Dear Readers,

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July-let the fireworks begin! To SUBSCRIBE a friend or to UNSUBSCRIBE, simply send me an e-mail at kzina@itsma.com. We would also appreciate hearing any other comments or suggestions that you have, so simply press Reply and let us know what you think. Thanks and have a great month! 

-Kristin Zina, Manager, Public Relations and Member Communications, Editor of ITSMA's E-ZINE

IN THIS ISSUE

What's Hot: Propositioning the Sales Team

Upcoming Services Marketing Events: Sign up online and receive a 5% reduced fee!

  July 27-28, 2000. Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy. Workshop with Dr. Lynn Phillips

  August 15-16, 2000. ITSMA's Annual Services Sales Forum: Selling Services in the Internet Age

  September 10-13, 2000. ITSMA's Accelerated Development Course at Babson College

  October 2-4, 2000. ITSMA's MarketingServices/2000 Annual Conference-Sign up by August 1 and SAVE 10%!

Next Online Briefing:
  July 18, 2000. Marketing Professional Services: Meeting the E-Challenge

Member Voices: Marketing vs. Sales

A View from the President's Office

What's Hot: Propositioning the Sales Team

"They just don't get it. We launched a great new service; the market is hot; the collateral looks great; our partners are raring to go, but the sales team doesn't deliver. If it's not packaged in a box and they can't offer discounts, they can't sell it."

A bit harsh? Perhaps. But marketing's view of sales is generally not, shall we say, highly enthusiastic. The sales view of marketing, of course, isn't much better: "They're good at making grand plans and PowerPoint presentations, and they're definitely good at telling us what we do wrong, but they're not really helping us."

Surprisingly, however, a recent ITSMA survey of almost 1,700 IT sales representatives at 16 IT firms showed that reps across a range of IT sectors hold a highly favorable view of selling services. Large majorities of the reps believe that selling services helps achieve their sales goals, and that their sales managers were strongly committed to building the services business.

The number-one challenge, according to the sales reps, is articulating a clear and compelling value proposition. More reps identified "justifying the services price and value delivered" as a critical barrier to selling services than any other issue. Similarly, almost 87% of the reps stated that a clear value proposition was "essential" (25.2%) or "extremely essential" (61.4%) to selling services. On a five point scale, the mean rating for this issue was 4.5, higher than any other source of success (Figure 1).

The ITSMA Services Sales Effectiveness Survey identified several other areas in which marketing can contribute more effectively to services sales success. These areas include strengthening the corporate brand, improving sales training, and providing more effective sales tools. The most important message from the survey is that marketing needs to focus more attention on developing the services value proposition. If the sales team can't explain and quantify the value, all the flashy collateral in the world can't help close the deal.

For more information on ITSMA's Services Sales Effectiveness Survey, contact Paul Gates at +1-781-862-8500, ext. 15, or pgates@itsma.com.

Given the importance of developing effective value propositions, ITSMA will host its bi-annual workshop with Dr. Lynn Phillips, on July 27-28, 2000,  Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy.The workshop will describe how to design, deliver, and communicate a superior value proposition for sustainable competitive advantage.

Upcoming Services Marketing Events

Sign up online at www.itsma.com and receive a 5% reduced fee!     [TOP OF PAGE]

July 27-28, 2000. Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy. Featuring Dr. Lynn Phillips, Executive Educator and Former Faculty Member at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford Business Schools

Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy is one of ITSMA's most highly-rated and well-attended events. It is designed to help services marketers deal with many of their biggest challenges, including defining and delivering better value to their current customers, attracting new customers with new value offerings, and performing activities required to provide or communicate value to their customers more effectively and efficiently. This event will take place at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, Massachusetts. For more details and to register, visit Building a Market-Focused Services Strategy.

August 15-16, 2000. ITSMA's Annual Services Sales Forum: Selling Services in the Internet Age

This popular ITSMA forum will explore a range of critical topics that impact the success of your services sales engine. The first day will feature case study presentations from industry leaders: Cambridge Technology Partners, Compaq, IBM, Lucent, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sun Microsystems, and Synet Services Corporation, on their sales models and best practices. The second day will feature a workshop led by ITSMA's Steve Hurley on the topic of Client Centric Selling. The session will focus on the five stage client relationship model and how marketing and sales can move clients through the stages more effectively. For more details and to register, visit ITSMA's Annual Services Sales Forum.

September 10-13, 2000. The Accelerated Development Course: Building the Foundation for Services Marketing Success

This MBA-level course highlights the difference between traditional product marketing and services marketing in the Information Technology sector, and provides the tools and techniques to be successful in maximizing the impact of an integrated services marketing program. The strategies and tactics that are successful in IT services marketing are different from those used in product marketing. This course will take place at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Seating is limited. For more details and to apply, visit The Accelerated Development Course.

October 2-4, 2000. ITSMA's MarketingServices/2000 Annual Conference: Marketing in the E-Millennium

Featuring keynote speaker Geoffrey Moore, Managing Director of the Chasm Group, and author of Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game and just released June 1, Living on the Fault Line. This conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, California. IF YOU REGISTER ONLINE BEFORE AUGUST 1, YOU SAVE 10%!

Register for any ITSMA event by calling Jeff LaVoie at +1-888-ITSMA92, ext. 38, or +1-781-862-8500, ext. 38; or register online for a reduced rate.

ITSMA 2000 Events Calendar

Next Online Briefing  [TOP OF PAGE]

July 18, 2000, 12:00-1:00 p.m. EST Marketing Professional Services: Successful Strategies for the New Economy
Complimentary for Active Members

ITSMA will explore the winning strategies of professional e-Services firms. Find out what it takes to earn more than your fair share of this burgeoning market.

Register online for the briefing now.

Please visit us online to view the technical requirements needed to participate in ITSMA's online briefings. For visitors who register for the briefing, confirmation and downloading directions will be forwarded to you within 24 to 48 hours prior to the briefing.

Member Voices: Marketing vs. Sales   [TOP OF PAGE]

Each month we ask members to sound off on a critical services marketing issue, and publish a selection of their responses.

THIS MONTH'S QUESTION:  "Should marketing report to sales, or should sales report to marketing?"

Jerry Miller, Director, Computer and Network Services, Hekimian: "This question is of the form: What is the capital of Kentucky, Louisville or Lexington? Sales should not report to marketing, nor should marketing report to sales. These are peer departments with different goals. If marketing reports to sales the longer term incentive for marketing gets lost; new products from outside current customer demands (that may not be well-articulated) do not get developed; emerging markets get overshadowed by the bigger customers who are paying the bills. If sales reports to marketing, everything will be better next year because there will not be a focus on selling what is currently available to meet this quarter's payroll (let alone sales quota). If sales and marketing are equals reporting to the CEO, then their conflicting and complementary goals can be sorted out, if not by agreement between the departments, then by fiat from the CEO. By the way, the capital of Kentucky is Frankfort." For more information on Hekimian, visit http://www.hekimian.com/.

Jim Greene, Director, Business Development, Novell: "First, in most larger companies sales and marketing are separate groups run independently of each other, yet with a mission to support each other. Yeah, right. Large companies would do well to learn from small ones and have a single VP over both sales and marketing. Why? Because the life of the business is revenue. Don't make money-don't exist. Where does the ultimate, most frequent interface to the customer reside?  With sales. Therefore, marketing should always remember that they are there to make Sales' job easier by providing tools, communicating to the customer and to the sales force, developing programs that drive demand, and making sure the customer is satisfied. Sales' job is to get new customers and to do whatever it takes to make a satisfied customer a loyal one-one that continues to buy, buy, buy. So, the question of who should report to whom is moot. They should both report to the same person and have the same goals:  Marketing to support sales and the customer, sales to support the customer, both to help the company hit its targets." For more information on Novell, visit http://www.novell.com/. 

ANSWER NEXT MONTH'S MEMBER VOICES QUESTION: "Does leaving a piece of collateral behind really make a service more tangible for the prospective client?"

Answer this question by simply sending an e-mail to Kristin Zina, Editor of the ITSMA E-ZINE and Manager of Member Communications at ITSMA, at cearnst@itsma.com, or visit Member Voices, where you can also view past months' questions and answers. Let us know what you think of this feature. Thanks!

A View from the President's Office 

"The issue of dealing with the sales force has always been the one topic that gets most services marketers worked up. I was not surprised that our Member Voices question, on the topic of where marketing and sales should report, had an abnormally high number of "passionate" responses. In general, services marketing needs to take a greater leadership role in generating awareness and consideration, in influencing what clients the sales channels should pursue, what services to offer them, what messages to communicate, and how to manage their loyalty over the long haul. This doesn't mean, taking over sales, it means helping them do their job more effectively regardless of where marketing and sales report." 
-Dave Munn, President and CEO, ITSMA

***Reproduction or disclosure in whole or in part to other parties shall be made according to the ITSMA Citation Policy. Reproduction prohibited. 

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About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we provide research, consulting, and training to the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.