MARKETING AND SALES EXECUTIVE THINK TANK

This ITAC Marketing and Sales Executive Think Tank was held on November 27, 2008 at Dell Canada.

Mandate of ITAC Think Tank:

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

Attendees:

  • Dave Grindal, Director, Marketing and Sales Support, ACI Worldwide
  • Lynne Tait, Director, Marketing, Algorithmics
  • Janice Hoskins, Marketing Manager, Canada, Avnet Technologies
  • Bryan Socransky, Director, Business Development, Genesys
  • Brian Stevenson, VP, Sales, Laser Networks
  • Donna Teggart, Director, Marketing Communications, Platform Computing
  • Mary Coxon, Senior Manager, Channel Marketing, Synnex Canada

Host: Sandi Sandiland, Director of Relationship Marketing and Alliances, Dell Canada

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

Issues Covered:

1. Managing Sales & Marketing through an economic downturn
2. Building cooperation between Marketing and Sales

Synthesis of Group Discussion

Most of the organizations represented are planning for an economic downturn, and are taking such actions as:

  • using contingency budgets
  • cutting discretionary expenses (travel and printing), while maintaining programs
  • conducting (more) meetings by videoconference
  • freezing hiring or, conversely, hiring (a good opportunity to recruit talent, affordably)

Sales and Marketing organizations are being affected by:

  • deferred contracts/sales (clients pushing out expenditures, if not cancelling) or, conversely, earlier deployments by stronger firms that see an opportunity to wipe out competitors
  • clients’ close rationalization of all IT expenditures
  • reduced marketing budgets
  • close scrutiny of marketing spend and pressure to demonstrate ROI on every program

Some key tactics to manage the Sales & Marketing functions through tougher times include:

  • changing core messaging from warm “customer experience and customer sat” to “ROI, cut costs, increase sales”
  • crafting very simple and specific value statements
  • moving customers to (lower cost) self-serve options and online portals
  • tilting the customer/prospect balance towards existing customers and driving organic growth, so as to protect profit margins
  • broadening geographies
  • moving into other, less vulnerable verticals
  • more videoconferencing (except at early stages of a relationship when face-to-face meetings are important)
  • sending fewer people to travel to accounts
  • creating additional reason to travel: organizing networking receptions for resellers, sales training etc.

Most agreed the economic downturn is a good opportunity to break a habit, end the culture of entitlement (“we’ve always done it this way”) and drive innovation.

Executives reported numerous frustrations between Marketing and Sales:

  • lack of understanding of/respect for roles (Marketing is the voice of the market; Sales is the voice of the customer and business can’t be driven by the Deal of the Day)
  • lack of follow-up on leads/poor-quality leads
  • administrative and turf issues (who put the lead in the system?)
  • lack of communication

Some best practices for building alignment between Marketing and Sales include:

  • putting marketing people in the field with Sales
  • Marketing: participating at events, demoing products
  • Sales: leveraging knowledge of product managers

Next Steps:

The ITAC Think Tank will next meet in February 2009.

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