Beyond "e": 12 Ways Technology is Transforming Sales & Marketing: 12 Ways Technology Is Transforming Sales and Marketing [Hardcover]

The dizzying barrage of new web-based marketing technologies is leading to confusion, the rule of “hype,” and bad marketing decisions. Beyond "e" is designed to help sales and marketing executives look beyond current ebusiness fads to understand the fundamentals that will distinguish sales and marketing leaders in the future.

Despite the tremendous sums being spent on e-commerce sites, and the excitement of creating brands and security customer loyalty on the Web, the marketing function in most businesses has not yet been dramatically restructured around technology. This is about to change. Fortune 500 companies spend roughly 25% of their annual sales on marketing and they are realizing that technology is consuming a growing portion of this huge budget. Beyond "e" is a handbook for the re-organization of the entire marketing function--so that it uses technology to maximize its impact on customers. A number of successful books have already been published on the topic of Internet-based marketing such as Loyalty.com and Customers.com. These books focus on the important topics of branding and customer relationship management. In contrast, Beyond "e" is focused not just on Web-based marketing, but the entire traditional marketing function in organizations--and how every aspect of it can be reorganized around the customer, using new technologies--not just the Web but options such as high-tech customer call centers, outsourcing pieces of the marketing function, or creating multi-channel distribution systems. The book is full of case studies from American Express, GE, IBM and other clients of author Steve Diorio's marketing strategy firm IMT Strategies. Topics include: organizing around the customer; creating an enterprise-wide "single point of contact" for customers; using technology to build and maintain customer loyalty; adapting sales and marketing techniques to the "E-world" (pricing and branding strategies).

If E-Commerce Isn't A Silver Bullet, What Is? How to Use CRM Tools, Interactive Marketing, Online Marketplaces and Other New Technologies to Drive Revenue Growth

Five years into the "e-business revolution" most businesses are still struggling to harness the power of new marketing technologies and stretch their sales and marketing dollars. Beyond 'e' will help sales and marketing executives see through the smoke of current e-business fads to understand the fundamentals of marketing strategy, and how to apply them in the midst of powerful and confusing new technologies. Beyond 'e' reveals how leading-edge businesses­­from IBM, Eastman Chemical, e-Bay, Citigroup, Dell, and others­­use cutting edge technology to to improve everything from sales force efficiency to brand management and email marketing.

Based on thousands of interviews with sales and marketing managers in Global 2000 companies, this essential guide to smarter marketing through technology covers:

• Ways to repackage or redesign products for Web-based distribution channels
• New approaches for managing an ever-expanding number of third-party distribution channels
• Ways to transform your call center from a phone-answering department to a high-impact sales team

Beyond "e" explains the benefits of today's complex technologies in language anyone can understand, and reveals what marketing executives must do over the short- and long-term to master today's technologies­­and win customers.

"Beyond "e" hits home on the emerging theme of sales force effectiveness, and looks beyond the e-business fads that have burned many managers. It's a tactical handbook for anyone struggling with the fundamentals of using technology to maximize their sales and marketing efforts."

--Don Peppers, President, Peppers and Rogers Group

"Beyond e goes beyond the typical marketing fluff. We began implementing these ideas immediately"
­­Robert Stagno, Vice President of Worldwide Direct Marketing, IBM

"...An outstanding blend of strategic insights and pragmatic
advice."
­­Dale Kutnick, CEO of The META Group

"How will sales and marketing executives survive the next technology cycle? How can we turn technology chaos into advantage? What are the best opportunities to take right now? This book will help you answer those questions for your organization, using strategies based on the innovations and forward thinking of some of America's top companies..."
­­From the Foreword

Technology has transformed the ways that marketers must approach operations, channels, and customer bases ... and changes in the next decade will be even more dramatic. Beyond "e" shows marketing managers how to successfully blend current and future technologies into their existing marketing strategies, broadening their marketing reach while simultaneously focussing on the wants and needs of particular groups and even individual customers.

Each of the book's twelve chapters outlines how technology will impact a particular aspect of sales and marketing, laying out specific management strategies for taking advantage of these opportunities. Based on research conducted by IMT Strategies, Beyond "e"provides insightful analyses and hands-on recommendations, including:

• Branding strategies to meet the changing needs of online buyers
• How to integrate interactive direct marketing tools into existing marketing mixes
• Six fundamental ways that networks will revolutionize the flow of information
• Techniques for mastering customer service delivery across many channels
• Seven short-term tactics to protect margins and boost market share
• How to maximize new, technology-enabled, peer-to-peer networking systems
• Ways to transform call centers into strategic traffic cops
• Strategies to organize around customers and processes, instead of products and business units

Far too often, successful marketing and business strategies are squeezed and distorted to make them fit into flashy new technologies. Beyond 'e' puts the cart once again before the horse, providing new tools to support rather than replace current selling approaches and showing marketers how to use today's exciting web-based technologies to create solidly constructed, effective, and powerful marketing programs.

Stephen Diorio is founder and president of IMT Strategies, a leading sales and marketing strategy firm. A former marketing executive with Citicorp and GE, Diorio is a popular speaker and established authority on sales and marketing strategy.