MARKETING AND SALES EXECUTIVE THINK TANK

This ITAC Marketing & Sales Executive Think Tank was held on September 14, 2005 at the IBM Software Centre.

The Attendees

  • Stephen Fair, Vice President of Sales, Strategic Accounts, Avaya Canada Corp.
  • Patrick Lance, Vice President Marketing, Avaya Canada Corp.
  • Betty Levine Gall, National Manager of Business Development, Cygnal Technologies Corp.
  • Amber Walker, Marketing Manager, Cygnal Technologies Corp.
  • James Toccacelli, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, EDS Canada
  • Ron Mitchell, Executive Vice-President North America, Marketing Communications, Fujitsu Consulting Canada
  • Belinda Tang, Vice-President Marketing and Strategy, IBM
  • Shirley Horvat, Director of Marketing, Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc.
  • Johnnie-Mike Irving, Managing Director of Sales, Telus
  • Bob Horwood, Executive Vice-President, ITAC & President, ITAC Ontario
  • Sam Jackson, Manager, Membership Development, ITAC

The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker , Principal, SMA

What is the definition of Marketing and Sales alignment?

  • Marketing and Sales alignment can be defined as a working partnership in which both areas bring value to the organization.
What evidence is there of Marketing and Sales alignment within an organization?
  • support and leadership to each other
  • a constant set of interactions
  • ongoing dialogue in similar language (at all levels)
  • organizational integration (in some cases)
  • credibility and acceptance of each other's role
  • joint market intelligence (feet on the street/experiential and market research/modeling)
What are some techniques for fostering Marketing and Sales alignment and positive relationships between the two areas?
  • cross-fertilization at meetings
  • physical integration
  • Marketing personnel facilitating Sales meetings
  • use of external lead generation services vetted internally by Marketing
  • Marketing, generating and tracking leads, Sales qualifying and entering them into the sales cycle as cold leads
What are the best new innovative Marketing and Sales practices?
  • organizations must draw on a range of best innovative practices.
  • targeting of resources to very specific high-value activities
  • highly selective customer advisory roundtables
  • highly focused sponsorship activity, creating richness in brand awareness
  • using output from executive roundtables to shape marketing messages
  • leveraging CEO surveys to determine how their top of mind issues translate to the CIO's agenda
  • developing executive relationships through ongoing dialogue
  • account-based marketing planning (focused on relationships with large individual accounts not whole industries)
  • executive visits: bringing out-of-town executives in to gain access to CEOs
  • marketing the value of Marketing inside, e.g. through white papers, posters
  • customer advocacy and information exchange; events that feature customers not company executives
  • metrics for all sales activity

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