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Showing posts from September, 2009

America's Healthy Future Act 2009

The following link will take you to the 223 page proposed U.S. Senate Finance Committee healthcare reform bill released today entitled America's Healthy Future Act 2009 . This will be introduced to the Senate Finance Committee on September 22, 2009. Happy reading it if you really care about what is going on. http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/091609%20Americas_Healthy_Future_Act.pdf

The Product Marketing Reporting Structure Dilemma

Where should product marketing report into within a technology organization? Marketing? Business Units? Product Management? The CEO? IDC's 2008 Tech Marketing Benchmarks study indicated that product marketing reports directly into marketing at approximately 45% of technology companies. This is by no means a clear trend to be replicated by every company. In fact, based upon years of research at IDC in this area as well as my own experience in the product marketing function, I continue to believe that the correct answer for product marketing's reporting structure is. . . . it depends. Yes, this may seem like a cop-out initially, but there really is some support for my opinion here. The first question to consider is what is your definition of product marketing? IDC's official definition is as follows: Marketing professionals accountable for developing and executing the strategy to increase market share for specific products. Activities include market sizing and opportunity ass

IDC's Sales Enablement Framework

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Sales enablement continues to be an area of opportunity for marketers to improve their credibility in the organization and their impact on the bottom line. IDC defines Sales enablement (SE) as: "The delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time in the right format and in the right place. . . to assist in moving a specific sales opportunity forward." I'd like to invite Rich Vancil, VP of IDC's Executive Advisory Group, to share with you the sales enablement framework that our team (Rich Vancil, Lee Levitt, Seth Fishbein and me) has developed: "Thanks Michael. Sales people are knowledge workers and their preparation time is all about building their knowledge so that they can have the most effective interactions with their customers. We like to refer to these interactions as 'conversations'. A sales-person's conversations can be actual or virtual; written or oral; one-way or interactive; one-dimensional or multi-media. IDC's