Spend any appreciable time with Bob Madaio, and you’ll find him to be an easy-going, laid-back fellow who is engaging, warm and friendly. But look a little closer, and you’ll discover a competitive spirit willing to do whatever it takes to bring success to his company, and ultimately, the ability for dealer and reseller customers to win.
The vice president of marketing for Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America may be a relative newcomer to the industry, having assumed his current role in 2018, but Madaio is a quick study following a 15-year tenure with EMC (now Dell Technologies) and a six-year stint with Hitachi. With EMC, he tackled roles that included competitive intelligence, market analysis, solution marketing and technology alliances.
Thus, when Sharp was looking to fill the marketing position, Madaio’s technology marketing expertise made him an ideal fit for the gig.
“What drives me is the desire to help Sharp change in ways the competition cannot keep up with,” said Madaio, a 2020 ENX Magazine Difference Maker. “I love to see us and our dealer partners win in the marketplace, and I love healthy competition.”
Madaio credits a deep curiosity, technical and marketing acumen—combined with a constant desire to learn—as being central to his value proposition. He’s not concerned with being the smartest in the room; his real goal is to emerge with the best ideas and solutions in a collaborative nature.
The true reward, he feels, is the success experienced by others. “Bringing new people successfully into the organization and finding ways for those that have been at Sharp for a long time to look at things in new ways—and hopefully enjoy their days more because of it—is really what is most rewarding to me.”
Madaio has played considerable roles in a number of successful Sharp endeavors, including the Momentum Roadshow series and the Own IT 2020 dealer conference that positioned SIICA’s smart office solution platform front and center. The national dealer meeting attracted 1,000 guests to Las Vegas for a look into how Sharp can address the evolving needs of its partners. In the end, Madaio believes the event reinforced the position Sharp is taking in solving the office technology needs of dealers and their end-users.
While 2020 got off to a solid start, the global pandemic created an industry pause that prompted all companies to reflect and make the necessary changes to move forward in a period of uncertainty. Madaio and Sharp mobilized to confront this new reality, but the overarching objectives remain unchanged.
“At the moment, my main goal is for us to combine deep empathy for our customers’ and dealers’ situations while maintaining a maniacal focus on taking even more share from our competition,” he said. “The good news is, the more understanding we are of our dealer and customer challenges, the easier it will be to build relevant solutions that help us to win in the marketplace.”
Moving forward, Madaio believes it is important for Sharp to continue communicating its vision of simply smarter business solutions to its customers. “We can make it even easier for our dealers to leverage our content and campaigns to reach end-users,” he noted. “We can improve the simplicity and usability of our digital tools like our website and configurators. There’s plenty to keep improving—and that’s what keeps marketers energized, right?”
On the home front, Madaio and his wife, Ana Maria, have been married for 23 years. They have two children, Gia and Nick, and their dog, Milo. Travel, especially of the international variety, piques his interest. He’s taken the family on enjoyable excursions to Thailand and Kenya. He’s also contributed time and energy to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. Soccer is also high on the priority list, and Madaio has taken in matches while visiting Spain, Italy, France, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
