Getting Closer to Customers: Winning Strategies for Engaging Senior Executives

October 13, 2009
8:00 am Pacific – 11:00 am Eastern – 16:00 London (Duration: One hour)
(Free for ITSMA members)

Registration is closed.

Overview

In a downturn, your lowest-cost and most-probable source of revenue is your existing clients. Trusted relationships with strategic accounts also translate into marquee references, positive word-of-mouth, and valuable insight into the most effective new offers. In this tough economic climate together with heightened scrutiny, we may be seeing the demise of high-end hospitability programs.

Consequently, marketers need to rethink their client relationship-building programs, from user group meetings to advisory councils to reference programs to hospitality and senior-level events. Relationship-building programs for senior executives at key (named, strategic, global, etc.) accounts can no longer be one-off or hospitality activities, but must be part of a portfolio of client engagement designed to progressively develop and nurture long-term relationships.

In this Briefing, ITSMA’s Julie Schwartz and Katie Gustin will address the questions that get at the heart of how to improve relationships with senior executives at your most important accounts:

• What programs and activities can be most effective in deepening relationships with senior executives? Account-based marketing? Customer councils? Online communities? What activities should you invest in and why?
• How can you improve coordination across the range of relationship-oriented programs to ensure maximum overall effectiveness?
• How can you capture the attention of these busy senior executives? What incentives do they need to participate?
• What role should marketing play vis à vis sales and delivery in maximizing relationship growth?

You’ll also hear from Tony Viola, Vice President of Marketing at Patni, and Bill Koff, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer in CSC’s Office of Innovation. Tony and Bill will describe their best-practice client engagement programs and share their knowledge and experience in an interactive Q&A format.

This Briefing is complimentary for ITSMA members and $195 for nonmembers.

Presenters

Julie oversees ITSMA’s thought leadership development and custom research. She has authored numerous reports and articles on technology services trends, marketing, branding, and sales topics, and is a frequent speaker at public events and client meetings. Julie created ITSMA’s Solutions Roadmap and Services Competency Assessment, developed a balanced scorecard approach to measuring services marketing performance, and designed ITSMA’s 360° brand assessment research, which helps companies better understand how their brands are perceived by customers, prospects, partners, employees, and influencers.

Prior to joining ITSMA in 1996, Julie was an analyst with State Street Research. Earlier, Julie was the director of professional services research for Dataquest and manager of research for The Ledgeway Group.

Julie holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated summa cum laude and was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She also has a Master of Science in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she was named a Seley Scholar.

Katie joined ITSMA in 2004 serving members through ongoing best practice and benchmarking research as well as custom projects. Katie is responsible for managing ITSMA’s highly regarded Competency Assessment Program, online member surveys, including the essential annual ITSMA Services Marketing Budgets and Trends Survey, and ITSMA’s signature How Customers Choose research program.

Katie has a Bachelor of Science & Business Administration degree from the School of Management, Boston University, where she concentrated in Marketing and Finance. Katie can be reached at kgustin@itsma.com.

General Information	[TOP OF PAGE]

ITSMA’s Online Briefings offer recent research findings or survey results from thought leaders on a variety of services marketing topics. The Online Briefings can be viewed individually, or in groups composed of people within the same company. The briefings are available anywhere in the world that has telephone service and access to the Internet. A typical program runs 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers. The person making the online presentation speaks into a telephone and advances the visual portion of the presentation via their computer connected to the Internet. At the end of the presentation. and at the presenter’s discretion, the listeners are invited to ask questions. Each listener with a question identifies him or herself and is listed in a queue and taken one at a time by the presentation monitor. The monitor also manages the question and answer session by giving each questioner access to the phone line to communicate with the presenter.

Technical Requirements	[TOP OF PAGE]

This briefing will be administered by BT Conferencing. All participants are required to test their browsers 24-48 hours prior to ensure compatibility. This test can be done by clicking here: Check your system. You will receive a pass code and dial in number three business days prior to the briefing.

The technical requirements for this ITSMA online briefing are:

• Direct or dial-up Internet connection of 56Kbps or higher.
• A separate telephone line to access the audio teleconference.
• If participating from your company, ask about your company’s Internet Firewall 48 hours prior to the event. This will enable your IT technician to reconfigure your connections if necessary to ensure access to the Internet portion of the briefing.
• No plug-ins or software downloads are required.
• System Requirements: Windows 2000 or higher, Internet Explorer 6.x or greater, Netscape 7.2 or later. The following operating systems will work with limitations: Windows 98 SE, NT Server or Workstation 4.0, Mac OSX 10.3 with Safari 1.2; Solaris 9 with Netscape 7.0 or Mozilla 1.4, Sun JVM 1.4.2.

Fees and Registration	[TOP OF PAGE]

Aside from the telephone call, the fee for the presentation is complimentary for active ITSMA members, and $195 per location for non-members.

Note: Registration is on a first-come/first-served basis. You must register by 5:00 pm ET, October 12, 2009.