Memo from Analytix.

Marketing

BUILDING A HIGH-PERFORMING MARKETING FUNCTION FOR A

BILLION DOLLAR DIVISION OF A GLOBAL IT SERVICES PROVIDER
This memo framed our discussion with the divisional CEO of a top 5 global IT services
provider who wanted to establish a high-performing marketing function for his division:
1. Client objectives
2. Focus areas for our engagement
3. Prioritization of key activities

1. CLIENT OBJECTIVES
You have asked us to drive GTM strategy and execution in a way that achieves your
overall objectives of ROA improvement, margin expansion and more than 10% annual
revenue growth in Infrastructure Services. You expect our team to assume ownership of
three levers that directly affect these outcomes. In decreasing order of urgency, these
levers include:

Sales productivity: Outbound marketing is your most immediate area of

concern and includes:
o Creating a compelling value proposition.
o Building a better pipeline, capturing synergies with Application Services.
o Raising market awareness of the Infrastructure Services business.
o Providing better sales enablement to increase win rates and profitability.
Product relevance: Jointly with the portfolio management team, ensure our
product portfolio remains competitive and addresses customers most pressing
needs.
Target market focus: Evolve our BU strategy and GTM approach in light of
changing dynamics at customers, competitors and suppliers.

While a majority of the effort in 201X will focus on sales productivity, achieving our
objectives requires all three levers to work in unison.

2. FOCUS AREAS
The most pressing challenges highlighted by the stakeholders fall into the marketing
disciplines of Awareness, Product Marketing, Demand Generation and Sales
Enablement. These challenges translate directly into opportunities for our team to make
a difference.
Branding and Awareness

The umbrella story is neither compelling nor well understood. The overarching
Infrastructure Services messaging, positioning and value proposition needs to
1

Memo from Analytix.Marketing

o Align with the corporate story, capturing synergies with Application Services.
o Appeal to a business-level audience (CIO, CFO, LOB) and a technologylevel audience (CIOs team, developers).
o Be useful across the sales cycle and different selling motions.
Awareness of our Infrastructure Services capabilities is low in some markets,
overshadowed by your companys reputation in Application Services.

Product Marketing and Interface with Portfolio Management

Offering definition, packaging and messaging was cited as the top concern
overall by some sales leaders as well as by corporate marketing. Basic
deliverables that communicate the portfolio in a globally consistent manner are
lacking, resulting in improvised content development at the country level.
Portfolio readiness was also cited as the top concern overall by some sales
leaders. The perception is that our emerging Cloud Services portfolio is not fully
available at the regional level.
o Delivery readiness issues include a lack of lifecycle management process
and unit costing.
o Sales readiness issues include a lack of pricing models and demos. While
your emerging portfolio is not meeting sales goals, none of the stakeholders
thought the portfolio itself was unbalanced.
Reference-ability of customers, while only one of the deliverables of a content
refresh, was highlighted as a low hanging fruit opportunity.

Demand Generation1

Cross-selling Infrastructure Services to the installed base of Application Services

customers represents one of the single biggest opportunities. This will only work
if
o Infrastructure Services are positioned early and often.
o Customers do not perceive a commercial or technical lock-in.
o A value proposition exists for all audiences (LOB owner, CFO, developers).
Renewals of large contracts (including those of our competitors) might not
receive the systemic, pro-active attention they deserve.
Channel partner productivity is low today.

Sales Enablement
Sales training on GTM plays, value propositions, proof points and pricing models
can contribute to closing the large gap between top performing and average sales
reps. Some of the sales reps were described as reactive, relying largely on

1 This

covers offline and increasingly online campaigns to directly build a pipeline. It includes events but
also customer relationship marketing, which consists of account-based engagement and measures to
increase loyalty and share of wallet.

Memo from Analytix.Marketing

sourcing advisors for deal flow, ill-equipped to articulate the best of our
capabilities to the various customer audiences, and with poor pricing discipline.
Influencer Marketing2

External thought leadership is missing even though interesting intellectual

capital is generated internally (e.g., IT best practices for corporate divestments).

Marketing Operations3

Pipeline visibility could be a lot better. Visibility is only available within a

country. A replacement for the Siebel CRM system is being considered.
Marketing performance management is rudimentary at best.

3. PRIORITIZATION OF KEY ACTIVITIES

For purposes of aligning with your expectations, I have categorized various activities
and initiatives into three time horizons. This sequence needs to be adjusted in light of
your priorities as well as existing and planned budgets, resources and commitments.
Horizon 1 Jump-start, fire-fight, identify quick wins (Q4 to Q1)

Synch with all stakeholders to align on expectations and understand the

organization, portfolio, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in detail.
Establish credibility, trust and a close working relationship with our sales leaders.
Review all existing content. Define set of consistent, standard digital assets.
Assess all talent currently involved in BU marketing. Identify critical gaps.
Develop the marketing plan for 201X.
Decide on initial set of campaigns and events.
Work towards quick wins.
o Learn what selling motion is successful today and what accounts for the
wide distribution of quota achievement among the sales force.
o Identify friendly customers open to a validation of the revised value
proposition as well as to various forms of reference-ability.
Create an umbrella story for the BU that is compelling to the various audiences.
Create a sales playbook for the 201X Sales Kickoff.

2 This

covers analyst relations, public relations, sourcing advisors and other market shapers such as
bloggers.
3 This covers enabling marketing infrastructure and capabilities, including budgeting, planning,
performance management, program management as well as operational processes, systems and people.

Memo from Analytix.Marketing

Horizon 2 Deliver on the basics4 (CY 201X)

Ranked in descending order of likely priority.

Provide a content refresh for all relevant offerings.

Conduct rigorous, interactive sales training for the global field organization,
including real-time feedback to sales reps practicing the new sales plays.
Establish thought leadership for the BU in the marketplace, which may include a
speaker program (featuring both customer and internal speakers), contributed
articles, newsletters, blog posts, advertorials, case studies, white papers, social
media content.
Define and execute campaigns across all marketing functional areas: branding &
awareness, product marketing, demand generation, sales enablement and
influencer marketing.
Define and operationalize a basic marketing performance scorecard.
o Establish metrics along the demand waterfall and customer life cycle to
track success (e.g., inquiries, MQL, SQL, SAO, bookings, win/loss).
o Establish the foundation for a data-driven budgeting process.
o Continually optimize marketing mix across program and people spend.

Horizon 3 Recharge our growth (stretching into 201X)

Ranked in descending order of likely priority.

Develop a clear understanding of how the selling motion has to evolve

strategically to increase our win rates, deal sizes and deal profitability.
Drive these required changes into GTM strategy and marketing mix.
Increase the breadth and depth of our vendor alliances / GTM partnerships,
driving joint offering development and GTM activities.
Evolve the balanced scorecard towards providing real-time performance
feedback that can guide marketing decision making at the operational level.
Review portfolio strategy and business model evolution. Ensure a strongly
differentiated business strategy is well articulated.

Fully recognizing that these activities are perennial.