World famous for its honky tonks, dive bars and dance halls, Nashville, Tennessee is the home of the Grand Ole Opry®, the Country Music Hall of Fame and countless record labels. Last week, Music City made a big impact on the channel marketing landscape with the 2015 SiriusDecisions Summit. Here are some of the new concepts and thought leadership content shared at the Summit.
Integrated Multi-Touch Channel Marketing Made Simple
In keeping with the event’s focus on effective ways to grow and outperform in today’s competitive landscape, Zift CEO Ken Romley co-presented with Lisa Vega, Senior Marketing Manager of pureIntegration, an IT Systems Integrator, HPE Platinum Partner and Intel Security Premier Partner. Their session, Channel Partner Case Study: Integrated Multi-Touch Channel Marketing Made Simple, detailed how:
pureIntegration expanded overall marketing reach by nearly 50% and increased opportunities by 20% month-over-month through Zift Solutions’ direct integration into SugarCRM®.
If you weren’t able to make it to the Summit, missed this presentation or just want to learn more about how pureIntegratinon filled their sales funnel and conquered familiar channel challenges, you can click here to read the pureIntegration success story.
The SiriusDecisions Channel Program Model
Channel Marketing Management (CMM) got some love on the main stage with a presentation by Laz Gonzalez and Maria Chen of SiriusDecisions. In The SiriusDecisions Channel Program Model, they dissected the ad hoc approach many B2B organizations take in developing a channel program and the optimal functions and processes required to drive successful partnerships and channel success. They focused their message on how to build a truly end-to-end channel management program. Key areas included the intersection of channel sales, channel marketing and channel operations. This image outlines the complete program model:
We’ll share more about the Channel Program Model in coming months, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here is a link to a recent SiriusDecisions blog post on the topic.
Critical Event Takeaways
After four and a half days there was a ton of interesting content. Here are a few critical event takeaways I wanted to share with you.
- Come to Win – Every Time! Magic Johnson kicked off the event with an inspiring keynote. It focused on the importance of understanding your customer, over delivering, and come to win – every time. Here is a post from SiriusDecisions that summarizes some of his presentation.
- Demystifying B-to-B Buying for 2015 and Beyond. This topic will surely be discussed much more in the coming months. We all know the buying process has changed, but don’t count out sales too quickly when it comes to educating prospects. SiriusDecisions presented some new findings that speak to the buying process and how sales is involved in the education process. What this tells me is that now, even more than before; sales and marketing have to work together throughout the buying process. Collaboration is a must!
- Make it easy! This was the theme of a presentation from Stephanie Sissler of SiriusDecisions. She shared the five key drivers for effectively measuring and improving the partner experience. These five “P’s” are what partners are looking for – Product, People, Programs, Processes and Promotions.
Overall, I thought it was an inspiring event. Did you attend? If so, share your thoughts, experiences and insights in the comments section below.
