MARKETING AND SALES EXECUTIVE THINK TANK

This ITAC Marketing and Sales Executive Think Tank was held on January 18, 2007 at Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.

Mandate of ITAC Think Tank:

To discuss and establish thought leadership positions on critically important issues, which will be communicated to the technology marketing and sales community at large.

Issues Covered:

1. Lead generation versus brand development: deciding where to put your resources
2. Marketing to SMBs in Canada: challenges and strategies

Attendees:

  • Nancy Briglio, Territory Sales Executive, North Region, IBM Canada Ltd.
  • Linda Fitzgerald, District Sales Manager, Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.
  • Chris Herbert, Marketing Manager, Unis Lumin
  • Shirley Horvat, Senior Director, Marketing, Bell Canada, Enterprise Group
  • Nancy Mancini, Director, Marketing, Open Text Corporation
  • Cheryl McKinnon, Director, Industry and Solutions Marketing, Open Text Corporation
  • Peter Owsiany, General Manager – Ontario, Acrodex
  • Luc Villeneuve, VP, Sales Central Region, Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.
  • Dave Walsh VP, Marketing & Corporate Development, Acrodex
  • Donna Wittman, VP, Software & Peripherals, Dell Inc.

The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker, Principal, SMA.

With limited resources, it's essential to evaluate the relative effectiveness of branding and lead generation activities. Some criteria now in use are:

  • Level of awareness of various businesses i.e. if you are well-known in one business line, focus on lead generation; if unknown, raise awareness through brand initiatives
  • Relative maturity of market and position in buy cycle; entering a new geographic market may call for more lead generation
  • Size of market: unit cost of building brand may be too high for the number of targets
  • Length of view: Sales is short-term which lead generation supports. Brand is a longer term initiative
  • Cost: lead generation can be more costly than awareness building on a large scale
Some tactics to consider when balancing branding and lead generation activities are:
  • Equip good salespeople with branded messages in sales collateral
  • Build brand awareness into lead generation
  • Use your brand to position yourself as expert in a particular area to drive leads
  • Be consistent at all touch points, as brand IS the customer experience
  • State brand in terms that are relevant to the customer
  • Reinforce branding by capitalizing on word of mouth, for example through user groups, customer groups and blogs.
Specifically, with respect to the Web, sales and marketing executives recommend:
  • Using email not for “selling” but for “telling” – sharing information adds value to the relationship
  • Following up sales with email for add-on sales
  • Considering carefully the saturation point; use traditional mail to get through noise
  • Paying attention to privacy concerns
  • Using Web as part of overall marketing mix, not a magic bullet; consider where it fits in your sales cycle
  • Using email to keep the conversation active with customers and prospects; multiple touches are important during long sales cycle and can be very effective because they have “opted in”
  • Supplementing with telephone contact
SMBs (defined as less than $250M in sales, 500-1000 employees), comprising lion's share of market in Canada, can be characterized as:
  • wanting high touch attention (because they don’t have much IT in-house)
  • expensive to service, with higher sales costs
  • full of opportunities
Best ways of targeting SMBs are:
  • Segment your markets
  • Pay attention to industry: they want to know you understand their unique pains
  • Sell through channels to provide high touch
  • Use ASP model to reach smallest accounts (resellers)
  • Wrap services around the product sale (resellers)
  • Acquire players to target SMBs (manufacturers)
  • Use dedicated portals
  • Use different go-to-market strategies and business models
  • Leverage sales team at right times, focus on a few areas only
  • Mine and distribute data (holds value for SMBs)

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