AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES SERIES TO HELP COMPANIES INCREASE IMPACT OF MARKETING ON SALES EFFECTIVENESS
American Marketing Association and Founding CMM Sponsor iCentera Provide Insight on Improving Marketing and Sales Effectiveness
CHICAGO, IL. January 07, 2005—The American Marketing Association (AMA) wants to help companies increase the impact of Marketing on Sales effectiveness. To accomplish this, the AMA is announcing a new series of new educational programming aimed at helping Marketers transform their 30,000-foot brand promises and positioning into more consistent and compelling selling messages used in the 3.5-foot customer buying conversation.
The newly expanded Customer Message Management Forum will provide educational programming specifically aimed at helping companies:
- Avoid parity in their value propositions
- Elevate from product to solution-oriented sell
- Deliver more useful and accessible sales-ready support tools
- Establish consistent, high-quality "single voice" across multiple touch-points
By providing best practices and practical examples of how companies can push their brand messaging further 'downstream,' the AMA will help marketers have a more relevant and serious impact on revenue-generating activities, according to Dennis Dunlap the AMA's chief executive.
"The Marketer's most powerful, but often overlooked branding tool is the field sales force," says Dunlap. "Driving the brand from the company down through its selling channels -- is what separates great brands from also-rans. And, that's where we plan to focus our Marketing and Sales integration efforts.
To accomplish this, the AMA is expanding its popular Customer Message Management Forum initiative (www.marketingpower.com/cmm). Five new sponsors have joined in partnership with the AMA to help grow the program, which has been developing over the last two years.
Founding sponsors include: Avitage (www.avitage.com), iCentera (www.icentera.com), and CMM Group (www.customermessage.com). The Associate Sponsors include: Interwoven (www.interwoven.com), and The SAVO Group (www.savogroup.com).
The Customer Message Management Forum initially started in 2002 as a group of sales and marketing experts and thought leaders brought together by the AMA. The objective was to discuss the long-standing disconnect between these two departments, and begin building best practices that focused on how both groups could better facilitate the customer buying process.
Improving the "customer conversation" emerged as the key missing link, where Marketing and Sales could come together to increase a company's selling effectiveness.
"In today's highly competitive and perceived parity markets, it's not what you sell, but how you sell that matters," says Dunlap. "Salespeople will tell me: 'It's not about where I show up; it's about what I say when I get there that really counts.' The customer conversation has become the last bastion of competitive differentiation.
A schedule of upcoming Customer Message Management Forum events and registration information is available on the web at www.marketingpower.com/cmm. Educational and training opportunities include Internet Radio Programs, Monthly Web Seminars, Regional Conferences and Published Content.
Companies that will benefit the most from participating in the Customer Message Management Forum events are the ones looking to:
- Avoid parity in their value propositions
- Elevate from product to solution-oriented sell
- Deliver more useful and accessible sales-ready support tools
- Establish consistent, high-quality "single voice" across multiple touch-points
"There needs to be a sense of urgency around solving these problems," Dunlap adds. "So, the AMA will be presenting concepts that can be applied immediately to improve the consistency and quality of your company's customer conversations in ways that can impact your quarterly results."
Customer Message Management Forum Sponsors:
About iCentera
Within 24 hours, iCentera delivers a hosted Marketing & Sales Intelligence Center that companies can market, sell, and communicate through. iCentera's icSuite provides absolute content management, private website creation, and real-time analytics so that companies can immediately begin to sell better and sell more. Founded in 2003, iCentera "Portals for Mortals" enable companies to deliver their information, their way, to whomever they chose. icSuite customers include: AlterPoint, American Locker, IPIX, netForensics, and NexTone. Partners include: The American Marketing Association (AMA), salesforce.com, and Avante Solutions. For more information please call us at 866-556-1288 or visit us at http://www.icentera.com.
About Avitage!
Since 1994 Avitage! (audio-video montage) has helped sales and marketing professionals communicate more effectively and sell more efficiently. Companies engaged in business-to-business solutions selling use Avitage! to bring selling messages to life for the sales channel and customers. By combining multi-media and web technologies with new production and delivery processes, Avitage! improves sales conversations with customers, reduces dependency on the 6 legged sales call (multiple people on a call), improves the consistency of message delivery and reduces the time and effort needed to find and assemble communications for customers.
The Avitage! Marketing and Sales Communication System uniquely enables sales people to access and use media to produce programs that are tailored to the specific interests of each stakeholder and buying situation. ALL media delivery methods are supported, including traditional PowerPoint, on demand programs and live web meetings. Contact Avitage! to learn how you can apply media and web delivery to revolutionize your business-to-business sales communications. http://www.avitage.com.
About CMM Group
CMM Group provides a repeatable process, training, message development and delivery services, to help companies increase marketing effectiveness in selling conversations, collateral and support. We help you bridge the sales and marketing divide with a customer-focused messaging process - for the sake of the customer who is trying to make a buying decision, for the sake of marketing people and sales channels who are doing the hard messaging work, and for the sake of corporate budgets that can benefit from "one-voice" customer messaging.
CMM Group is led by the people who pioneered Customer Message Management and have implemented the principles and tools with companies of varying sizes in a variety of markets, including world-class clients such as Caterpillar, Manpower, American Express, Rockwell and others. We are marketing and sales professionals who have "walked the walk" for nearly two decades. Contact CMM Group to learn more about how you can create more customer-relevant messaging, and sales-ready support tools that increase Marketing's impact on sales success. http://www.customermessage.com.
About American Marketing Association
The American Marketing Association is the source that marketers turn to every day, online, in print and in person. AMA members are connected to a network of experienced marketers that's almost 40,000 strong and includes leading marketing professionals and academics from every industry.
The AMA is information, ideas and insight that marketers can use every day, along with the knowledge that helps them grow in their career. Our web site, MarketingPower.com, is the every day connection to industry updates, news, and articles. We offer highly acclaimed seminars, workshops and Hot Topic events focused on the trends shaping the future. The AMA is also the source for the field's top publications. And AMA local chapters keep members in touch with the best people and the best practices.
For over six decades, the AMA has been the source that marketers turn to first. For more information please call (800) 262-1150 or visit http://www.MarketingPower.com.