How to Utilize Your Membership

This step-by-step plan shows you how ITSMA will work with you to help you get the most out of our insight, community, and advisory services.

Step 1. Member Engagement Planning

Upon joining ITSMA or renewing your membership, your member engagement director will schedule time to begin your membership planning process.

During the meeting, your engagement director will walk you through a planning guide to better understand how membership can help you with your:

• Company, marketing, and sales objectives
• Marketing strategy and programs
• Team and individual professional development
• Marketing research and thought leadership
• Peer community relationship growth

This discussion will enable ITSMA to craft a customized engagement plan that maximizes the member benefits available to you, your team, and your entire organization.

After completing an engagement plan, it’s time to make sure everyone on your team and within your organization is aware that they have access to ITSMA resources, including:

• Our Online Library containing hundreds of marketing, sales, and strategy whitepapers; along with tools, briefings, and best practice case studies
• Regular web briefings and local events
• "Ask ITSMA" inquiry service
• ITSMA’s monthly E-ZINE
• Membership rates for ITSMA workshops and conferences
• Marketing on the Verge: ITSMA’s blog on what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next

Your engagement director will support your efforts to inform your team with ideas and templates for internal promotion.

Step 2. Schedule an Insight Session	[TOP OF PAGE]

The second step in the engagement process is scheduling an Insight Session, a free half-day of consulting, training, problem-solving, or strategic review on the topic of your choice.

Members use Insight Sessions to address challenges in a variety of areas, such as:

• Developing marketing strategy and plans
• Launching new offers
• Refining value propositions and messaging
• Managing customer relationship programs such as councils, executive events, and reference management
• Exploring best practices (e.g., thought leadership marketing, account-based marketing, or demand generation)
• Reviewing services and solutions portfolios
• Educating marketing and sales teams

Insight Sessions are organized at the discretion of the Executive Sponsors at member organizations. Each member organization is able to utilize one Insight Session per annual membership term. There is no fee to member companies for conducting an Insight Session beyond any necessary travel expenses for ITSMA experts.

Step 3. Access Events & Research	[TOP OF PAGE]

As part of your engagement plan, ITSMA will identify specific events and research studies that will be beneficial for you and your team.

Members may elect to participate in:

• Give-to-get benchmarking studies
• Sponsored brand tracking studies
• Membership surveys on a wide range of topics

Select events in 2008 include:

• ITSMA's Annual Marketing Leadership Forum
• Account-Based Marketing Workshops
• Solutions Marketing Workshops
• A wide array of Web and Breakfast Briefings
• 2008 Annual Marketing Conference

Step 4. Get Expert Advice and Consulting	[TOP OF PAGE]

To gain even more value from your membership, it’s important that you and your team members are proactive about reaching out for support from ITSMA experts. Just a few of the ways we can help to achieve your marketing goals include:

• Conducting a Services Marketing Competency Assessment for up to 12 members of your team to evaluate their proficiency and help you shore up your professional development programs
• Responding to queries through our “Ask ITSMA” inquiry service

In addition, our hands-on consulting practice can help you and your team to achieve quantifiable marketing, sales, and business results in a number of areas, including:

• Go-To-Market Strategy, Implementation, and Measurement
• Brand Positioning and Differentiation
• Portfolio Management and Rationalization
• Solutions Strategy and Marketing
• Account-Based Marketing
• Customer Relationship Programs
• Sales Enablement

Consulting services are available at an additional fee.

Step 5. Value Review	[TOP OF PAGE]

At any time, your engagement director can put together a comprehensive report that outlines the activities you and your team participated in during the year.

Together, we will review the customized member engagement plan created in Step 1 and evaluate how well your goals for membership were met. The value review process will spur thinking about your goals for the upcoming year and how your membership can help you achieve them.