Highlights from IDC's Sales & Mktg. Effectiveness Summit

IDC just completed its 4th annual Sales & Mktg. Effectiveness Summit. This was a full day event in NYC that included a great line-up of executive speakers from Careerbuilder, Akamai, Salesforce.com, ESPN, American Express and others. Although this certainly won't do the event justice, here are a couple of the "gold nuggets" that I took away from the event:

• Sales may be the "top scorer" in your company, but marketing most likely has the most "assists". [Mary Delaney, Chief Sales Officer, Careerbuilder.com] Do your sales & marketing teams appreciate the contribution of each group as well as the need to work as a team?
• "Candor", not "Cancer". [Delaney] That is, honest feedback can either be brought to the right person/team so that something can be done about it - Candor; or it can spread to every other individual in the organization resulting in lack of action and a reduction in efficiency and moral-Cancer. (I believe Mary sourced GE/Jack Welch for this philosophy)
• SF.com's framework for optimizing "Campaign to Cash": 1) Demand generation; 2) Sales effectiveness; 3) Territory and fit; and 4) Retention/upsell. No doubt this framework requires a combined marketing and sales effort, with a strong focus on data quality and segmentation its markets and subsequent strategy. They are certainly "sipping their own champagne" at SF.com. (better than "eating their own dog food")
• American Express has truly leveraged marketing asset management processes and technology(SAVO) to improve their effectiveness. For example: 1) significantly reduced the 10+ hours/week that sales spent on collateral creation and research tasks; and 2) improved usage and engagement measurement by sales of marketing's content and related assets including user and asset-specific metric reporting capabilities(e.g., 3,844 total log-ins and 12,654 document requests in the first month of their MAM roll-out).
• Akamai has taken some very tactical steps to improve marketing and sales alignment, for example: developed call scripts for inside sales and improved marketing's overall lead generation process to improve prospect qualification; created templates for more rapid response to RFPs; and developed competitive and objection guidelines for sales to help them in the sales process.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

Nudge, Nudge. Wink, Wink. Say No More. Please.

Humour can be a great route to engagement, but I thought we all knew from personal experience that if the joke has to be explained to you, then the impact is greatly diminished. It's either a bad joke or it's been badly told. Or both.



The parentheses above left me dumbfounded. Not only did it bring to mind memories of excrutiatingly unfunny speakers/party bores, it also managed to be sleazy rather than risque. If you're that unconfident about getting your idea across, tinkering at the edges will simply make things worse. Far better to go back to the drawing-board and craft it properly. If you have to explain it, rewrite it.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

The Streets Of London.

Two leading tech businesses.
Two flagship stores separated by the width of Regent Street.
Two retail experiences separated by a chasm.

This is the new Nokia store at 4 p.m. today. A stylish place but few customers, no buzz and inevitably bored staff. A sterile environment.



Literally across the street is the Apple store. A similar design aesthetic but, as ever, full of people either using it as an internet cafe or buying stuff from constantly engaged staff. An active environment.



The design and ethos of both stores urges you to interact with the products. Indeed, the Nokia store explicitly exhorts you to "discover" more about each phone. But clearly, there's a difference between the two.



Each phone says "No SIM card inserted". We all understand why and I'm not saying Nokia are doing anything wrong, it's just that the nature of their product hamstrings them when it comes to customer trial so they surely have to do something more to facilitate that discovery. Both companies have commendably strived to make these stores remarkable and they both are. But these are the very different impressions they leave.

The Nokia store is a gallery.
The Apple store is alive.
The Nokia store staff are tech sellers.
The Apple store staff are tech users.
The Nokia store is a place where you browse.
The Apple store is a place where you use.
The Nokia store is about surface.
The Apple store is about corporate DNA.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

How To Be Noticed.

Many marketers would have you believe that it's all about building a brand image by messaging and clever tactics, but really it's what you do that is much more important.

I've previously highlighted No Impact Man's decision "to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact." It has gained a lot of mainstream publicity and media coverage for sure, but the family are not celebrities and are seen as just regular customers in their local coffee shop. Except that they're not.

The woman behind the counter said to Michelle, "I just want you to know that you and your husband really make me think. I've joined an environmental group because of you and this week we're starting to compost." This woman, by the way, doesn't know about the semi-famous No Impact project. She just sees Michelle and I coming in most days, refusing to use disposable products.

People don't need to know your whole carefully-crafted marketing story. If it's encapsulated in what you do, they'll get the message.


Addendum: Perhaps this is an example of behaviour as social object.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

Real Difference?

Talking of different, I'm still bemused by Becks Vier and their "different by choice" campaign. They may well be, but the only objective attribute they mention is the 4% alcohol strength which, of course, is also enshrined in their name.

As a drinker of bottled Becks (5%), that strikes me as a claim to Vier being a weaker beer while the question of taste which is what they're really wanting to emphasise is lost in the shuffle. Yet again, we see how difficult it is to get two ideas across simultaneously.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

Make Them Laugh, Make Them Cry.

When David Ogilvy said "If you can't make a lady laugh, you certainly can't make her buy", I'm not sure this is what he had in mind.


But, amidst a sea of "Creating World Class Solutions" and "Your Growth Is Our Business" banners at the trade show that I briefly endured the other day, it was this one for a tiny accounting business that was catching a lot of eyes (and causing women to laugh) .

Now you can debate whether the impression it gives is the one you would want from your accountant, but that actually has more to do with you than them. Your worldview is beyond their control but, in a truly commoditised service business, they've shown themselves to be different and human.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More

Flaky Thinking.

Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate
Tastes like chocolate you'd brush to the floor.


Joss Stone features in the latest version of the classic Flake ad. She's there no doubt to modernise the feel, but the women who brought it to my attention had noticed something else.

At the end of the piece, she brushes away the chocolate crumbs and with it all the sensuality. Because, as my friends said, they would never brush the chocolate away, they'd eat every piece flake by flake. Here it just ends up on the floor.

Along with its effectiveness.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Read More