers at the center of everything we do. As a senior product leader, my focus is on developing and maintaining a 36-month product vision and execution strategy that supports the financial, strategic, and development goals of the organization.
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Building great products is one passion of mine, but the commercialization aspect of bringing them to market and having full P&L responsibilities is what gets me out of bed in the morning. This includes evangelizing my products both internally and externally with customers and at conferences and events.
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Experience in creating new teams and supporting processes from scratch as well as taking on existing teams and mentoring them to their potential.
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I pride myself on ensuring my team and I create and foster rock-solid relationships with our respective peers in Engineering, UX, Sales, Marketing, and professional services/support.
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Ensuring my teams and I hold ourselves to a strong ‘voice of the customer’ operating model where customer data, not opinion, is used in everyday conversations about strategy, execution choices, roadmaps, and daily decisions about what to and NOT to work on.
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I have managed teams as small as 2 in a startup environment and as large as 200 in large global organizations up to $6b in annual revenue.
860-689-4290 aaron@videtto.com
EXPERIENCE
October 2022 – Present
Principal Consultant
Videtto Consulting Group, LLC
Providing fractional Chief Product Officer (CPO) executive services to pre-series A startups to help them with various aspects of their product development and growth. With Product/Market fit, assists in determining their ideal customer segments and defining the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the Served Available Market (SAM) for their product. Develops comprehensive business plans that include a 3-year P&L estimation, a roadmap to profitability, and outlines the key metrics, goals, and strategies necessary to achieve financial sustainability and growth. In addition, prepares clients for critical investor meetings and supports the presentation and communication of their product vision and growth plans.
May 2022 – October 2022
Senior Vice President, Product & Customer Experience
Came into a new organization where the product management function previously did not exist. In just 5 short months Aaron had three main accomplishments: 1) Created and rolled out the PM function, supporting teams and org processes, 2) Led the development and implementation of a 36-month product and service offering roadmap, 3) Defined requirements, CX and UX for the company’s first customer portal.
January 2021 – May 2022
Chief Customer Officer
Created the customer success organization from scratch by integrating existing and new external team members. Orchestrated oversight, training, and continuous improvement for a team of account managers and customer success specialists in facilitating customer retention and generating revenue and margin growth. Formulated and deployed cross-functional processes for optimizing executive management structure, developing and funding new service offerings, conducting customer success evaluation, and driving customer evangelism programs.
May 2018 – January 2021
Director, Product Management – CT Corporation
Oversaw a team of product managers developing a global line of tech-enabled services that grew and delivered roughly $180M in annual revenue. Initiated the adoption of numerous cross-functional and enterprise-wide product management processes, significantly improving product management practices' visibility, accountability, and effectiveness. Overhauled the digital customer experience model based on VoC while managing one of three major components of a high-impact digital transformation initiative. Reimagined the digital customer experience while consolidating over 17 separate portals into a single experience that met customers where they worked so they could conduct business the way they desired.
February 2017 – May 2018
Director, Office Shipping Solutions BU
Managed P&L and all operational areas of a global $100M business unit with a keen focus on executing short- and long-term strategies for sales, marketing and promotion, product development, and customer satisfaction and retention. Oversaw market success of five global products, along with corresponding strategy and targets.
January 2015 – February 2017
Director, Global SaaS Solutions
Launched the first software-as-a-service (SaaS) product in this business unit to replace a 12-year-old on-premises
solution by focusing on the pragmatic marketing approach, defining customer problems, and releasing a product within six months in 12 markets across the globe with a laser focus on the customer & user experience.
September 2013 – January 2015
Senior Manager & Chief of Staff to Chief Product Officer
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Led the design, creation, staffing, and development of the new product management team; oversaw daily activities, including product roadmap creation and executive review, GTM planning, product documentation and delivery, prototype development, administrative review, and market and competitive intelligence research.
RESULTS
Played an essential role in generating a 4% year-over-year growth for a highly underperforming business unit while accomplishing 95% of the revenue budget as opposed to the four-year average of 63%.
Reimagined the digital customer experience while consolidating over 17 separate portals into a single experience that met customers where they worked so they could conduct business the way they desired.
Exceeded revenue targets by 2% in 2021 while delivering 44% year-over-year growth.
EXPERTISE
Product Management
Strategic Planning
Assessments
Revenue & Margin Growth
SaaS
Market Segmentation
Customer Experience
P&L
Voice of the Customer (VoC)
Executive Presence
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Product Evangelism
Market Research
UX Design
Product Launches
Team Leadership
Communication Skills
Builds Consensus
Start-Up Mentality
Mentorship, Training &
Development
EDUCATION
Master of Business Administration
Bachelor of Science
Computer Information Systems
MEET AARON
Q & A
Who has been your main influence?
Most people don’t choose to be in product management, it is typically something they stumble into, and once they do, they are there for life. My story is the same thing. My first job out of college was as a Consulting Engineer at Citrix Systems in their labs (R&D) group. I was flying around the world installing and configuring beta versions of software solutions at various customer sites. On the plane ride home, I would write pages and pages of emails with suggestions of how our solutions could better solve the needs of our customers. There was one time that I wrote an entirely new product requirement document and re-wrote the entire UI in PowerPoint for my boss. After I landed, he called me into his office and said, “No more consulting engineering role for you; I’m promoting you to a Sr. Product Manager role. Your job is now to define our products, what they do, and how they do it.” In 2006, I was hooked on the product management discipline. I owe my entire career to that leader at Citrix.
What is your greatest accomplishment?
In February of 2017, I was asked to take ownership of a declining $100M global business unit at Pitney Bowes called the Office Shipping Solutions group. I was told the BU had been declining around 6% per year for the previous 4 years, and they were hoping that I could turn it around.
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Through what I like to call common sense management, I identified the problems, created viable solutions, and launched them quickly.
I started at the beginning, asking various stakeholders why they thought the business was failing. I spoke with sales, service, marketing, product, internal execs, and then with customers, competitors, and prospects. I learned very quickly there were a few main problems: 1. We did not have the right products, 2. Our sales team wasn't focused on selling the products because they weren't being properly compensated in their comp plans to do so and 3. it was too tricky to sell these custom solutions
How did I fix this?
I moved up the release date of a new SaaS version of a product I was building, partnered with another firm to launch a second SaaS product quickly, and created a custom deal desk that met weekly to make quick decisions on price and implementation timelines sales could use in their pitches.
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In 8 months I turned the business around from shrinking 6% YoY for the previous 4 years to growing 4%. We achieved 95% of our revenue target in those 8 months where the previous average had been 63%.
What are your long-term goals?
I will have been successful in my career when I have earned the right to hold a COO or CPO role of a $1B+ business unit of a large, publicly traded, global organization. I'm looking forward to leading a global team of professionals with whom I have unique relationships because I regularly visit and strategize with them in person.
Which recent projects are you proud of?
A small, software development outsourcing firm ObjectFrontier Software (now called Relevantz) wanted to grow from $25M to $100M in annual revenues. They hired Gartner to assist them in creating their growth plan, one of the first steps? Hire a Chief Customer Officer, creating a customer-centric culture to help grow the business. Since I had done business with them before, they called me to ask if I wanted the job. I seized the opportunity and joined knowing full well everything would have to be built from scratch. I was to own 94% of the company's revenue in the form of customer retention and growth plans.
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After joining, I did what I always do, go into learning mode. I spent time to understand the company culture, goals of my peers on the executive team, other leaders within the organization, our customers, and the members of my team. After that I created the first draft of the Customer Success Organization plan. The plan included critical elements such as: purpose, org responsibilities, team and org design, individual roles and responsibilities complete with SMART performance goals and allocations, 3-year P&L projection plan and needs assessment, and new processes to support my teams and enable them to accomplish their goals. I first reviewed this with my team for accuracy and input, and then with my boss, the CEO. After a few rounds of revisions we launched the new Customer Success office to the entire organization within 3 months of me starting there.
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Within the first year I was able to:
-Define, Launch, and Run a completely new customer success office with three main functions: Customer Relationship Managers (Quota carrying), Customer Operations, Sales Enablement Support
-Promote and rightsize the salaries of my team, as they were grossly underpaid based on others in similar roles in the market
-Grow revenue 49% in the first year, on track for 23% growth the second year (the year I left)
Do you live by any piece of advice or motto?
The team will almost always come to a better result than the individual, so surround yourself with talented individuals, engage with and listen to them, and enable them to be successful.
What are you passionate about?
Accelerating profitable revenue growth using the right mix of products and services delivered to targeted customer and market segments through a differentiated and relevant customer experience. The way this is accomplished is something I’m also passionate about, working with and learning from my peers and my customers. Correctly solving the right set of customer pains through delivering innovative solutions and products is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
What behavior or personality trait do you most attribute to your success, and why?
Everywhere I’ve worked, people have said the thing they like the most about me is my ability to get things done through a can-do and inclusive attitude.
What is the one thing you need to know about your co-workers?
How are they measuring our success?
Do you have a favorite season?
Fall is my absolute favorite season.
Who inspires you and why?
Richard Branson – To build an empire so large from nothing while maintaining humility and focusing on what matters (people) is something I greatly admire and respect from Richard’s career.
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Warren Buffett – This is one of the most intelligent people I know on our planet today. His decisions are thought out, calculated, based on analysis, and not made by the seat of his pants. To be as disciplined as Warren is in business decisions is something I greatly admire and inspire to be more like.
If you were an action figure, what accessories would you be sold with?
A magic wand – Used to deliver unthinkable solutions to the market quickly.
A magic flute – Used to build consensus and bring the rest of the matrix along with me.
A cape – because I would love to be able to fly!
INTERESTS & HOBBIES
TESTIMONIALS
Ted Best, Vice President, Product Management, Wolters Kluwer
Aaron is a passionate, customer-focused, results-oriented product leader who brings a positive and energizing leadership style to the teams he manages. He has an innate talent for getting the most out of his team while building their core product management skill set and positioning them for long-term career success. It has been a privilege working with Aaron while I was at CT, and I look forward to seeing him drive continued success at CT and other organizations in the future.
Alpana Prasad, Sr. Director, Engineering, Wolters Kluwer
Aaron is one of the most customer-centric and result-oriented product leaders I have worked with. He is a true leader and works closely with his team, peers, and stakeholders, listening to feedback and figuring out the path forward, always keeping the customer first. It’s been a pleasure working with Aaron. He is passionate, driven, and fun to work with, and I highly recommend Aaron as a business leader!
Ani John, Associate Director, Product Management, Wolters Kluwer
Having the opportunity to work in Aaron's team has been an unimaginably wonderful experience. As a Product Director at CT Corporation, Aaron led by example. He empowered his team members by helping them realize their potential and mentoring them to be leaders of their respective products. Aaron will excel in any role that requires proactive leadership with a customer-centric mindset, a supernatural capability to work under pressure, a positive approach in the face of uncertainty, and a courageous attitude to make big decisions when change is needed. I feel fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from Aaron and, on top of all that -to get to know a wonderful human being. All the best, Aaron – I hope we work together again.
