Digest...

The first area that we identified was to make sure that we are all using the same dictionary. And we think about the whole process from glimmer in the eye to somebody signing a check and we asked the key questions: What are the various steps of the process? What does marketing have primary emphasis and control over? Where exactly does the handoff take place? And what is, in essence, the SLA between sales and marketing? To answer these questions, we came up with a taxonomy and definitions which takes into account everything from a registration, to a marketing lead, to a marketing qualified lead, to a sales accepted lead and so forth, and makes it very clear in black and white what that means and how you interpret it.

The second realization that I had is that this is a company that sells $15 billion worth of IT solutions and services to a relatively small number of very big customers, meaning long relationships and very complex engagements. In other words, perfect for account-based marketing (ABM). Account-based marketing is one of those areas that we’ve spent a lot of time initially thinking about and planning for. We have now really built a solid foundation of technology platforms to support ABM and serve the sales organization, as well as the human capital needed to align in order to make sure that those investments payoff.

So, even though we get excited about marketing technology and marketing reports and how many eyeballs we get on things, sales people couldn’t care less unless it makes their job of serving their customers easier. So, ABM makes that a much simpler discussion because we don’t run to them with colorful charts and upward looking trends. We go to them when we find something that’s happening in their particular account that is a commercial insight. Then we’ll bring a marketing person to understand what we have available and tweak it and fine tune it to really position them better with their account.

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