B2B Marketing POSTs by Laura Ramos

I am attending the Business-to-Business Forum 2010 conference, sponsored by MarketingProfs, on Tuesday, May 4.  In the afternoon (starting at 3:30 pm Eastern) I am hosting a session titled, “Marketing Challenge! Lead Management Automation Systems” which will explore the factors that make marketing automation pay off in higher quality leads and better sales relationships.

Joining me are four executives from some of the top lead management automation providers:
Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer, Eloqua
Jon Miller, Vice President, Marketing, Marketo
Kristin Hambelton, Sr. Director of Marketing, Neolane Inc.
Parker Trewin, Director of Marketing Communications, Genius.com

This discussion will not follow the typical panel discussion format. Instead, I will “challenge” my four colleagues to show how their customers address B2B marketing scenarios in innovative ways. In this format, I will pose common demand management situations to each panelist and invite him or her to describe how — using real-life examples — they see customers handle each challenge.

To be fair, I admit that we gave each panelist one scenario to ponder ahead of time.  For those attending, I thought it would be fun to preview the scenarios with you in this blog post.  Each panelist must answer one of the following, and, I think you will agree, some of these challenges are really challenging.  All are based, in part (and disguised to shield the innocent), on client interactions I experienced during my years at Forrester Research.  Here are the challenge situations I will present to each panelist — and they have only 5 minutes to answer! I won’t tell you who will answer which challenge; you’ll have to join me at the forum to find out the assignments:

Challenge 1: A large business services firm uses territory-based sales pursuit – supported by events, sponsorships, and hospitality — as its primary go-to-market strategy. This multibillion-dollar business generates almost half of revenues from several hundred of its many thousands of accounts. Contracts are multi-year, multi-million dollar and account-based marketing has been key to achieving past success. As offshore and conventional competition increases price pressure, what can your marketing automation solution offer the CMO of this firm to enable sales to increase cross-sell and upsell opportunities and to reinforce the value of maintaining an ongoing services relationship with this firm? In particular, how does your technology help the CMO identify opportunities within accounts that can include as many as a dozen decision makers?

Challenge 2: The wealth-management division of a large, national bank offers investment and equity management services through professional advisors and independent brokers. Historically, these advisors establish personal relationships with clients maintained through person-to-person contact. With the rise of electronic banking and trading, many advisors – especially independent ones — want more branding and demand generation support from the bank but worry that the bank’s electronic presence creates too much of an intermediary presence in these relationships. What can your marketing automation software offer the head of Wealth Management to empower these brokers to pursue new business more efficiently while keeping their personal relationship and brand relevant?

Challenge 3: The CMO of a high tech, 500+ person firm enjoys a collaborative working relationship with sales and strong demand for current product offerings. As a Salesforce.com user and enthusiast, he is satisfied with the firm’s current sales management tools – having made a recent investment in a custom sales portal, specialized reports, and integration with the firm’s separate telesupport system. As the economy turns around, he is feeling greater pressure to pump up the sales pipeline but is unconvinced that a marketing automation investment makes sense. What can you show this reluctant CMO to convince him that your marketing automation solution will deliver real returns on this investment, and will win converts among the sales organization?

Challenge 4: The VP of Marketing for the SMB division of a global high-tech company with offices in more than 20 countries has been using an email services provider (ESP) for many years to send out emails. The firm has extensive investment in sales automation, Web analytics, Web content management, and business analytics. They also have a multi-million record customer database stitched together through several acquisitions and legacy systems. What can your marketing automation system offer to help deliver more targeted messages to SMB prospects, develop the resulting demand, and right-channel qualified leads, all while reinforcing relationships with current business buyers to markedly reduce churn?

After answering thse four challenges, I’ll open the panel up to the audience and see if the attendees can stump the panelists further. This will be a fun, engaging, and lively session full of information to help B2B marketers understand what lead management systems can do for their business and which solution might best fit their needs.  Hope you can make it!

Please feel free to comment on this post with your ideas for other challenges — who knows, I may use the best on on Tuesday during the Q&A section!