Reflecting the lightning speed of their industry, participants in the recent New England Technology Marketing Summit packed a week’s worth of marketing ideas and debate into a whirlwind nine-hour program.

The event, organized by the Marketing Roundtable, drew more than 150 marketing, sales and chief executives from software and technology companies to hear solutions to the toughest tech marketing issues.

By the end of the day, the message was clear: Despite all the glitzy marketing tools now available to help us do our jobs, marketers still need to focus on the key basics of knowing the customer and measuring results. Here are some highlights, with a healthy dose of both wisdom and wit.

Marketing and measurement

“We’re here to validate your frustration,” said Dan Cerutti, president of CrystalQube, as he opened the panel. What a relief.

But with the compassion comes some tough love. “Marketers don’t have a free pass any more when it comes to measuring results,” Cerutti warned.

Mac McIntosh, a B2B marketing and sales consultant, was even blunter: “Measurement isn’t hard. We’re just lazy.”

That said, McIntosh gave us the short list on the key measurements marketers can use to build success for their companies and their careers:

•What is our average
     • cost per inquiry?
     • cost per qualified lead?
     • marketing cost per sale?
     • return on investment?
• What percentage of the closed sales came from leads?
• Have these numbers improved?
• Where do our best leads come from?

“Knowing the answers to these questions,” said McIntosh, “is the key to bigger budgets, more staff and maybe even a promotion and a raise!”

Marketers have got to “follow the money” through all their activities, from advertising and lead generation to public relations and sales support.

Carol Meyers, VP Marketing at Utica, proved measurement is not only possible, it can be used to hold marketing team members accountable, with compensation based on performance. The idea of performance-based compensation got a lot of interest from participants—especially sales executives who relished the idea of marketing being held to the same standards as their comrades in sales.

“Focus on what matters and measure everything,” said Meyers, displaying samples of the detailed reports her department produces each month to track lead-generation inquiries, PR hits, analyst contacts, customer case studies and a dozen other activities.

Marketers need to “do whatever it takes” to “close the loop” between marketing activities and sales revenue, advised McIntosh. While it is a challenge, panelists recommended using all available technical and human tools to find the answers, from software to surveying prospects to hiring temps.

Marketing and product development: What gets built versus what gets sold

Companies need to dig deeper into customer problems and requests before committing to and building a complex and potentially hard-to-market solution.

“The trick is not to build what people ask for; it’s to solve their problems,” said Steve Johnson, who trains product managers at Pragmatic Marketing.

With the sarcasm of Dave Barry, Johnson quipped that “the 4 Ps of product marketing are not people, prayer and PowerPoint.”

Instead, he reminded us that the 4 Ps are the following:

Problem: Product Management finds and quantifies the problem.
Product: Development and Services solves the problem.
Promo: Product Marketing and Marcom communicates the solution.
Place: Sales Channel sells the solution profitably.

If one sentence could sum up most of the department clashes that take place between departments, Johnson nailed it with: “Nothing seems hard to the people who don’t actually have to do the work.”

Along the same lines, Bill Corrigan of Softricity gave us this down-and-dirty advice:

“Don’t overanalyze, build something that will work instead of finding the ultimate solution, and do an ROI analysis.”

Francis deSouza, who has built a fast-selling solution by anticipating and understanding the idiosyncrasies of the instant messaging market, shared this insight:

“Know where you are in the market, and pick your battles based on whether you’re in a mature market or an emerging market. Based on your market stage, you may choose to listen more to the different voices in your company: Sales is all about today’s battles. Engineering is about 18 months from now. Client Services is about yesterday.”

Then there’s the practical, down-to-earth advice from John McEleney of Solidworks:
- Learn how to “just say no” to customizations and prioritize new functionality based on ROI.
- Use Survey Monkey to poll your users.
- Try to “dummy down” the techno-speak, as in “Me Tarzan. You Jane.”

That was from just two of the seven sessions. Here are some quick takes from the other expert speakers:

• Remember that in this age of attention-deficient audiences, “marketers need to earn the privilege of selling to people,” said Seth Godin. His new book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable gives us more on the same theme as his best-selling Permission Marketing and The Idea Virus.

• Marketers need to listen to how their best salespeople talk to customers, and work on developing “sales-ready messaging,” recommended Mike Bosworth. The author of the popular Solution Selling, a classic among salespeople who specialize in complex, high-end sales, Bosworth previewed his new book CustomerCentric Selling due out from McGraw-Hill in November.

• The top five marketing priorities for tech companies are: lead generation, product launches, sales training and support, website changes and additions, and webinars and emarketing, in that order, according to a study released by IDC.

• There is still a huge gulf between marketing and sales professionals, and their perceptions of each other. To help these two adversaries play like they’re on the same team, panelists recommended techniques to build agreement:

   • Do SWOT analysis together (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

   • Collaborate on developing measurements of lead qualification.

   • Do win-loss analysis together.

For information on upcoming events in New England organized by the Marketing Roundtable, go to www.MarketingRoundtable.org

Liz Taylor specializes in direct mail lead generation for the software and technology industry. She can be reached at www.LizTaylorMarketing.com