This ITAC Marketing and Sales Executive Think Tank was hosted at SAP Canada by Cory Coley-Christakos, Senior Director of Marketing.   

What We Learned

• Gaining trust is key to lead nurturing
• SMB and Enterprise organizations need very different online marketing approaches
• Discover netweaving – can it work for you or against you?
• SMB and Enterprise organizations have the same thoughts about social media and ROI – does it need to be tracked?
• Symbiotic relationship between marketing and sales cannot be neglected
• Get your SMEs to develop content; keep it authentic to increase your brand’s trust factor

Netweaving¹ is 180 degrees different from networking where the focus is on the other person.  Netweaving is seeking to help others and networking is seeking to sell to others.  A master netweaver listens first and looks to become a resource for other people!  Many people face challenges, have needs and problems to resolve.  Netweaving seeks to help others and not sell others!  By simply asking, “How can I help you?”  Take notes about the people that you meet.

What’s your view about the best mix of traditional and online methods?

• Prospects are taking longer in the buying cycle due to online research; develop Canadian-specific content to drive them in
• Channel partners add compleity to the social media challenge to ensure the right mix of content; it’s not one size fits all
• Online marketing makes it easier to be agile and quicker to respond
• Pepper your prospects with different messages
• Email campaigns tend to be more marketing focused – not necessarily sales-oriented

Clients versus prospects – is there a difference in the marketing mix?

• Face-to-face is where you need to be – using LinkedIn is a good start
• Targeted, online campaigns are effective with customers, especially to upgrade products/services
• Face-to-face is critical for client retention; online is good to start relationship but must enhance with face-to-face
• Relationship-based marketing is key, depending on which tier the prospect is at – top, middle or chasing white space
• Prospects want to be educated before buying; they conduct online research first
• Educational events get prospects engaged; social media helps to establish credibility
• Too much importance on “lead” (prospect); cross-sell and upsells to be top of mind (customer)
• Use online marketing to create your thought leadership platform and get them in the room
• Hire your SMEs to ghost write blog content

What social media tool is most effective and how do you use it?  Specifically how and when do you use social media with traditional methods?

• Social media tools can offer a big opportunity to provide content for sales team – a place they can find information.  Sales tool enablement is the last place to invest
• Go where your customers are; participate with LinkedIn groups
• Use Facebook and Twitter for public relations messaging
• Ghost writers can impact sense of trust with the right social media message
• Re-engineer message to position pain points better; messaging needs to be customizable
• Netweaving not networking
• Personal connections can enhance best of breed relationship building

Media marketing from the 1990’s is what social media is today

How do you track ROI on online activities?  Do you use technology to track your social networking investment, and how?

• Is ROI the question?  What’s the visibility of that investment versus traditional marketing
• Stats can be obtained but show me the pipeline
• C-suite needs to be social media savvy to increase trust factors and watch the ROI increase

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – William Bruce Cameron ² 

• Social media needs to integrate with traditional marketing and show how it affects the pipeline at the end of the day
• Tools like Marketo & Eloqua help you dig up what’s in the pipeline
• Cognos, Predictive Analytics can be used to measure touches to see a prospect’s journey

What is the most effective way to ensure sales follow-up on leads generated by marketing?

• Any hint of a sales transaction on social media is forwarded to sales via traditional hand-off
• There continues to be a disconnect between marketing and sales
• Enterprise organizations have a lot of processes and levels of qualification
• Ensure you have a good strong lead definition and an understanding of a lead’s stages
• Know “who’s on first” at the onset of a campaign before hand-off
• Eloqua can track client profile.  Based on lead scoring and depending on score, hand-off is made

Attendees:

• Anu Vijh, Senior Channel Marketing Manager, Symantec
• Chub Letenyei, Senior Field Marketing Specialist, OpenText Corporation
• Cory Coley-Christakos, Senior Director of Marketing, SAP Canada Inc.
• Crystel Figaro, Marketing Manager, Canada, Pitney Bowes Software
• Cynthia Hart, Marketing Programs Specialist, Asigra Inc.
• Dave Rumer, Independent
• Deborah Brown, Independent
• Deenah Patel, Marketing & Communications Leader, IBM Global Business Services
• Doug Shirra, Director, Enterprise Marketing, Canada, SAP Canada Inc.
• Jim Theobalds, Senior Account Manager, Nova Marketing Group Inc.
• Milvi Ester, Independent
• Nicole Krolick, Marketing Consultant, McAfee, Inc.
• Wayne Hendry, Communications Manager, ITAC