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Dear ITSMA Friends and Colleagues, With the holidays fast approaching, ITSMA wants to know about your charitable or cause-related marketing plans. Drop us a line to share your best practices in philanthropy. In the spirit of giving, we've also got a bounty of new research to support all your year-end strategy and budget work. Check out four new publications below on alliance and partnership programs, sales force retention, and how customers define value. And that $2,500 reward is still waiting for your top-notch job referral! Have a great December! -Rob Leavitt, Associate Director of Research, Editor of ITSMA's E-ZINE What's Hot: Standardized Customization and Automated High-Touch Professional Development: Get Smart with ITSMA December 19, 2000: High-Performance Marketing for CRM Services (Online Briefing-free for members) 2001 Events: Preview Next Year's Courses, Conferences, and Briefings Download Now: How Customers Define Value (Slides from November 21 Online Briefing) Research Desk: New Reports on Alliance Programs at AGENCY.COM and Bain & Company The War for Sales Force Talent (Research Summary) Brand Study Sponsorships Still Available-Sign Up Now! Sound Byte: Driving Business Website Traffic Member Voices: EDS Tackles COMDEX: Are Trade Shows Worth the Investment? Toolbox: A Day in the Life: Client Visit Checklist Reader Survey: Another Winner! $2,500 Reward: Refer a Colleague to ITSMA and Help Us Grow Please
forward this E-ZINE to interested colleagues! Reader Survey: Click here http://65.202.39.35/surveys/ezine_survey.asp to respond and enter a monthly drawing for an ITSMA fleece pullover. What's Hot: Standardized Customization and Automated High-Touch Are oxymorons the key to success? Every client for high-end IT services is different and has unique wants and needs. But they all want the personal touch. This is not news. The challenge for IT services providers, of course, is to standardize and automate as much as possible to drive down costs, increase margins, and maximize speed to market. So we race across a tightrope, trying to balance standard technologies, methodologies, and self-serve systems in one hand with personalized and customized service in the other. Amid the balancing act, according to Earle Humphreys, CEO of Global Network Technology Systems (GNTS), developing and packaging intellectual property is a critical success factor. The GNTS sweet spot is "network infrastructure architecture," which encompasses the design, deployment, and secure management of fixed and virtual networks. Many companies think that success in this market, Humphreys asserted at ITSMA's recent TelecomServices/2000 conference, rests solely on having a high-end, first-class talent pool. However, given that people often come and go and the labor market is tight, Humphreys believes that firms that are able to package intellectual property in the form of exclusive delivery tools and methodologies will be the ultimate winners. Such tools and methodologies are especially necessary to help business partners deliver higher-value services more quickly, affordably, and consistently on a global scale. Reliance on partners for the bulk of service delivery, in turn, allows GNTS itself to focus much more intensively on customizing standard offers for different market segments and maintaining top-level personal contact with the most strategic clients. Investing more in the creation of intellectual capital won't make the race across the tightrope any less necessary, but it might make the tightrope a bit wider and easier to negotiate. -Rob Leavitt Professional
Development: Get Smart with ITSMA
December 19, 2000, 12:00-1:00 p.m. EST: Online Briefing: High-Performance Marketing for CRM Services (free for ITSMA members) What's the latest in marketing CRM services? How does your program stack up? Join Rob Leavitt, ITSMA's associate director of research, to discuss such issues as marketing end-to-end customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, vertical markets, partners and alliances, application service providers (ASPs), and outsourcing. Rob will present findings from a new ITSMA survey on marketing CRM services and assess best practices in the industry. To register online, visit High-Performance Marketing for CRM Services 2001 Events: First Look Planning is hot and heavy for next year's lineup of industry-leading courses, conferences, and briefings for ITSMA members. Early highlights include these:
Other highlights next year include a chief marketers conference, our annual e-Services Marketing Forum, and annual conferences for marketing IT services and telecom services.
Check out Julie Schwartz's November 21, 2000, presentation with data from a recent ITSMA customer survey on how customers define value. ITSMA 2001 Events Preliminary Calendar Research
Desk: Alliances,
Sales Force Retention, and Brand Awareness
AGENCY.COM Alliance Program Maximizes Partnership Benefits: New Best Practice Case Study Highlights Alliance Program Strategies, Systems, and Initial Results Virtually all providers of e-Business services are assembling networks of partners to expand their marketing reach and delivery capabilities. However, few have invested as heavily in developing the evaluation, management, and relationship-building aspects of partner programs as AGENCY.COM. ITSMA's new Best-Practice Case Study reviews the systems and practices the company has used to maximize the benefits of an e-Business services partner network and highlights a series of applicable "lessons learned." Key takeaways address necessary levels of investment, partner recruitment and evaluation, relationship management, joint training, and unexpected benefits. "AGENCY.COM: Building an E-Business Services Alliance Program" was distributed recently to all ITSMA member delegates. Additional copies are available to members for a nominal reprint charge and to all others for $795. Bain Enters the E-Services Fray with BainNet Alliance Program: An Interview with Steve Berez, Vice President of E-Commerce, Bain & Company Alliances are all the rage in the e-Services and e-Consulting markets, but Bain's June 2000 launch of a global alliance of Internet service providers represents an aggressive initiative into the e-World from the traditional, high-end management consulting firms. Steve Berez developed and manages BainNet, and he spoke recently with ITSMA about BainNet's rationale, how the program works, and how it differs from other alliances in the IT sector. ITSMA's Viewpoint interview with Steve Berez was distributed recently to all ITSMA member delegates. Additional copies are available to members for a nominal reprint charge and to all others for $395. For more information or to order copies, visit our research library or contact Paul Gates at +1-781-862-8500, ext. 15, or pgates@itsma.com. The War for Sales Force Talent (Research Summary) The war for talent rages in the sales ranks, just as it does for engineers and consultants. Sales organizations are the most recent casualty in the fight to retain good employees, and they're asking themselves the same questions as the other industry players: How can we build IT services sales teams that are stable and satisfied? How do we combat competitive poaching? Are stock options still an effective incentive? Most important, are we doing everything we can to find and keep the best salespeople? Reducing sales force turnover is one of the most effective ways to control costs and increase productivity. External forces such as labor market conditions and the economic climate will always impact sales force retention, and there isn't much you can do about that. However, you can address the internal elements. Analysis of sales force turnover reveals multiple causes for employee dissatisfaction. These causes are often related to at least one of the three Cs: compensation (salary, commissions, benefits, incentives), commitments (quotas, deadlines, travel, stress), or consideration (recognition, respect, trust, autonomy). ITSMA's new Services Sales Effectiveness Update, "Find 'Em, Get 'Em, and Most Important, Keep 'Em: Best Practices in Sales Force Recruitment and Retention," explores the common themes and unique practices of IT services sales organizations to find, develop, and retain qualified sales forces. Key recommendations that emerge from the new Update include:
How comprehensive is your program to find 'em, get 'em, and keep 'em? -Lori Weiner lweiner@itsma.com ITSMA recently sent the new Update to all subscribers to the Services Sales Effectiveness program. The publication is available for sale to all other members for $595 and to nonmembers for $695. For more information or to order copies, visit our research library.
Sign
Up Now! Sponsorships
Still Available for Brand Awareness Research Networking and Telecom Services Brand Awareness Study, Fall/Winter Traditional equipment vendors, systems integrators, professional services firms, and a host of other contenders are vying for brand leadership in the exploding networking and telecom services space. ITSMA's new Networking and Telecom Services Brand Awareness Study will offer sponsors a choice of two markets: the services provider market and/or the enterprise market. Sponsors will help shape the survey instruments and influence the respondent profiles, as well as gaining early access to the data. Sponsor fees range from $12,500 to $35,000 per segment. Contact Matt Leary at +1-401-683-7589 or mleary@itsma.com to participate or view a study prospectus online. Only two slots left for Networking and Telecom sponsorships! CRM Services Brand Awareness Study, Winter 2000/2001 Like networking and telecom services, the fast-growing CRM market is awash in new technologies, new types of services offerings, new competitors, and entirely new business models. ITSMA's Winter 2000/2001 CRM Services Brand Awareness Study will create a critical research foundation for all CRM services providers seeking to better understand the market. Primary and secondary sponsors of the study will gain early and affordable access to fresh data on unaided and aided brand awareness, customer preferences, relative positioning, and other critical metrics in the race for market leadership. Sponsor fees range from $12,500 to $27,500. Visit ITSMA's Online Research Library, the leading resource for specialized studies and reports on branding, online marketing, professional development, sales effectiveness and other critical marketing topics. Sound
Byte: Driving
Business Website Traffic "Direct-response marketing is the most efficient and cost-effective means of driving Web traffic. If your goal is to achieve new customer acquisition, I would invest my limited marketing dollars in the following priorities:
-Craig Lakey, vice president of marketing, Hoovers, "Interview: Hoovers' VP Marketing Gives His Top Online Marketing Tactics for Business-to-Business Success," B2BmarketingBiz.com, November 14, 2000 Member
Voices: Are Trade Shows Worth the Investment On November 7, 2000, EDS announced a major demonstration initiative at COMDEX, the enormous technology trade show. The company was building the world's largest temporary metropolitan area network to service all buyers and sellers at COMDEX/Fall 2000 in Las Vegas. ITSMA wondered if such an investment was worthwhile, given our general concern with the limited payback from trade show initiatives in IT services marketing. The verdict? Well, you decide. Visit our Website to see:
Toolbox:
A Day in the Life Each month ITSMA highlights one or two new ideas, books, applications, or other tools that services marketers can use immediately to strengthen their programs and organizations. A Day in the Life: Client Visit Checklist Asking clients what they want, according to Dr. Lynn Phillips, "is counsel for despair." Phillips, a pioneer in developing, teaching, and consulting on "market-focused management" and a regular ITSMA seminar leader, urges instead that marketers study clients' behavior and creatively infer how best to help them succeed. "Becoming the client is quite different than just asking them what they want," he explains. ITSMA strongly supports Dr. Phillips' approach and often suggests the simple device of spending "a day in the life" of a strategic client. Observing how your most important clients operate on a daily basis often provides deeper insights than other research tools into how your services-or packaged solutions-can impact the client's business. Spending a day in the life of your clients can address several critical objectives, including:
Table 1 provides a handy checklist of questions for marketers who are interested in implementing a "Day in the Life" program with one or more key clients.
Reader
Survey: Another Winner! A special thanks to all those readers who responded to our E-ZINE Reader Survey last month. Readers continue to tell us they want more research findings, more commentary, and more analysis of services marketing-related news. We're working include more of this type of material while remaining sensitive to e-mail clutter.
And we do have a winner! Congratulations to Allan Kaufman, director of business planning in 3Com's e-Business Professional Services Group. Allan was the winner of our November drawing for an ITSMA pullover fleece. All December survey respondents will be entered into a new drawing for yet another fabulous ITSMA fleece, just in time for winter! $2,500
Reward: Refer a Colleague to ITSMA and Help Us Grow ITSMA is growing fast, and we can't do it alone. Opportunities to expand our highly regarded research, consulting, and professional development services abound, and we're looking to fill a number of new positions. If you know someone who can help us grow, give us a shout. |
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