This video was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

Many compaines would benefit if their sales and marketing teams where able to align themselves toward common goals. So why do so many companies fail at this crucial task?

CMO Heidi Melin from Polycom gives her thoughts after a panel discussion at the  Computer History Museum on Tuesday March 24.

This video was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

Marketing analytics tend to be owned by the IT deparment.  But is that the best location? And why do marketing professionals shy away from anything related to data?

Marketing Operations Director Tina Stewart from Salesforce.com weighs in after a panel discussion at the  Computer History Museum on Tuesday March 24.

This video was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

What skill sets make up an effective CMO in today’s marketing environment?

President and CEO Kevin Callaghan from Mountain Travel Sobek offers advice after a panel discussion at the  Computer History Museum on Tuesday March 24.

This video was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

Viral marketing–today’s must-have for most marketing departments. But is it actually effective or is it just so much hype?

Senior Marketing Director Tina Stewart from Juniper Networks weighs in after a panel discussion at the  Computer History Museum on Tuesday March 24.

This video was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

After the panel discussion at the Marketing Transformation Services event about best practices, I, David Spark, pulled out my Nokia N82 and interviewed people about leads, marketing and sales aligning, and how to get communities around your product. Watch the video here.

This article was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

Is your marketing department supporting the sales department? Is sales feeding back the information from the field to support your marketing? Is there a collaboration loop that’s making this all happen?

Simply put, is your marketing and sales departments aligned?

The expert panel discussion that met at the Computer History Museum on Tuesday, March 24 took these questions to task. The panel, sponsored by Marketing Transformation Services–featured:

• Lori Granville – VP Marketing Operations, Oracle
• Heidi Melin – CMO, Polycom
• Peter Finter – VP Global Market Strategy and Operations, Nortel
• Nanci Caldwell – Board Director, former EVP/CMO, PeopleSoft
• Bud Hyler – President, Logical Marketing

Some of the thoughts addressed during the panel discussion:

• Understanding the lifecycle of a deal is very powerful because you can introduce different ideas at different points.
• Shortening the time at each stage of a sales cycle is up to marketing because the sales team is usually waiting for backend processes to finish so they can move to the next stage.
• When a customer is ready to buy, let them buy.
• Forget about the purity of the marketing. It’s all about the leads and getting the sales.
• Do sales and marketing agree on how to score and value a lead? If not, start developing transparency. Don’t let marketing get away with black box-style lead generation.
• Is the sales department the customer of marketing? Sales and marketing should be one process. They have the same goal. Don’t think of it as two processes.
• Lots of discussion about the definition of a “qualified lead.” Need a real taxonomy of leads from sales and marketing.
• Sales and marketing are partners to driving revenue for the organization.
• The average salesperson underperforms the best salesperson by 30% and more. So as a marketing person you should ask yourself, “How can I help the average salesperson close?”
• 80% of sales materials get thrown away untouched.
• Address the top reasons your sales staff are stumbling.
• For the benefit of your sales force, marketing needs to be the owner of the customer.
• Get away from the tyranny of one. That’s the case when a salesperson says, “I was talking to a customer and he said we should do this. Why aren’t we doing that?” Don’t let that voice move the company. Let marketing own the customer so sales doesn’t feel that they must make that statement.

Got your own thoughts on the alignment of sales and marketing? Do you feel they’re sometimes battling against each other, or are you moving like a seamless machine? If so, what did you do and can you share your brilliance with us?

This article was produced by Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build their industry voice through storytelling and social media.

It used to be that a mention in the New York Times would be worth its weight in marketing gold. But is that still true today in this age of blogs, YouTube, and viral marketing? And how many companies understand how to implement these new technologies to productive–and profitable–use?

Answering such questions about new age media was the task for an expert panel discussion that met at the Computer History Museum on Tuesday March 24. The panel, sponsored by Marketing Transformation Services–featured:

• Anna Fieler, CMO, Tiny Prints
• Mark Wilson, VP Strategic Operations, Sybase
• Kevin Callaghan, President and CEO, Mountain Travel
• Kip Knight, President, Knight Vision Marketing
• David Spark, Spark Media Solutions
• Andrew Holtvedt, Marketing Partner, Heidrick and Struggles

The panel’s insights include:

• Don’t outspend your competitors, outsmart them.
• Videos have suddenly become inexpensive to produce, so add video to every marketing piece you create.
• Strategy still matters: make sure you have the right marketing and sales strategy to match the times.
• An effect sales tactic can be to provoke your customers by giving them something to question and think about.
• In the old days brand managers had total control over their company’s messaging. No longer. Customers now create their own messaging about your company. Embracing customers’ content is the key to today’s brand management.
• Create a blueprint before you launch your marketing campaigns–otherwise you will waste time and effort and have no way to measure results.
• Unknown companies need to think about discovery, which is defined as “how do you get yourself on the map.”
• Remember to make it easy for customers to actually buy your product.
• Look for a distribution channel wave to ride. Example: The presidential campaign.
• Create lots of different media units–video, newsletter, articles, blogs–from one concept.
• Take the content that’s hidden inside your company and expose it. It’s an untapped resource that is highly valuable to customers.
• Many companies mistakenly put marketing analysis in the IT department. That’s a mistake. To succeed, marketing departments must claim ownership over data analytics.

Challenges:

• If viral marketing is so effective why wouldn’t everyone do it all the time?
• Building awareness is not enough, you must also generate revenue.
• Good viral marketing creates something that’s related to your brand.
• Do not be fooled by traffic numbers for traffic’s sake.
• Translating marketing into customers and dollars remains to paramount goal of marketing today
• For further reading: The Ultimate Question.

Participants include executives from Adobe, Autodesk, Blue Shield of California, Cisco, CyberSource, Ericsson, Everyone.net, Google, Heidrick & Struggles, Juniper Networks, Mountain Travel, Net App, Nortel, Oracle, Polycom, Salesforce.com, Seagate, SECA Marketing Partners, Sybase, and Tiny Prints.