Vice President, Enablement Strategies
SAVO

As Vice President of Enablement Strategies, Jim Moliski works with clients to design cross-functional Sales Enablement programs that deliver the “genius” needed to improve selling conversations.

Throughout his career, Jim has combined a deep interest in technology with a passion for helping companies address sales and marketing challenges. At Mercer Management Consulting, Jim worked with large corporations on marketing and strategy engagements in the U.S. and overseas. Since 1998, Jim has focused on the on-demand software environment starting as Director of Product Management at MarketHome.com, a Berkeley, California startup acquired by the publicly traded MySoftware in 1999. Jim then co-founded Optomail, a venture backed on-demand marketing solutions provider based in Tokyo, Japan. Joining SAVO in 2004, Jim led SAVO’s implementation team before transitioning to his current role.

Jim began his career as a Naval Officer onboard the USS Dubuque based in Sasebo, Japan. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

That’s why Kronos started a blog, Workforce Institute, that focuses on business issues in Kronos’ core market, workforce management, rather than on Kronos’ offerings.

In this ITSMA Case Study, we look at how Kronos has used blogging to expand its reach and influence among customers and influencers in the world of workforce management.

Key Takeaways

• Blogs, especially ones that focus on a specific target audience, are excellent platforms for discussing and debating industry issues.
• Independent advisory boards lend credibility to blogs and help generate ideas.
• Blogs need a content engine to sustain them over the long haul.

By Dave Munn, 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: Do you have any guidance or input on what you are seeing for best practices or trends on features/benefits of software support contracts?

A: In the research we have done for our members, we have found that the top drivers of value for software support are:

1. System upgrades and updates, including compliance updates
2. Bug fixes
3. Phone support
4. Online knowledge base

There are other benefits, of course, but buyers consider them secondary.

There are different approaches to packaging the support offerings. Some companies allow anyone to search their knowledge bases. Others allow only support customers to access the knowledge base.

Many companies take a tiered approach. At the highest tier, they offer an all-inclusive premium package. At the lower end, they sell a self-service support offering that allows access to the knowledge base and little else (besides updates and bug fixes). We have seen this work well in many cases. Customers like having the tiered option, and our research has found that they are generally more satisfied with the product they purchased than if they were forced to buy the one and only version of the support package.

	Do you have a sales or marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access our experience, insight, and research results.

Services Marketing News

Interviews with social media leaders at SAP and IBM, the CMO at Siemens, and why you’re spending too much money marketing to new customers.

• Interview with SAP’s social media director
• Excellent analyst reports on social media community software
• Is the rebound in services softer than we thought?
• Cisco wins social media award for simulation game PlanNet
• How IBM Uses B2B Social Media
• Interview with Siemens’ CMO
• SAP working on augmented reality for business
• What matters in the cloud? Data. EMC buys cloud data company Greenplum
• Why you’re spending too much on marketing to new customers
• When NOT to Pursue a Case Study

For up-to-the-minute services marketing news, follow ITSMA on Twitter: @itsma_b2b.

Upcoming ITSMA Events

Creating and Using Effective Thought Leadership

Roundtable
September 14, 2010
12:00 – 3:00 pm London time
Marble Arch, London

Technology and professional services companies agree that thought leadership is becoming more important to their marketing strategy, yet many organizations struggle with developing consistently good thought leadership. At this roundtable, ITSMA executives and Fiona Czerniawska, one of the world’s leading commentators on the consulting industry, will discuss the amount and quality of technology related thought leadership; examples of good—and bad—thought leadership; and why some companies produce good content on a regular basis while others produce inconsistent or mediocre materials.

The Next Generation of Sales Enablement

Basking Ridge, NJ
September 14, 2010

Newton, MA
September 16, 2010

Santa Clara, CA
September 21, 2010

(All three events are free for ITSMA members)

Join executives from ITSMA and SAVO Group, the leading provider of sales enablement solutions, and learn why so many technology and professional services companies are investing in sales enablement. The interactive discussion will cover the five areas that marketing can focus on to improve performance in sales enablement, proven techniques for driving productivity, and ideas for building a winning sales enablement strategy. You will gain insight into the innovative techniques that continue to transform many of today’s leading companies, including VMware,IBM,First Data,Experian, and Akamai.

The Year of Marketing Transformation: Doing Things Differently

November 2-3, 2010
The Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA

The Annual Marketing Conference is ITSMA’s pinnacle event, showcasing the best of the best in marketing and in the industry. This year’s conference theme is The Year of Marketing Transformation: Doing Things Differently , and the plenary sessions will focus on what we as marketers need to start doing to be seen as true business leaders. Top marketing executives and industry thought leaders from Cisco, Cognizant, HubSpot, IBM, The Farland Group, PAC, SAVO, Wellesley Hills Group, and Xerox; ITSMA’s Julie Schwartz; and others will offer their perspectives. Recipients of the ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards will share their winning practices. Attendees can also sign up for one-on-one meetings with an ITSMA expert or associate during the conference. Get more information and register: http://www.itsma.com/events/2010-conference/ .

To view all events, please go here.

Recent ITSMA Thought Leadership

How to Create a Services Development Process
Given the poor odds of success with new product and services introductions, it is important to find ways to minimize the risks of new services development. Here’s how to develop a services development process that will increase your chances of success.
Read How to Create a Services Development Process

Marketing Organization Model, Structure, and Competencies of the Future
In this online briefing, David Edelman of McKinsey & Co. considers the impact of digital marketing on the needs of the wider marketing organization ; Peter O’Neill of Forrester discusses the balance between global and local marketing; and John Lenzen of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) explains some changes that are underway within his own organization.
View Marketing Organization Model, Structure, and Competencies of the Future

Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media
In ITSMA’s recent social media survey, we found that in most organizations, marketing is the catalyst for social media being used by others in the company. In this online briefing, ITSMA’s Chris Koch and Katie Espinola will examine marketing’s role as the catalyst and offer case studies from top B2B technology companies.
View Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media

Globalizing Marketing: How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing
Globalization is making it more important to maintain an effective localized touch with field marketing. Marketers must differentiate between the marketing processes and content that can and should be centralized, and what must remain under local management. In this Viewpoint, Peter O’Neill, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester, explains how marketers can localize while they globalize.
View How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing

Based on ITSMA’s research with B2B services marketers, we’re seeing companies successfully using social media to drive more attendance and interaction at events. Social media becomes the glue that binds events together, driving registration and discussion prior to events and enabling conference attendees to continue the dialogue between events.

Use Social Media to Drive Event Participation

For example, IBM’s Software Group used social media in 2009 to help drive participation in its live user conference, Impact, which is targeted at buyers of IBM’s WebSphere software for service-oriented architectures (SOAs). IBM promoted the live event through such channels as event-specific Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, and Twitter feeds, leading to a 10% increase in registrations for the live event. But it also went beyond those simple uses to create a virtual companion event to the conference. For a company like IBM, with its global customer base, an online companion event meant that many more people could attend virtually than could afford to make the pilgrimage to the live event.

But the virtual conference did not simply piggyback on the live conference. It had its own share of exclusive sessions. For example, IBM made subject matter experts available to chat with online participants during pre-specified times and promoted these encounter sessions both on- and offline.

Avoid Creating Social Media Silos

All told, the combination of the live and virtual events generated more leads for IBM at a lower overall cost per generated lead than previous conferences.

Many marketers view social media tools such as blogs and social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn as distinct channels, but IBM’s Software Group is determined to manage them as links in a larger strategy.

“For me, having a separate standalone social media campaign doesn’t work. It’s all about integration,” says Sandy Carter, vice president, IBM Software Group Business Partners.

To get the full scoop on IBM’s plan, read IBM Software Group: How to Integrate Social Media into the Marketing Strategy.

They can’t.

The problem is that buyers see a yawning chasm between what providers know about their solutions and what they know about their customers’ businesses. But providers know more than buyers may think. And providers have valuable input to give to buyers trying to make a business case for a solution.

As long as buyers will accept it.

There are different levels of participation that providers can have in the business case—everything from constructing the whole ball of wax for them to getting shut out of the process entirely.

Providers that contribute to business case development have an advantage over those that don’t. ITSMA research has shown how important it is for customers to be able to measure their solutions’ value. In fact, almost all customers are required to make a business case for and validate a solution’s value before they receive approval for buying it.

Business cases are sometimes developed during the epiphany stage of the buying process, long before buyers have formulated their RFPs. Helping buyers with business cases at this early stage could boost you onto the short list of contenders for the deal, or even give you preferred provider status.

Rejection Is Natural

Buyers’ natural reaction is to reject our help. Our real problem, though, is that we accept that rejection at face value. We should understand that at least some of that rejection has to do with buyers and not with us.

It’s part of human nature to think that we are unique and special. It helps us get through the day. We apply that same perception to our organizations. How many times have you heard customers say, “Yes, I know we have 12 competitors that do roughly the same thing as us, but we’re unique.”

It’s also human nature, given our tribal backgrounds, to mistrust outsiders. Acknowledging that providers may already know more about their businesses than buyers think causes the same kind of discomfort as when a complete stranger approaches us already knowing our name. Customers are highly skeptical of providers’ claims, and they don’t necessarily want to collaborate with solutions providers to measure or document value delivered.

So how can we break into the business case development process? Here are some ideas to consider:

• Realize that not all business cases are alike. Although ITSMA research has shown that the vast majority of buyers are required to provide some kind of formal justification for purchasing a solution, sometimes those decisions are made based on the solution’s features and functions rather than on hard ROI numbers. Providers can offer evidence of the benefits of those features and functions with detailed case studies of customers in similar situations.Furthermore, companies frequently implement solutions to comply with regulatory changes, such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX); increase the company’s level of security; or support the company’s strategic direction. In these cases, ROI is often irrelevant. ’The features and functions are what allow a company to comply with SOX, increase security, or achieve sustainable competitive advantages that are important. In this case, providers can offer thought leadership on regulatory compliance to support the case.
• Build evidence for soft benefits. Many customers in our research look at soft metrics when building a business case and measuring a solution’s benefits, things like customer and employee satisfaction, brand equity, internal collaboration, communication, and service quality. Soft benefits cross all industry and company boundaries. Providers that can demonstrate how their solutions have improved these soft metrics with customers will have a more receptive audience among customers looking for the same improvements in their own businesses.
• Provide ideas for ways to save money. By focusing less on what solutions do and more on how they save money, we can help customers make their business cases. For example, a solution can reengineer a business process to reduce needed headcount or increase efficiency, leading to substantial savings. Providers should point out all the ways that customers have saved money using their solutions. Buyers may see opportunities for savings that they themselves hadn’t envisioned, thereby strengthening their cases.
• Establish best practices and benchmarks for processes. Business process improvement is at the core of many B2B projects. Showing objective evidence that there is a better way to do a current process helps prove the business case for a project. Providers can try to do it themselves or they can contribute to efforts by third-party business process standards organizations to benchmark and define best practices.
• Help measure post-implementation business improvements. Validating the business case via a post-implementation audit is not a priority for many customers. Such audits are costly and time-consuming. But by stressing that post-implementation measurement is a path to continuous improvement and that the solution can help by making it easier to measure the value, providers can help buyers build their business cases. For example, if a customer’s reason for buying a solution is to improve customer satisfaction or increase productivity, the solution needs to make it easy for that customer to measure improvements in these areas.

Providers that follow these five guidelines will lay the groundwork for strong, trusted, and reciprocal relationships in which customers are better able to build their business cases and are more likely to share the information providers need post-implementation to win more business.

What other ways can we help customers with business cases?

But developing a social media voice is a more complicated proposition.

A good starting point is to create a social media policy for the organization. But these policies are more like guardrails than signposts. Writing style guides can also help, but who has time to plow through them? Employees and subject matter experts need active support from marketers to develop their social media voices. In ITSMA’s social media survey, 68% said that marketing is the catalyst for social media. It’s worth our time to develop a brief guide to social media voice for employees that takes into account the unique attributes of your target audience.

Here are six important qualities to have in a social media voice:

• Authentic. Social media ups the ante for saying what you mean and meaning what you say at the time you’re saying it. In social media, buyers can connect synchronously with you and their peers, they can react instantly, and they can do so through easily accessible tools like Twitter. Obfuscation used to be a way to buy time in an era when buyers had to write letters to the company president to get their complaints heard (and they had few ways to determine whether others were having the same problems). In social media, obfuscation only brings a swift, often large-scale, backlash.
• Relevant. In social media, it isn’t just what you say, it’s the company you keep. Creating a responsive social media network means focusing on a subject that you know well and sticking to it so that people know what to expect from you. Remember that it’s as easy to disconnect from people in social media as it is to connect with them. Lack of relevance is a ticket to deletionville.
• (More) Informal. Social media are designed to elicit conversation, yet most of that conversation happens in written form. That means we need a new standard for ourselves. We should make our writing sound more like the way we speak (when we’re at work). One way to judge whether you’re being too stiff or overly casual is to read your writing aloud before posting it. If it sounds too stuffy, is overly long, or is overwrought, simplify it. On the other hand, if it sounds like you aren’t old enough to have a driver’s license, put more thought into it.
• Grammatical. Sure, social media are more informal by default, but informal doesn’t mean you should sound unprofessional. Indeed, the more personal nature of the communications makes good skills even more important because all the misdeeds can be easily tracked back to their source. It’s OK to split an infinitive now and then, but the really obvious stuff—misspellings, misunderstood words, bad punctuation, and internet shorthand (unless you are really short on space)—reflects poorly on the reputations of the communicators and their companies.
• Responsive. Just when we think no one is listening to what we’re saying in social media, we’re likely to receive a message, often from someone we’ve never conversed with before. If we ignore these messages, we lose opportunities to have interesting conversations that could contribute to our social media success. Blog comments, for example, should all receive a response from the blogger, even if it’s just one message thanking everyone for their time and good thoughts.
• Generous. Sharing is the currency of social media. By pointing to content from others that you think is interesting, you build your social network and help other social media participants build theirs. For example, Twitter updates that come with a link to something deeper to read (such as news, opinion, tips, research, and thought leadership) are more likely to be passed on, or retweeted, to others. Rarely do those links lead to paid content. Those who make their content freely available will have many more readers than those who don’t. Besides, it makes us feel good. Acts of generosity, it turns out, light up the same primitive, feel-good area of the brain that sex and food do.

Want to see some other qualities or add your own? Read 13 Qualities of a Social Media Voice.

To create the most effective mix, you must first discover which tactics best serve the goal of accelerating the buying process. However, most marketers hand leads off to sales and have no way of knowing what happens from that point.

The main obstacles to visibility are lack of systems and disparate data. Tracking leads and marketing activities in spreadsheets just won’t cut it anymore. Companies need a closed-loop system for demand generation and lead management.

Unfortunately, very few have formal lead management programs. In fact, in ITSMA’s Budget and Trends Study, this was a priority for just one of the companies surveyed. Nevertheless, for 43% of respondents, spending on marketing automation software, tools, and processes is expected to increase in 2010.

Companies that have these systems in place are experiencing many benefits:

• Ongoing personalization of marketing materials
• Closed-loop feedback with sales
• Lead tracking
• Performance metrics

And perhaps most important, these companies are gaining the ability to demonstrate the impact of marketing on the sales pipeline and on closing deals.

To hear more about the Year of Marketing Transformation, join us at our 17th Annual Marketing Conference on November 2 and 3 in Cambridge, MA.

By Chris Koch, 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: We’re past the beginner’s stage of social media. We have programs in place but wonder how we can take things to the next level in terms of engaging our audience.

A: As we discovered in our ITSMA social media survey, integrating social media into the rest of your marketing strategy is critical.

One of the most successful ways to integrate social is through events. Social media can be an inexpensive (the tools, anyway) way to engage with your audience before an event and to provide a bridge that connects to the next event, through an online community, for example. We’re hearing that event participants are often eager to keep talking between events, especially since most happen just once a year.

Marketers also use social media to drive their audience to their Websites, where they can track activity and begin the lead management process. This is important because measuring social media in isolation yields little information that the business will be interested in. The business is looking for leads and conversion into sales. You measure that by creating a lead management process that encompasses everything you do in marketing, from events to social media.

	Do you have a sales or marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access our experience, insight, and research results.

Services Marketing News

How to organize marketing, why you shouldn’t take technology out of the CIO, IBM shows off through social media, and CA has a new service for tracking opportunities.

• Why you shouldn’t take the technology out of the CIO.
• Why we need to rethink computer security: young employees view social media as a right.
• Social media engagement lags in B2B.
• IBM has an iPhone app for the US Open Golf Championship that shows off its technical abilities.
• CA taps new service to track opportunities.
• Six types of marketing structures: which one looks like your organization?
• What we can all learn from I Can Has Cheezburger: speed, flexibility, failure.

For up-to-the-minute services marketing news, follow ITSMA on Twitter: @itsma_b2b.

Upcoming ITSMA Events

Integrating Social Media into the Marketing Mix?
Roundtable
September 14, 2010
London, UK

Sales Enablement & the Changing Buying Process
Briefing
September 2010
London, UK; Texas, and California

New Partnering: Innovative Strategies in Collaborative Marketing
Roundtable
September 2010
Boston, MA

ITSMA’s 17th Annual Marketing Conference
The Year of Marketing Transformation

November 2–3, 2010
Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA

Register by July 30 for a $400 savings!

Over the past few years, marketing has weathered quite a sea change: budgets have dwindled, new tools have emerged, offerings have changed, the industry has morphed, and power has shifted. Join us as we hear from industry experts and marketing leaders about the Year of Marketing Transformation and what we as marketers need to start doing to be seen as true business leaders. Top B2B marketers will offer their perspectives, and recipients of the ITSMA Marketing Excellence Awards will share their winning practices. Attendees can also sign up for one-on-one meetings with an ITSMA expert or associate during the conference. Get more information and register: http://www.itsma.com/events/2010-conference/.

To view all events, please go here.

ITSMA Featured Research

ITSMA Online Survey: Integrating Social Media into the Marketing Mix and the Business
Social media have value on their own, but they should also be used to complement other marketing channels, such as events, whitepapers, and Websites. In this report, ITSMA examines how B2B marketers are leveraging social media channels in their marketing strategies.
Read the ITSMA social media survey

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.
Read the ITSMA Services Marketing Budgets and Benchmarks report

Recent ITSMA Thought Leadership

Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media
In ITSMA’s recent social media survey, we found that in most organizations, marketing is the catalyst for social media being used by others in the company. In this online briefing, ITSMA’s Chris Koch and Katie Espinola will examine marketing’s role as the catalyst and offer case studies from top B2B technology companies.
View Why Marketing Must Be the Catalyst for Social Media

Globalizing Marketing: How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing
Globalization is making it more important to maintain an effective localized touch with field marketing. Marketers must differentiate between the marketing processes and content that can and should be centralized, and what must remain under local management. In this Viewpoint, Peter O’Neill, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester, explains how marketers can localize while they globalize.
Read How to Sync Headquarters and Field Marketing

CSC’s WikonnecT: How to Build a Thriving Social Media Community
Private online communities are the holy grail of social media in B2B. ITSMA research shows that B2B buyers’ most valuable sources of information are their peers—nothing else comes close. Providers that can facilitate that peer connection have an unparalleled opportunity to build trust and loyalty with prospects and clients. In this ITSMA Case Study, we discover how CSC successfully navigated the challenges of social media with WikonnecT, a B2B online community for the insurance industry.
Read CSC’s WikonnecT: How to Build a Thriving Social Media Community

Xerox Global Services’ Competipedia: Using Social Media to Enable the Sales Force
Social media tools expand the possibilities of competitive intelligence by driving collaboration. In this ITSMA Case Study, we show how XGS used social media tools and principles to develop Competipedia, a wiki-based tool that salespeople can use to find and share competitive intelligence on a secure, easy-to-use Website.
Read Xerox Global Services’ Competipedia

One place where this gaping chasm between B2B and B2C is quite apparent is in the availability of a formal marketing certification.

As our profession has matured, the need and desire for agreed standards and approaches have increased. But while there are many generic marketing certifications, almost all are focused on B2C. And when B2B is included, it’s usually from a product rather than a services perspective.

The ITSMA Board Kicks Butt and Takes Names

It was this lack of formal standards that stoked up discussion among ITSMA’s European Advisory Board members last year and led to the development of the joint ITSMA/Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professional Diploma in Marketing for Business Services and Solutions. As representatives of global IT services and solutions organizations, the board members felt that there was a need to professionalize B2B marketing.

It was universally agreed that the standard to be attained was that of CIM’s Professional Diploma in Marketing, an internationally recognized qualification in best practice marketing (albeit consumer-focused). All that needed to be done was to make it relevant and identifiable to marketers of business services and solutions—no easy feat.

As discussions progressed, ITSMA members Fujitsu, Steria, and Tata Consultancy Services signed up as foundation members of the program, committing some of their most senior marketing resources to work alongside ITSMA and CIM on the development of the global B2B services marketing program.

24×7, Global Access to Course Materials

The result is the ITSMA/CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing for Business Services and Solutions, with templates, case studies, and articles specifically focused on the B2B services and solutions profession.

To address the global nature of many of the organizations in this industry, the program can be delivered using a combination of online learning and face-to-face workshop days. When required, the face-to-face days can also be delivered via virtual classroom, enabling geographically dispersed members of the marketing team to attend the same course and achieve this recognized standard together.

Philip Oliver, Executive Vice President Marketing, Fujitsu, said, “I firmly believe that the introduction of this course will benefit the IT industry as a whole and gives us a real opportunity to professionalize B2B marketing.”

The ITSMA/CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing for Business Services and Solutions will begin in September 2010. For more information click on ITSMA/CIM Professional Diploma.