Ever wondered what sales would do in your shoes with your budget? Want to know what sales people think are the most effective types of marketing programme? Ron Rose of HP Exstream, career IT salesman tells all…

How did you get started in IT, and what path has your career taken?

I got into IT by accident rather than design – a variety of early roles led to working for a company producing software and hardware to process cheque remittances. I had a mentor there who spotted the sales potential I had and I then took a sales role within a legal software company. At the time, software was urgently needed by legal firms, conveyancing levels were high, as was debt collection volume. Solicitors needed to computerise their time recording, start to use email, log and track documents – it was the ideal industry for technology. The company I worked for was acquired by Sanderson, one of its major products, Minder, monitored debt recovery for customers like Barclaycard. Tallyman, also a debt management product, was then developed by Sanderson. I was involved in the launch of the product and went on to sell it to customers like Lombard and British Gas and Barclays. I went on to join the London Bridge Software sales operation (later acquired by Fair Isaac) selling their Debt Manager product. After launching and running my own software reseller business for 3 years, I joined HP’s Exstream division about a year ago.

What has shaped the way you work with marketing?

During my time at Sanderson, I was actively involved in the development for a debt management software product called Tallyman. This was my first experience of developing a joint go-to-market strategy with the marketing team, and was instrumental in shaping the way I work with marketing departments now. I saw the power of merging the two disciplines during the Tallyman launch. Sales and marketing were heavily involved in all aspects, from the creation of the position and message through to the creative aspects, direct marketing and follow up. I had to work through the whole process: how do we express what this software does? How do we make the differences it has versus the competition clear? How can we get the message out? I developed an appreciation that getting all of that right is not easy. Throughout the process, sales and marketing were not two separate entities, and were never seen as such – perhaps it is the nature of a new product launch that it clarifies and makes urgent what needs to be done. As a result, we had such a dependency on each other to make Tallyman a success that I developed a deep understanding of and commitment to the marketing process.

The second major factor was an experience at London Bridge. In conjunction with the marketers, we created a joint go-to-market plan for Debt Manager. The plan was designed to support the sales process along the length of the sales funnel and sales and marketing worked together on this. Sales drove the intel from the perspective of what clients were feeling and needing, and marketing drove the positioning and messaging to attract the right type of people. They also provided the engine room to execute the programme. It was an integrated campaign that took place over the course of a year or so, and included multiple elements from seminars and thought-leadership to lead nurturing and more gentle contact activity. There was no formal “handover” point; more colleagues working together to develop a market and generate quality interest. It re-energised a whole market for London Bridge, made the product relevant to people’s challenges brought in great opportunities and have us a number of excuses to go back to people.

What changes have you seen in the way that sales and marketing work together since your experiences at Sanderson?

I’ve seen quite big changes. Marketing is less a department and more a process – more a science. In my experience, marketing teams have always been concerned with lead generation, but it used to be in the direct response arena. The marketing teams would send follow up letters and collateral after the salesman’s cold call. It’s more proactive now, plus lead generation is not the be-all-and-end-all, it’s a component of a much wider discipline.

Where can gaps between sales and marketing arise?

I’ve seen this in every IT organisation. There seems to be a cynicism, a kind of barrier, between sales and marketing people. I’m not sure why this arises, but in my view most marketing people seem very willing to engage in the lead generation process. Perhaps it happens because sales people just aren’t incentivised to engage with marketing. Sales training is also quite narrow – it doesn’t teach marketing engagement, which could be really helpful.

Poor mapping back to corporate objectives can often be to blame. The sales plan, the marketing plan and joint GTM plans have to back directly into the business’ strategy. Sales must sell what they have now, they can’t sell the future. Marketing have a more difficult balancing act; supporting now’s sales with tomorrow’s market and business development.

What’s the best example of marketing working well with you/the sales team?

It has to be the experience of the seminar campaign programme at London Bridge for Debt Manager. Why? Because in creating the GTM strategy we really questioned what we were doing. We reinvigorated a great product by building on its heritage and developed content that people wanted access to. We generated leads, all the time positioning us far enough from competitors that we were able to engage on our own terms. The programme enhanced our credibility as a company and the content we generated fed into the entire sales approach: sales pitches and bid support reinforced the messages and helped us close the deals.

What are the biggest opportunities sales and marketing have to work more closely together?

They are absolutely everywhere. It’s a question that’s very different because of the different cultures organisation to organisation. However, as a general point I would say that marketing people will get great knowledge and a lot of respect from getting more involved in the sales process itself. If they get out and meet customers, understand the products backwards, they can then get more involved in supporting the sales funnel right to the end. For example, a lot of bid documentation and presentations should have a marketing eye cast over them. Positioning, messaging, consistency – they’re critical in bids and marketing has a lot to add in this environment. I don’t believe in a designated handover point between sales and marketing, they should work together through the length of the funnel.

What would you spend marketing’s budget on if you had it?

If you asked 100 sales people, I suspect that 90 of them would say “corporate hospitality”. Partly because it’s a day out for them, and partly because they are incentivised around closing deals and the opportunity to build relationships is really valuable for them. Personally, I’d spend it on solid product awareness – being known by the right people for the right stuff. I’d want to make sure that I was automatically on the list to receive relevant RFIs; a seat at the table for big bids.

What are the most valuable things sales people get from marketing?

Lead generation without a doubt. It’s worth saying that lead numbers from marketing don’t impact my views of marketing effectiveness. My expectation as a salesperson is that I need and expect to be out there generating leads. If marketing’s doing its job well, that should be straightforward for me. Any leads I receive from marketing are a welcome bonus.

Market research is right up there too. There’s some great information and intelligence about competitors and key accounts around but I don’t always have time to track it all down. Marketing’s digest of this and view on what it means are really valuable.

The positioning, messaging and referenceability material is vital too.

What can sales teams do to work better with marketing?

The biggest battle is that sales need to believe in marketing. But sales teams are under pressure too, and the onus has to be on marketing to sell what it does and demonstrate the value. Best way to do that? It has to be to generate leads and work back from there. Marketers should work hard to develop joint GTM plans with sales and allocate a shared responsibility for its outcomes.

Understanding the psychology behind why people say “yes” can really improve both campaign planning and content. Psychologist Robert Cialdini has spent many years researching the factors of influence and persuasion and has identified the core ways in which they can be encouraged.

His book Influence is fascinating, but it’s how to exploit these techniques day-to-day campaign that’s important. Clearly there’s no substitute for great content and compelling communications, but using these methods as we’ve suggested below will definitely increase your chances of success. Here are two of the factors of influence and some ways that you could use them, I’ll cover the others in future posts:

“Much obliged…” If you feel indebted to someone else, you believe you have an obligation to return a favour, and will often go to quite staggering lengths to do so. Cialdini cites an experiment where a university professor sent Christmas cards to complete strangers and was staggered by the high number of cards received in return. In B2B marketing, we can use this technique in a number of ways:

-help someone do their job better – become a resource for them. If you can provide them with slideware or research that helps them prove their point, back up an investment case or provide a “quick-scan” guide to a new concept your content will be credited, circulated and used.
-be thoughtful – invite them to a genuinely useful event (see the Tom Ilube interview, where he says “All CIOs understand the game – they know that if they attend the event and get value from it, that they would give value back to that supplier by giving them some time face to face later on”)
-make someone feel you empathise with them and brighten their day: for example, someone sent me a very relevant Dilbert cartoon on marketing in the mail this week with a note attached, great for the standout factor
-consider the timing of your different communications too - if your recipient gets a useful download or research piece before you contact them, they’ll be more likely to speak to you than if you blasted out a non-personalised email saying “buy our stuff”.
 
“I do…” We all have a mental picture of ourselves, and we will always look to act in ways that back that up. Basically, we all try to act in ways that are consistent with our previous actions and beliefs. This is known as consistency, and when used in combination with commitment it’s very powerful. If you can get someone to commit to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honour that commitment. Cialdini describes an experiment where researchers, posing as sunbathers at a beach, picked fellow sunbathers at random and put a towel down nearby. Pretending to go for a walk, another researcher posing as a thief then stole the radio the researcher had left on the towel. Only 4 in 20 of the sunbathers said anything to stop the “theft”. In the next test on a different group, the researchers asked the sunbathers to “keep an eye on my stuff”. In 19 of the 20 cases the sunbathers turned into veritable vigilantes, chasing the thief and even holding him down to stop him running away. Some thoughts on ways this can be used:

-read quotes, keynotes, results presentations (from the individual you’re targeting and the company) and approach them in a way consistent with their stated goals and previous behaviours (as well as the company’s brand values). If they’ve made a commitment to something (best company to work for, green goals, locally-minded) then use this in your approach
-make a strenuous effort to confirm people’s places at your event as soon as they have indicated they will attend. Mention who else is attending, how they’ve also made the commitment to go, explain what’s being done and laid on, what the benefit will be, reinforce the exclusivity and the limited spaces
-consider how your calls to action can encourage people to act in a way clearly in accordance with their self image, and how you can encourage them to make a commitment on this basis. If it’s likely people will perceive themselves as time-poor then openly acknowledge this in your communications and provide them with multiple quick ways to respond
-Personalisation comes into its own here. Just a small amount of research into name, role and function can have a big impact

It’s worth noting that these work best between people, rather than companies. If the recipient thinks it’s a real person inviting them to a useful event then it will clearly bring obligation into play in a much bigger way than sending the invitation from sales@companyx. That’s why in almost all cases, something that feels hearfelt and personal will work better than even the most stunning branding.

Building lead generation programmes for 2009? We’ve put together our 7 critical success factors – the things we’ve seen the best lead generation programmes have in common.

The 7 factors below are in order chronologically. Approaching them in this order (starting with the data, moving through the development of a reputation, building access at the right level and then a concentration on timing) has the greatest cumulative effect.

Factor 1: The best campaigns have a deep understanding of the data set to be campaigned on. Typically, the data set and a joint go-to-market strategy around it have been developed with the sales team at the outset. Marketers who use the sales teams’ knowledge to help segment and tier target organisations and develop specific programmes for each will have best success.

Factor 2: The internet is rapidly becoming a fantastic source of information. Both to get your data (sources such as LinkedIn and ZoomInfo) and to work out who should be in it (searching Monster for job descriptions similar to those of the people you are targeting, reading end-user blogs (ie Waitrose’s MD kept a blog for the whole of last year). Real-time information helps targeted campaigns strike at the most opportune moment.

Factor 3: It’s not just the data you have – you need to ensure you are positioning to attract the right kind of customers. If you occupy the right position in people’s minds, they will come to you, or at least meet you halfway. In building a compelling set of content using to communicate intelligently with it, you’ll find you are attracting people, and your data set will grow organically as contacts and colleagues add themselves to your database.

Factor 4: In the lead generation space there’s a lot of debate about spend on brand awareness versus lead generation. The best campaigns acknowledge that it’s never about one or the other. Continuous campaigning builds brand through the very process of a longer term communication strategy that adds value, changes opinion, positions… and in doing so, generates leads.

Factor 5: In designing the content of a campaign, first consider the prospect’s next step. In enterprise B2B marketing, the next step is very rarely to click and buy. Think through the journey you want the prospect to go on, and sell the next step more than selling the product or service.

Factor 6: The quality of the content you’re providing is critical. In the spirit of reciprocity, people receiving your campaign will only give once they’ve taken – it’s all about a value exchange. It doesn’t have to be big on spend, but rather big on thought. What do they really need to help them do their jobs better? Become a resource for your target audience  – crack this and you’re streets ahead of a traditional campaign.

Factor 7: Work hard to know when it’s right. Industry statistics suggest that only ¼ of leads generated are ever sales ready at the point of generation. Monitor news and accounts and keep good records of purchasing cycles. Work a mixture of useful information and harder sales messages through your ongoing communications, pushing harder when your intel suggests you should, and taking a softly-softly approach at other times. Factor 2 can help you here as well, intelligence from the research (the web, your sales team etc) can tell you when you approach a company or industry.

Here’s a snapshot of the programmes we predict a major focus on for next year – an insight into what the best marketing departments will be doing in 2009.

4 key strands are emerging – a spotlight on data, gaining access at the right level, enhancing credibility and building programmes that appreciate timing and lead nurturing.

Spotlight on data

1.       Marketing teams will focus on building solid data platforms to increase effectiveness and control spend. The data sets they need to work on will take two forms – intelligence on customers (what they are interested in and how they are responding) and quality of contact data.

2.       Joint planning with sales (from account planning to CRM implementation) – marketing teams will be creating a single go-to-market strategy for key clients and segments with their sales counterparts.

3.       Key account monitoring – in an increasingly unpredictable environment those first to respond to opportunities will have the upper hand. Marketers are increasingly looking to us to monitor activity within key accounts and suggest appropriate actions to capitalise on any changes.

Building access at the right level

1.       Marketers are looking to improve the access they have at the right levels within the target organisations, as research shows that a focus on the C-level alone omits a broad sweep of other decision-makers. From partnering with influential network-owners through to building.

2.       Access is gained through a bargaining process – marketers need to work out how to give value through their communications and positioning, and work out how they want that to be reciprocated by the target. Good programmes will attract the right people and build strong relationships that can be further leveraged through networking.

Enhancing credibility

1.       Companies must position well next year to attract the right opportunities (without wasting money chasing the wrong ones. ) Authoritative comment will be critical to this – in 2009 marcomms ‘copy’ will move up several gears in terms of seniority and knowledge, becoming market comment. If something is perceived as “marketing” by the recipient then it’s probably failed – successful marcomms in this environment will feel like part of a good conversation.

2.       There will be an increasing use of the semantic web to understand and extend networks. People are publishing information about themselves, what they want and what they are interested in more than ever before. Programmes are being built that capitalise on that “interested market” information.

Understanding timing

1.       The emergence of continuous customer contact programmes that tie the three elements of the above together with characterise 2009. These lead generation “engines” will focus spend on enhancing reputation and favourability with only those customers most likely to buy, whilst appreciating that not all will be immediately ready to do so.

2.       Communications will focus on selling the next step, not just the end product. Ongoing comms programmes will drip feed useful information at the right time whilst supporting the joint lead nurturing efforts of sales and marketing.

The CIO Executive Council has released its CIO starter kit. In terms of getting inside a CIO’s head and understanding their  and how they work, it’s a fantastic resource.

The kit is made up of 20 documents created by leading CIOs, and features a research report on best practices, a guide on how to map IT to business drivers and what a CIO should do in their first 90 days.

Computing.co.uk reported this week about the rise of the interim CIO. In a very useful article, they looked at the reasons behind the increasing number of interim appointments, and made a good start at getting under the skin of this new breed.

 John Hall, who works as an interim CIO, describes how the role has come to be popular for driving through change:  “more recently it has become about change implementation. We are used to coming in and ramping up quickly, taking control and driving something forward. Also, because we are interim we are unencumbered by thoughts of our careers, any hidden agendas, or indeed office politics.”

What does this mean for IT marketers? Among the range of consequences, here are three trends we have picked up.

1. In my recent interview with the former CIO of Egg, Tom explained the importance of the ‘trusted advisors’ around him (subordinates, peers in other departments, key suppliers) – with CIO change becoming more common, it’s essential to have programmes that reach out to these other audiences.

2. Other marketing programmes may need to move from a company focus to an individual focus. We have seen great examples of event series that someone attends as CIO of one organisation, moves companies and then gets back in touch to request an invitation. Web 2.0 strategies can also be very powerful for keeping track and maintaining relationships (in a very simple example, we’ve seen more and more people subscribing to email newsletters with personal rather than business addresses).

3. Timing becomes even more important – seeing when a new CIO is brought in, understanding the change that this is intended to drive, and building your messages around this (whether advising as an incumbent supplier or making a speculative move to break into the business). Equally, it means that now more than ever it is important to be very strict before qualifying an organisation out or stopping a programme around a specific proposition – things can change overnight.

We don’t have to look far for examples of the power that these individuals hold – see the recent post on the most popular man in IT.

Tomorrow night sees the November gathering of the ever-slinky S&M Forum.

Our topic couldn’t be more timely – the need to justify the business value of marketing is perhaps more pressing than ever. Why, so the boardroom argument may go, should we invest in marketing when propping up our sales team would surely get more money in? When such a claim is levelled, marketing needs the numbers at its fingertips to respond. Why then, are they often so far from reach?

How can the marketer quantify what he or she does in terms of boardroom-friendly raw numbers? How can ‘marketing success’ be measured? What activities are generating a good return on marketing investment? Is answering any of these questions actually possible? In researching tomorrow’s event, we dug up a number of useful articles and interesting commentators on the B2B marketing measurement debate…

Starting with the basics, Jim Lenskold’s recent study (2008 Marketing ROI and Measurements Study) showed that many marketers are struggling with the fundamental measurements required to manage and improve marketing’s contribution to an organisation’s business plan.

Thus those who do measure are already ahead – the study showed that simply the act of measuring marketing in the first place has a direct effect on performance.

Respondents who described their marketing as highly effective all showed better measurement and ROI practices than those lower down the table, and they are using business information that ranges from sales reports, financial data, lead gen data, marketing spend and sales pipeline details to furnish their measurements. Perhaps most revealingly, these ‘highly effective’ companies comprised only 9% of study respondents.

Arguably, the main reason for this paucity of highly effective marketing measurement lies in collecting this data and presenting it in an actionable way to those in the marketing department, and an understandable way to those outside it. There are certainly tools that can be deployed to assist in this process, for example marketing dashboards, but the key is to have not just the short-term, but also the long-term view driving all analysis.

This long-term view was touched upon in a recent series on B2B marketing measurement in which Forrester’s Laura Ramos urged for customer-centric metrics to be employed to measure the impact of marketing over the entirety of the customer life-cycle. Ramos recommended that marketing measurement should move away from focusing on the basic lead-gen approach and towards building and maintaining brand loyalty by measuring how prospects buy, using demand management to build further customer dialogue and align marketing and sales around common objectives.

This latter point, the disconnect between marketing and sales, is often the shadowy figure lurking at the back of this measurement debate.  So much so, in fact, that one article in the Harvard Business Review from a couple of years ago, set about ending the war between sales and marketing once and for all by tackling the economic and cultural differences that usually cause the tension. But what relevance would such a sales and marketing peace treaty have to effective marketing measurement?

Unsurprisingly, it is value. With an aligned sales and marketing team communicating with the market in a consistent and timely fashion, the ROMI is not muddied by conflicting sales activity – the marketing effort put in at the beginning of the sales cycle will have a direct effect right through to the end.

Indeed, Laura Patterson develops this point when she states that marketing isn’t an island. Pulling the lens out so the focus is on sales, product, customer service and finance as well as marketing can really add value to the measurement process by placing all campaign activity into its real-world business context.

Brian Carroll’s call for a marketing funnel is another case in point. Carroll takes the view that most companies use only sales funnels to collect all their leads, qualified or not. The result is less a funnel and more a bucket riddled with holes out of which the less-qualified leads leak. By creating a marketing funnel, leads can accurately be filtered through to sales only when they are sales-ready. And Carroll agrees with Patterson when he says that measuring the effectiveness of this sales-marketing interaction is central to its success.

Generating actionable leads rather than just leads is important here too, and certainly something that should be the focus of any measurement. Lead quality is vital in the context of marketing value. For example, if a lead is measured purely as a cost-per-click (CPC), does this mean that each resulting sales opportunity is treated as equally valuable? CPC certainly has its place – if the average sales opportunity return isn’t expected to be high compared to the number of click-throughs, a decision would be made about using such a model. But if a relatively few click-throughs (with a higher-than-normal CPC) results in one or two significant sales opportunities, the value of this kind of marketing must be properly measured.

The damn lies inherent in such measurement statistics are ably demonstrated by email marketing. As Stephanie Miller points out, a study conducted by the DMA for marketing activity throughout 2007 showed that email marketing had 150% more ROI than non-email online marketing. Great, but behind these bare figures lurks the spectre of spam and the Gatling gun approach to some email marketing. Because there is simply so much of it out there, hitting thousands of potential targets with a broad email sweep usually has a negative effect of alienating potential sales leads. With a smaller but more targeted email campaign approach, the opposite can be true. Miller urges us not to be blinded by the glittering promise of gold with email marketing but to measure emails in exactly the same way, using customer take-up across different styles and sizes of email campaign to guide future success.

So, is there a danger of measuring too much? Perhaps not, if the right activities are measured in the right context. And, no matter how difficult the economic climate is, marketing value will always come down to money: the sales that are generated directly from a campaign.

As Paul Dunay suggests, in the grand scheme of things, sales is the only metric that really counts. This is, he argues is the ‘right context’ for measuring marketing value, based on three tiers of marketing metrics, with the first two tiers feeding into the most important third tier:

1. Reach metrics: the straightforward campaign hits – e.g. webpage click-throughs

2. Efficiency metrics: how cost-effective each form of reach activity was and whether it achieved the desired result – e.g. cost-per-clicks and the number of downloads of a whitepaper

3. Value: the contribution to the sales pipeline – e.g. the ROI for the number of attendees at an event

Of course, saying that marketing reach and campaign efficiency impact on and drive the overall value of the campaign is nothing new, nor is it astounding. But this is a very tidy way if thinking about it.

Measure what you’re doing to make sure you’re doing enough of it. Measure how you’re doing it, to make sure you are learning and getting better. Finally, measure if it’s working for the business. So, in the end, it’s all very simple.

(Although setting up the lean, mean marketing operation that can get hold of those figures and track them is a whole new blog post!)

“Lloyds TSB has named Mark Fisher – currently overseeing the integration of ABM Amro into the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – as director of group IT and operations.

“Fisher will join next year as a member of the group executive committee (GEC) of the newly named Lloyds Banking Group to head the integration of high street rival HBOS.” http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=19229

What makes a successful account-based marketing (ABM) programme? Great execution is essential (as is a planning framework like this one), but here we wanted to highlight three elements of programme management that we think mark out ABM that really delivers results.

Having run account-based marketing (ABM) programmes for our clients over the last 2 years (treating their key individual customers as markets of one or, at least, a few), we’ve identified these areas as essential to keep in mind.

They’re important to ensure an ABM programme stays within its original budget and doesn’t demand more management than originally expected; keeps the faith and interest of the sales or account team; and delivers the promised results.

1. Turn theory into practice: we’ve seen a few situations where ABM becomes all about the planning, and ignores the detail in execution that can make or break the programme. For example, marketing might take on the role of profiling a target account, understanding its current priorities, and handing this analysis back to the sales team with a list of propositions to target the account with. For an effective programme, this should only be the first phase (and should be done with sales, not in isolation). For marketing’s involvement to stop there means that the most effective potential actions are never taken (whether it’s creating sessions to run for new contacts in the target account, or putting more effort into engaging them with corporate materials and events, or even targeted lead generation to help the stretched account team break into a new area of the business). Equally, there will always be some personalisation – or even unique material – needed at the account level. If it was as simple as just targeting the right existing activities at an account, then everyone would be doing it.

2. Keep focus: there are instances where we’re asked to support 9 or 10 different propositions being taken into 5 or 6 areas of a customer account. While this is achievable over a year, it can’t all be done at once. The key is to pick the most important 3 propositions and find where in the account they are most suited, craft the specific story and work with the sales team to take them in (supporting by building data, or creating campaigns, doing research or preparing sales materials). This way, the sales or account team will really feel the benefit and stay engaged, without the danger that your work will either be watered down or you will be asking for more time than the sales team has to give.

3. Avoid overcomplicating: in some cases, an ABM programme is really no different from any other marketing programme, just targeted at existing customers. Yes, it needs more intelligence upfront to avoid stepping on toes or saying the wrong thing – as well as more consistent interaction with sales or account teams. But that shouldn’t stop us being able to quickly and effectively get returns from existing customers: now more than ever, they are the best sources of potential new business.

Bearing all this in mind, we can deliver the three or four key activities that will make a real difference in a single quarter.

Just in the last month, we’ve seen examples of the results: two instances where our clients have uncovered workshops in their customers that they wouldn’t have known were happening – and which they can now use to start scoping a new project. All this aside from many other meetings with fresh contacts to discuss new propositions, opportunities entered into the pipeline, bid support on major deals, and the intelligence on customer plans that we have built.

All of which ties in to our ABM planning diagram (available to view here) – a useful tool for outlining the stages and scope of any ABM programme.

In the last week I’ve met two marketing directors at global B2B companies. Both with similar challenges: in 2009 they need to do more.

Both are looking to us to make the most of their money. So what did I do? I stepped through our lead generation engine approach – how more concentrated investments in sales-aligned marketing can deliver greater results at lower costs.

Why are B2B marketing departments increasingly seeking a longer term lead generation strategy?

First, because we have to work harder now than ever to identify the parts of the market where there is opportunity. It’s still there, arguably more of it than before, but in very different places than a few months ago. Longer term campaigning actually shows you where do market next (Sign up to our IT Boomhunter series via RSS or email to keep abreast of IT market developments as they happen.)

Second, because increased cost-control is changing clients’ and prospects’ behaviour – and sales and marketing approaches need to adapt in line with this. Again, only from longer term campaigning can you see these changes before your competitors do.

Third, because marketing departments themselves are under pressure to find efficiency, increase productivity and deliver bottom line results. This can result in ‘quick and dirty’ campaigns that frustrate the sales team (see this post on selling in harder times) and actually damage your chances of selling (see this interview with Egg’s ex-CIO, explaining why one-off campaigns won’t get a hearing.)

What’s needed is a cool appraisal of the real market conditions, and a programme worked out over the long term to reduce the cost of business acquisition whilst increasing marketing efficacy.

The Marketing Practice’s approach shows that this can be done. How?

It’s not just a theory. We’ve proved it. For example, we’ve been running an executive events series for more than 2 years. Working the same set of data (because we started with a clear idea of everyone in the target audience), we’ve more than doubled the number of attendees at the events every other month, cut by 35% the cost per delegate, and delivered countless opportunities for sales engagement (exciting, because we know that the events are just a means to an end, not an end in themselves).

Or take another example – a lead generation programme running over the last 3 and a half years for a software company. Over this time, we’ve worked online, offline, through events, dinners and conferences and with ongoing teleservice. Always to the same audience, building and refining data across their target markets. These kind of programmes work right from day one and build phenomenal market intelligence.

If you want to know how, we’re running a roadshow featuring case studies of how our “lead generation engine” approach works. Drop us a line now to find out when and where.