This photo captures the benefits of our mission delivery. Joanne Sopik, Allstream Sales Executive brought nine guests to Collaboration Event, Toronto. Her guests came to meet  her, team Allstream, attend their Unified Communications seminar, see other IT exhibitor's presentations, meet other peer's, clients and also Darryl Sittler, Host. This client committed to purchasing a PBX and SSI arranged a 15 minute "1 on 1" with Hall of Famer, and former Toronto Maple Leafs Captain Darryl Sittler. 

SSI designed the peer to peer event, motivating Allstream to collaborate with other complementary companies such as Commvault, Bakbone (seen in photo), HP Procurve, SONY, Spectralogic, Equalogic, Packeteer, BlueCoat, Datadomain, Trapeze, Marketlink/SRIT and media sponsor CRN. Collectively these exhibitor's sales reps reached out to 2,000+ clients via co-branded html trackable emails (driving web traffic), with 150 IT buyers, C levels attending. Guests enjoyed meeting Darryl and hearing his speech on "customer service". All guests received an autographed photo and signed welcome letter from Darryl and enjoyed the great food, beverages and ambiance of The Old Mill Inn.         (exhibits, photos)

Scheduled presentations, delivered in private rooms, featured many of Gartner's Top 10 list. with alliance partners teaming to provide "integrated solutions",ie;  

Unified Communications  *  Optimizing WAN performance * Data Deduplication * Virtualization * iSCSI Storage *

IP Telephony/VOIP * ERP/CRM * IP infrastructure *  Data Center/Green IT* and how these technologies integrate into complete solutions to solve business process problems. 

The event format  provides unique, affordable customer appreciation, C level PR,  new business development, team motivation, new technology education for end users and provides new vendors, such as Trapeze, a venue to attract reseller partners. 

Attendees ranged from large enterprises such as ADP (invited by Marketlink) to smaller SMB's and public sector, such as York Regional Hospital. These guests represented net new relationships for many of the sales reps. (ie. Packeteer met ADP via Marketlink and presented WAN optimization solutions to IT Manager).

The Collaborative synergy format of the events allows sales reps and marketing to accomplish several leadgen goals in a very cost effective manner, depending on their specific needs:

* 1 to 1 personalization. Format, flexibility makes event look like reps personal event to their guests.

* Promote customer referrals by showing unique client appreciation, thereby improving Netpromoter score 

* Educating clients and prospects on latest tech solutions from their company. (ie Gartner Top 10 list 2009)

* Having clients meet senior company executives and technical staff.

* Collaborating with Alliance partners to meet net new prospects in their ecosystems.

* Meeting new prospects from other exhibitors outside their immediate ecosystem thus new top of funnel contacts

* Personal motivation from meeting Darryl and learning high level achievement values and habits.

* Reach 2,000+ end users via co-branded html email E-invites from the rep and Darryl resulting in high open rates.

* Sales 2.0 Inbound marketing integration via html email links to your web landing pages & Excel csv lists of all registrants

* Meet new IT, software solutions, telecom vendors; learn about new solutions which could benefit their own clients.

* Collaborate with co-workers, alliance partners, share ideas and have some fun.

 

This shift in the buying power dynamic, market saturation for many IT, telecom, software solutions combined with slow GDP growth in many sectors, has resulted in the need for very large "top of funnels", sometimes in the 1,000's. Combined with this quantity problem is the need for marketing to deliver "sales ready" leads. Time pressed reps must focus on solutions selling and problem solving with clients, versus prospecting. However reps must still connect with and nurture many prospects in the mid funnel. This requires a well designed web enabled integrated inbound/outbound marketing automation, CRM solution and SaaS platform robust enough to handle 1000's at the top of the funnel, nurture 100's of relationships over 3-18 months in the mid-funnel freeing up reps time to handle the 25-50 "closing relationships" at the bottom.  

Sales 2.0 process methodology and tools have started to improve the productivity of marketing and sales however many companies and sales reps are still sufferring from these basic "sales readiness" problems:

* poorly defined ideal customer profiles (ICP), broken down by solution, sector sizing, buy cycles, personas

* vague definiton of business problems the company solves, by market sector, specific sub-segments 

* lack of complete ICP prospect lists with decision makers, influencers, email address, tel. number

* lack of automated closed loop lead generation process including lead definition

* sales readiness; ramp up delays for new reps due to lack of target prospect lists, basic leadgen messaging 

* sales managers who can't (or won't) assist new sales reps/teams in using new sales 2.0 tools and processes

* competition from sales managers, who are former reps, and still view their reps as competitors

* sales managers, executives not in social networks such as LinkedIN, thus depriving their reps of contacts

* manual sales tracking systems such as Excel spreadsheets, still being used today even in IT VAR sector

* ineffective websites and inbound marketing tools such as social media, SEO, web analytics

* marketing focussed on PR, communications  versus building integrated leadgen platform

* poor sales team motivation as a result of the above issues and the slow economy in general

* high sales rep turnover resulting in incomplete CRM databases as reps do not enter call notes and then leave 

* customer indifferance and low or non-existant viral referral (ie Netpromoter score)

* commoditized services/products making it difficult to reach C level decision makers and influence buying process 

* C levels ill informed about sales 2.0 process and methodologies and the new "buyer control" realities to-day

SSI Consulting & Salesstars.NET
 Georgetown, Ontario, Canada L7G 0A1 

(416) 258-1567
stuart@salesstars.net