ITSMA Newsletter Add-Ins 2010-03-10
Ask ITSMA:
What’s the Best Internal Communications Channel?
By Julie Schwartz, Senior Vice President of Research and Thought Leadership, ITSMA
Each month, ITSMA receives a number of queries through Ask ITSMA, a resource designed to give members a quick and easy way to get insight on important services and solutions marketing questions they face. In this column, we will publish some of our favorite questions, along with excerpts from our replies.
Q: What are the best communication channels for internal marketing communications across the organization?
A: There is no silver bullet that applies to every company. Each company has its own culture and history. For example, email might work well in one company. In another company, emails might be ignored due to overuse. Some companies have had great success with wikis. Others find that internal “radio” programs that people can download to their computers or MP3s are very effective. We have also seen weekly conference calls, microsites, online bulletin boards, and so forth . Here’s a great example of a new internal communication channel developed by Xerox:
Often faced with the same key competitors, Xerox Global Services needed a new way to share information and differentiate itself from the competition. It needed to find a way to gather competitive information from thousands of individuals and disseminate it to the entire sales force. That’s Competipedia. It replaced multiple internal content repositories with a comprehensive wiki-based Website that can be updated and edited —at anytime, by anyone —thereby creating an ongoing knowledge exchange portal for both the sales force and headquarters.
You can find more information about this and other MEA-winning programs on our Website: http://www.itsma.com/news/09-mea-winners/.
 |
 |
|
| Do you have a sales or marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access our experience, insight, and research results. |
||
 |
 |
HP and Cisco’s breakup, management challenges at Xerox, and changes at CSC lead this month’s news.
- Cisco backs away from HP partnership as the lines between services and products blur further.
- PwC talks about its best practices in social media strategy.
- CSC names new president of global sales and marketing .
- How IBM links Smarter Planet to its portfolio.
- Top five cloud applications for 2010 from IDC.
- ITV in UK signs outsourcing deal with Accenture.
- Report on the changing dynamics at Dell.
- Vendors most likely to be acquired or to go out of business before the end of 2010.
- Excellent profile of Xerox’s Ursula Burns: “I want us to stay civil and kind, but we have to be frank.”
For up-to-the-minute services marketing news, follow ITSMA on Twitter: @itsma_b2b.
Upcoming ITSMA Events
To view all events, please go here.
Tackling the Primary Impact Points for Sales Enablement and Productivity
Online Briefing
March 16, 2010
8:00 am Pacific – 11:00 am Eastern – 16:00 London (Duration: one hour)
(Free for ITSMA members)
In 2009, salespeople and business developers averaged 23% of their time on indirect selling activities that were almost all marketing related. That’s unacceptable. Though marketing budgets have been cut, marketers need to focus the resources they do have on five areas critical for high performance in sales enablement that will be discussed in this online briefing.
Avoiding the Social Media Silo: How to Integrate Social Media into Your Marketing Strategy
In-Person Briefings
(Free for ITSMA members)
March 23, 2010
4:00–6:30 pm ET
Boston Marriott Newton
Newton, MA
(Complimentary hors d’oeuvre and refreshments will be served)
March 25, 2010
7:30–9:30 am ET
Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner
Vienna, VA
(A complimentary breakfast will be served)
March 31, 2010
12:00–2:00 pm ET
The Roosevelt Hotel
New York, NY
(A complimentary lunch will be served)
April 7, 2010
12:00–2:00 pm PT
Hyatt Regency
Santa Clara, CA
(A complimentary lunch will be served)
Attend ITSMA’s In-Person Briefings to learn how to use social media to complement—rather than compete with—existing strategies and tactics. Using ITSMA research data and in-depth case studies from successful B2B social media practitioners, we will discuss the skills, processes, tools, and thinking needed to make social media a valuable piece of the marketing strategy.
ITSMA Featured Research
Services Marketing Budgets and Benchmarks: 2010 Budget Allocations and Trends
This report delivers a detailed look at the state of the services marketing profession as it exists in early 2010. It provides data on services marketing budgets, budget allocations, and marketing priorities from a range of companies across the technology and consulting industries.
Recent ITSMA Thought Leadership
ITSMA’s 2010 State of the Profession Address
In this Online Briefing, Dave Munn and Julie Schwartz share data from ITSMA’s 2010 Marketing Budgets & Trends Survey, to give marketers practical insight on how to take advantage of the changes that await in the year ahead. We have also prepared a free executive summary of our findings.
ITSMA’s Top Ten Marketing Ideas of 2009
ITSMA clients voted for these ideas with their computer mice. These are the ideas contained within ITSMA research documents that were downloaded most often in 2009, in order of popularity. We’ve created a special report with excerpts from these most-popular research documents, which you can download for free.
How to Format White Papers for Readability
Formatting is critical for pulling readers in and imparting value, even when they don’t read every word of your white paper. Here’s how to do it right.
Leveraging Reference Programmes to Help Customers Choose You
An effective client reference is one of the most influential factors in the sales cycle. In this Online Briefing, Paul Smitherman explores how to enhance the sales and marketing life cycle of value-based case studies and create strong propositions and programmes using client referral to drive sales. In addition, Patrick O’Halloran from Orange Business Services offers a case study examining Orange’s approach to reference management.
