• Defining your alliance strategy
• Selecting a partner and structuring the alliance
• Managing the alliance relationship
• Coordinating the alliance strategy across your organization

Download the presentation here. (154k pdf)

Please join us on August 17th from 6:00 to 9:00 pm at the Burlington Marriott for NETSEA’s Conversation with Mike Bosworth. This discussion is part of a series of events created to provide executive-level members with perspective on the latest trends that are shaping the technology industry from New England business leaders directly.

According to Gartner, fewer than 50% of companies have successfully deployed an organizational sales process that successfully aligns all company departments to drive revenue growth. With all the money that is spent on the sales process, why is this the case? Moreover, is a sales process alone the answer?

Mike Bosworth, the renowned author and speaker in the arena of high-tech sales and marketing will be joining NETSEA to provide critical insight into these and other essential questions around how to drive revenue growth by aligning the Executive team. Some examples of the topics to be covered include:

• Developing a foundation upon which to build a sales process that works for the whole company
• Aligning the organization into a common sales process built on this foundation
• Defining roles and responsibilities so that each part of the organization executes their appropriate part in the sales cycle
• Understanding when to have the Executive Team members themselves participate in the sales cycles

This session will include a keynote presentation as well as a thorough Q&A session to help you get the answers to these questions and learn how to fire up your revenues.

Insider's Guide to the CEO Mindset: Exceeding Your CEO's Expectations

Interactions with CEOs can be pivotal moments in your career – they offer as much risk as opportunity. The key to your success is knowing what CEOs consider, want, and need. It's a matter of understanding a CEO's mindset … and knowing how to exceed a CEO's expectations.

As a sales, marketing, or business development executive, you will be interviewing with and working for a CEO at some point in you life. You need to know:

• What do CEOs look for in a candidate?
• How do they evaluate VP performance?
• How do their expectations change over time?

NETSEA's Business Development Chair Dan O'Connor – a managing partner at Matlin Partners, an executive search & consulting firm – will MC the event. He will be fielding your questions and posing many others. And you'll be getting answers from four seasoned, successful executive officers:

• Ed Schmid , Founder of eCopy, a global firm specializing in the transformation of paper documents into accessible information
• Peter Vicars , CEO at TriSixty Security, provider of enterprise security policy automation software
• Omar Hussain , President and CEO at Imprivata, the growing identity management company
• Peter Zotto , CEO at IONA, a world leader in high-performance integration solutions for mission-critical IT environments

Keynote Speaker: Mark Johnson - Co-Founder and President of Innosight (formerly w/ Booz Allen)

Panelists: Ken Bisconti, vice president, product management, IBM Software Group
Ian Finley , former vice president of marketing, Formation Systems
Stuart M. Itkin, vice president of marketing, Kronos Incorporated
Brian Murphy , vice president of sales and service, Nexaweb Technologies, Inc.

Date: THURSDAY – February 9 th from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott , 781-229-6565

As you expand your product offerings, you can expect growing pains, too. With each new product release, you face complex challenges regarding sales force deployment, marketing messages, product management allocations and service models. Join us for a keynote presentation and panel discussion on the special challenges posed by new product development and market growth, including:

• Coordination : How do you integrate sales and marketing into one consistent effort?
• Continuity: How do you reach new target markets while satisfying current customers?
• Communications: How do you promote your new offers without undermining sales for older products?
• Control: How do you keep product management and service operations in line with accelerating marketing and sales objectives?

After the keynote presentation, our panelists discussed their own experience with product and organizational evolution – what is working and what did not work as well as planned.

Mark Johnson is President and co-founder of Innosight ( www.innosight.com )

Mark has led consulting engagements within numerous Fortune 500 companies in a broad range of industries, including a U.S. defense contractor, a commercial enterprise IT company, and a major medical device manufacturer. He recently led a large-scale innovation management project for the government of Singapore . Many of the insights from Mark's client work can be found in an article from the 2002 spring issue of Sloan Management Review entitled, Foundations for Growth: How to Build Disruptive New Businesses, which he co-authored with Clayton Christensen. As President of Innosight, Mark has been a featured speaker on disruptive innovation at several conferences in the automotive, healthcare, financial services, and venture capital industries, and has presented to various other constituencies, including the Department of Defense.

Prior to assuming his current role, Mark was Vice President at the GilderGroup, a high-technology consulting and publishing firm. Before joining the GilderGroup, Mark was a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, based in New York . During his tenure, he worked on a variety of assignments for clients involved in managing innovation and comprehensive change programs, collaborating on a number of these innovation projects with Professor Christensen. Additionally, Mark worked with Harvard Business School professor David Garvin in developing a set of methodologies for Booz Allen clients aimed at improving their organizational learning capabilities. Prior to joining Booz Allen & Hamilton, Mark was a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.

Mark received his MBA with second year honors from the Harvard Business School . He received a Master's degree in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the United States Naval Academy .

IDC Executive Briefing:
Research-based Benchmarks, Trends, and Best Practices in IT Sales and Marketing

Keynote Speakers: Rich Vancil - IDC Marketing Executive Advisory Services, Donald MacDonald - IDC Sales Executive Advisory Services

Date: THURSDAY - October 20, 2005, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott, 781-229-6565

According to IDC research, only one out of ten IT sales organizations met or exceeded their revenue targets last year. What are they - and you - going to do to improve sales and marketing in 2006?

Join IDC experts Donald MacDonald and Rich Vancil - and our panel of four high-tech sales and marketing executives - as they explore the top-level strategies and investments being tested today.

Through presentations and panel discussions, you’ll glean critical insight into important priorities, such as:

• Aligning sales and marketing teams into one coherent force
• Identifying your prospects’ true decision-makers (Think they’re at the C-level? Think again...)
• Getting sales people to appreciate the impact of the entire solution fulfillment cycle, not just the sale
• Balancing sales expectations versus expenses
• Understanding the interactions that really matter to customers

In addition, IDC’s research will allow you to:

• Discover the Six of ‘06 goals for today’s most functional marketing organizations
• Follow the latest trends in IT marketing investment
• Analyze the marketing performance measurements at the top of every tech CMO’s to-do list.
• Compare your marketing scorecard against other leading software companies.

After the two initial presentations, our four panelists will complement IDC’s reports with their own real-world experience - what’s hot, what’s not and what’s really working.

Richard Vancil, Vice President, CMO Advisory Research

Rich Vancil joined IDC in 2003 to create the CMO Advisory Research practice and leads the research service. Rich is a frequent speaker at IT industry and marketing executive forums where he presents his views on trends in technology marketing budgeting and best practices to improve operational efficiency. His work has been quoted in leading marketing publications such as BtoB Magazine, CMO Magazine and CRM Magazine.

Prior to IDC, Rich held executive marketing positions at early stage information-services companies including Individual, Inc. and Shareholder.com. Additionally, Rich worked in the market research field at Dataquest and The Ledgeway Group. Rich has a B.A. from Connecticut College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In 2004, Rich was selected as IDC's James Peacock Memorial Award recipient, IDC's highest research honor.

Donald MacDonald, Vice President, Sales Executive Service

Donald MacDonald joined IDC in 2004 to develop and lead the Sales Executive Service research practice. Donald has been in sales and sales management positions in some of the most widely known and successful sales-oriented companies in the IT industry including Xerox, IBM, and EMC.

Previous to IDC, Donald spent 10 years at EMC where he held various management positions in sales, sales operations, and international marketing. Prior to EMC, Donald held executive positions at market research firms including Edtelligence and New Science Associates. Additionally Donald held various sales and sales management positions at Xerox, Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM.

Donald holds an MBA from Northeastern University. He has also attended a number of executive education programs at Harvard, Wharton and Columbia University.

Positioning Value with Customers - More Than Meets the Eye

Robert Kear - Keynote (CMO, Sales Performance International)
Philip J. Harrell - Akamai (VP Eastern Region)
Mike Kozub - MarketSoft (EVP Marketing and Sales)
Rainer Gawlick - Solidworks, Lightship, Aspen Tech (VP of Marketing)

In an effort to grow revenues, fend off commoditization, and protect margins, no trend has been more prevalent in recent years than the efforts of many companies to be perceived as providers of "solutions," versus makers of products. The January 17, 2005 USA Today vividly illustrated this trend by citing initiatives by Intel, HP, Motorola, and AOL that will focus on new market approaches that are "solution-focused."

The trend has woven its way into a number of familiar corporate "conversations," including:

• Our sales organization needs to be more "consultative"
• We should strive to attain the status of "trusted advisor" with our customers
• We need to be perceived as providers of a total customer "solution"

In essence, companies are engaged in intense competition to establish legitimate value with prospects and customers. Companies have addressed these ideas in variety of ways, including strategic and tactical "sales transformation," messaging projects, brand and packaging re-alignment, and others. But when competitive pressures are really impacting the business, three common reactions to revenue and margin erosion have often occurred:

1. We must "fix (i.e., train)" the sales force
2. We need to offer "solutions" versus products (or services)
3. A combination of 1 and 2

In short, many companies place the burden of becoming more value-based or solution-focused on the sales apparatus of the organization. In fact multiple millions of selling professionals have received formal training in some form of solution, value, or customer oriented sales curriculum. While this training can clearly improve sales proficiency and help sales people better articulate and position value with customers, industry studies suggest that efforts to improve "sales people" may have hit the wall.

This presentation explores the four "revenue engine" transformations that companies need to make in order to raise the sales performance ceiling:

• Think Differently - Defining yourself by the problems you solve versus the products you make
• Communicate Differently - Aligning all aspects of marketing execution with a well defined problem/solution framework
• Engage Differently - Applying solution (or value-based) selling disciplines effectively across both direct and indirect channels
• Reinforce Differently - Providing comprehensive, cross-functional reinforcement for solution-centric disciplines

Robert Kear has over 20 years of extensive, hands-on experience in all facets of technology industry management, including marketing, sales methodology, software engineering, professional services delivery, and P&L accountability. Before joining SPI, he was VP of Marketing Strategy and CRM Strategy for JD Edwards & Company, where his role was the development of CRM strategy and deployment of methodologies to drive value-based marketing disciplines. From 1994-2001, Robert was co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of YOUcentric, an enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) software company, where he was responsible for all aspects of corporate strategy, market planning and execution, and product direction. In 2001, he was awarded the Ernst & Young eBusiness Entrepreneur of the Year for the Carolinas. YOUcentric received numerous industry awards, including world's best Enterprise Relationship management solution in 2000 by the Denali Group, and was acquired in November, 2001 by JD Edwards. Mr. Kear holds advanced and undergraduate degrees in mathematics from East Carolina University. Mr. Kear's new book entitled The Solution-Centric Organization will be published by McGraw-Hill this year.

What World Class Organizations Know about Recruiting , Selecting, and Retaining the Best Sales, Marketing, & Bus. Dev. People

Mel Kleiman - Keynote (Humetrics)
Jim Del Rosario (Deploy, Siebel Systems, Keane)
Jennifer Doherty (PTC, Digitas, Fidelity)
Shawn Lyndon (ePredix)
Steve Percoco - Facilitator (NETSEA)

Date: THURSDAY - Jan 20, 2005, from 6pm - 9pm

With "luke-warm" conviction, there is an age old mantra that we have all come to accept, that is, my team will be made up of a few A players, mostly B players, and the rest C players. Why accept that attitude of mediocrity? Why is that we ask ourselves how did I let another non-performer in the door? Why are we surprised when someone that started out so good, ended up performing so poorly?

Come to the next NETSEA event, and learn how you can work to avoid the pitfalls of poor hiring decisions. We all know how much of a drain even one non performer can be, and we all know how much bandwidth gets absorbed by managing non performers. Put an end to bad habits, and get some expert advice on how to build a better team. World-class organizations recognize that recruiting, selecting and retaining the best talent is not an art but an ongoing ever evolving process. These world-class companies focus on the tools, techniques, training, and processes used to gain and retain their competitive advantage.

As competition, change and lack of product differentiation continue to escalate, the only measurable differences between companies become the quality of the people they hire and the intellectual properties they possess. Research shows that it's the not the fast who eat the slow, or the big who eat the small. It's the focused and the flexible that eat the unfocused and inflexible. Help your managers learn to use the hiring secrets of the world's most successful companies. You can't afford not to.

Mel Kleiman is an internationally recognized authority on recruiting, selecting, hiring and retaining the best hourly employees. A noted author, consultant and professional speaker, Mel has more than 30 years of both practical and theoretical human resources experience as the owner of three successful businesses. As the founder of Humetrics, an independent human capital management think tank, Mel has helped corporations worldwide find unbeatable, cost effective solutions for their hiring needs.

Mel delivers more than 50 keynote speeches and seminars a year to leading national corporations and major industry trade associations. His high-energy, high-impact presentations and educational training workshops combine real world examples and best practices research. Mel always receives rave reviews; he engages audiences in an atmosphere of fun and provides practical, hands-on strategies that bring successful hiring results.

"It's so exciting. I still have managers and supervisors coming to me saying how great the training was and that they are actually putting it to use." Frances Whiteurst, Time Warner Communications.

Mel has been featured on CNN Headline News and in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and hundreds of business publications and trade journals. He is also the author of Hire Tough, Manage Easy; 267 Hire Tough Interview Questions; and Blueprint for Successful Hiring.

Jim Del Rosario is the VP, Staffing Performance for Deploy Solutions, Inc. He has more than 16 years of experience as a recruiter and recruiting leader. Jim is widely recognized for his leadership as a successful staffing and recruiting executive for CRM leader Siebel Systems and IT Consulting firm Keane, Inc. By assembling teams of highly skilled recruiters and recruiting managers in combination with innovative processes and technology, he has helped large corporations achieve their human capital growth goals during periods of unprecedented competition for top talent.

Jennifer Doherty is currently the Director of Global Recruiting for PTC in Needham, MA. PTC is one of the largest software companies in the world. Prior to PTC, Jennifer was the VP Global Recruiting for Digitas. She has spent the last 10 years providing recruiting and staffing solutions to companies such as Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank and most recently Iron Mountain.

Shawn Lyndon, VP of Product Strategy and Alliances, has been with ePredix since the company's inception. ePredix has created a database of predictive assessment and development content based on the results of tens of millions of individuals. By linking this enormous database to innovative technology, ePredix provides assessments that predict and improve job success for Sales, Marketing, and Business Development professionals.

Q4 is Already Over: Increasing Sales & Marketing Productivity

Brooke Savage (CEO of Pragmatech)
Trish Bertuzzi (President, The Bridge Group)
Jeff Howard (Business Development, 170 Systems)
Randy Clark (VP Marketing, ClearForest)
David Sample (former VP Sales, Hyperion)

Date: TUESDAY - Oct 12, 2004, from 6pm - 9pm

Companies perpetually continue to encounter several issues in the area of sales forecasting and executing to hit the numbers:

• Your company's confidence in the "forecast" erodes at a rate which is inversely proportional to the number of days left in the period.
• Increased degrees of difficulty to make quarterly numbers often leads to "stealing" from next quarter's pipeline . . . at a discount.
• It appears as though each quarter some "heroics" are necessary to "close" enough business to make the number.
• Pressure on results and execution increases with each close quarter end.

In determining how to address these issues, it is important to first get a clear understanding of the culture of your company. We often talk about companies as being engineering driven versus a market driven. An increasingly more important question is whether or not the company is revenue driven or sales driven. Is your company's answer to the above challenges always "execution"?

However, the real answer lies in Sales & Marketing Productivity - it is not merely a "sales execution" or "forecasting" problem it’s about alignment among the various departments who effect revenue including:

• Marketing
• Inside Sales
• Sales Operations
• Field Sales.

By recognizing the first point, having an open mind to change and look at all aspects of acquiring customers sets the stage for our expert panel to address: What to tweak, When and in which situations to consider changes to improve productivity.

Having representatives from all departments within your company attend will be valuable to your entire company as a key component to Sales and Marketing productivity is teamwork.

So, don’t miss this chance to learn and share some great ideas on productivity and get a primer on next years detailed topic events. Bring your peers, bring your CEO, bring a board members. This will be a very productive night.

Going International - When and How to Do It

Dan O'Connor (NETSEA; Matlin Partners; SVP eXcelon, VP & GM Borland International)
Robert Ball (Vice President, International, Akamai Technologies)
Pam Burton (President of Global Buzz Marketing; SVP, Protégé Group)
Lauren Kelley (CEO Synopia; SVP WW Sales and Strategic Development, ATG)
Bill Seibel (CEO Demantra; CEO Zefer; Co-Founder, Cambridge Technology Partners)

Date: TUESDAY - July 20, 2004, from 6pm - 9pm

Going International too late can cause you to miss the boat on great opportunities - are your competitors already making headway in some of these markets? Perhaps without your knowledge? But going International too early can also cause a company to lose focus if it's not ready to do so yet. If you're already executing on an International strategy, this session will help you make sure you get the most out of it. And if you haven't yet defined an International strategy, this session will help you shape it.

This valuable session will be useful for companies who are already International as well as companies who have not even considered an International strategy. It will cover questions such as:

• What countries and markets should we pursue?
• How business friendly are various countries (e.g., liabilities, unions)?
• Where do I establish a base presence?
• How do I get started building a plan or refining ours?
• What are some of the things that I should be looking out for from legal and financial perspective?
• Do I start with a partner to form a joint venture in country? What are the nuances to consider before setting up a JV?
• Do I use a VAR or VAD to sell in Europe? How do I set up the agreements?
• Should we consider a BOT or "build operate transfer" model?
• What are some of the go-to-market challenges to look out for?
• What does it take to set up a subsidiary? When does that make sense?
• How is employee compensation different from country to country?
• How do we manage cultural issues?
• Are our products internationally enabled?

Developing and executing on an International strategy requires collaboration among Sales, Marketing, and BUsiness Development functions in organizations. Come meet our panelists with deep experience in building out International distribution networks to discuss the issues and learn how to do it right.

Compensation Trends in Sales, Marketing and Business Development

Todd McCarthy (NETSEA, Matlin Partners, Heidrick & Struggles, Webhire, Saratoga Systems)
Chris Fusco (Salary.com, Mercer HR Consulting, BearingPoint[KPMG])
Gerald Hegarty (NetCommissions, Centiv[Incentive Systems])
Mike Balmuth (Summit Partners, Board of Directors at numerous companies)

Date: TUESDAY - May 25, 2004, from 6pm - 9pm

One of the most interesting (and scary) statistics is that approximately 70% of the current workforce has indicated that they would be interested in other job opportunities should an appropriate one come along. Until recently this has not translated into much because the number of good opportunities has been fairly limited due to a sluggish economy. But the economy is changing, and while the change is slow and steady at first, it will continue and most likely accelerate. Indeed, work by McKinsey & Company as well as others indicates that the underlying trend reveals a significant shortage in top talent over the next decade.

This means its more critical than ever to make sure you're compensating your key employees with the right compensation, both in terms of total compensation and in terms of structure (i.e., tying compensation to the right metrics). It's also important for us to understand whether we as executives are being fairly compensated and to either seek appropriate adjustments to our compensation or begin considering other, more attractive opportunities. In this highly interactive session with an esteemed set of experts in the area of high-tech compensation, we will cover the following topics:

• Current trends in Executive Compensation (salary, incentive, equity)
• Trends in compensation for Key Talent in Sales, Marketing, & BD
• Linking compensation to metrics, which key metrics are appropriate
• Compensation strategies that drive both performance and retention
• Perspective from the Board/Compensation Committee

Don't miss this opportunity to find out what's really happening in compensation, to give you insight into both your own compensation as well as how you should be setting the compensation for those who report to you.

What's In a Number? Metrics to Drive Sales & Marketing

Featured Presenters:
Lee Levitt (Acelera Group; IDC; Speaker at COMDEX & ComputerLand Nat'l Sales Conference)
David Rudnitsky (VP Sales, Salesforce.com; Ariba, Netscape, Oracle, ADP)
Richard Vancil (VP, Technology Marketing Research, IDC; Dataquest)
Carol Meyers (VP Marketing, Unica; Intel; IBM Lotus)
Steve Paxhia (Bd. of Directors, Deploy; CEO Beacon Hill Strategic Sol., Inso Corp. )

Date: TUESDAY - Feb 10, 2004, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott, 781-229-6565

Sales... it's all about the numbers...the number of people you talk to...the number of people that you meet with...the number of people that become customers...the amount of money you receive from each customer...the length of time you keep a customer.

Marketing... it's all about the numbers...your market share...the number of times a prospect sees your company name...the cost of identifying a new suspect...the number of suspects and prospects in your prospect database...how many times you've touched each of them.

Wouldn't it be great to know that while your western region is growing more slowly than your eastern region, it's because buyers in the western region will buy only after more than 3 sales visits. (And your sales management has been pushing sales staff to cut bait after 2!)Wouldn't that little tidbit of information change behaviors? Or that while you don't get a lot of attendees to your seminars, you regularly identify a handful of high quality prospects who registered but didn't attend the seminar! Wouldn't that nugget keep you from abandoning those sparsely attended seminars? Who cares if the room is almost empty as long as you're closing business from the activity!

Good sales and marketing metrics can lead to powerful conclusions like these and more, helping you to see your business from a different perspective. But you have to be able to pick the right metrics, implement measurement techniques that will provide consistent information, and be ready to analyze and act on that information.

This meeting will include a set of prominent experts and practitioners in sales and marketing leading an interactive discussion on how to leverage metrics to drive sales and marketing results.

High Tech: The "State" of Massachusetts

Featured Presenter: Speaker of the House Thomas Finneran

Date: Thursday - Nov 20, 2003, from 6pm - 9pm

The technology "bust" throughout the last several years has been prominent in the minds of everyone in our industry. Because of the economic crisis that has effected all of us responsible for "selling & marketing" in technology companies, NETSEA has engaged our "Thought Leaders" in State Government to understand their perspective on our industry, where we've been, where we are today, prospects for growth and proposed initiatives.

To that end, The Honorable Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Thomas Finneran will be leading us in an interactive discussion on the state of high technology in Massachusetts. The Speaker will be discussing how through wise investment and regulatory overhaul, emerging technologies can be the vehicle that helps to bring the entire Massachusetts economy back into prosperity, providing our families financial security and giving the state the revenues necessary to fully fund the programs and services upon which we all rely.

New England Technology Marketing Summit

Featured Presenters:
Seth Godin (Entrepreneur, NYT Best-Selling Author, Marketing Genius)
Mike Bosworth (Creator of Solution Selling)
Dr. Kenan Sahin (President of TIAX and former CEO of Kenan Systems)
Others TBD...

Date: Thursday - October 9, 2003, from 7:30am - 6:00pm

Location: BU Corporate Education Center, 781-229-6565

Cost: $395 pre-9/1, $495 post-9/1 (special price for NETSEA members) Register Now

Meet the best minds in technology marketing; learn what makes other companies successful; think how to make your marketing remarkable.

Exclusively for high tech CEOs, CMOs and VPs of Marketing, Sales, and Product Management.

Get away from the daily grind, renew yourself, and make an investment in the future of your organization. We've convened a group of some of the most successful technology marketing leaders, experts, and visionaries alive today.

Vital Topics:

• Remarkable marketing
• Customer literacy
• Return on marketing investment
• Sales & marketing alignment
• Marketing & product development
• Tech marketing leadership

What's in it for Me?: How Changes in Corporate Governance and Regulatory Reform Are Affecting Sales Organizations

Featured Presenters:
Bill Schnoor (Partner, Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault)
Bob Hult (Audit Committee, Centra; CFO, NMS Communications; VP Altavista/Digital)
Stephen DiPietro (Partner, Deloitte & Touche)
Christopher Sprague (Sales Financial Solution Controls, Documentum)

Date: Wednesday - Sept 10, 2003, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott, 781-229-6565

The pressure is on for generating revenue while the economic climate continues to be tough, but now there is an additional challenge. Sweeping changes in corporate governance, the roles and responsibilities of boards of directors and auditors, and accounting principles have profoundly altered the landscape on which Sales Organizations are expected to turn prospects into leads into revenue. Although many of these changes purport to apply only to public companies, in fact they are also shaping the way that auditors and potential acquirers are interacting with private companies. Accordingly, executives of private companies who ignore these changes do so at their own peril.

Bottom line: the rules have changes, the stakes are higher, and Sales and Business Development executives are on the front lines where regulatory reforms meet the realities of running a business, day in and day out.

Making Partnerships Pay

Featured Presenters:
Ben Gomes-Casseres (Prof. Brandeis; Harvard Bus. School; author Mastering Alliance Strategy)
Ron Corriveau (Legato Systems; Associations of Strategic Alliance Professionals)
Myron Kassaraba (Lanthorn Technologies; Trellix; Fidelity; Kodak)
Christian Klacko (Akamai; Nextel; World Bank)
Michael Loria (Lotus Software, IBM)

Date: Thursday - May 29, 2003, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott, 781-229-6565

In today's tough business climate, yesterday's partnering sweet-talk is useless and even dangerous. You can no longer enter an alliance with vague promises of a future pay off -- investors and company leaders demand measurable results. At the same time, you also cannot waste resources on doing internally something that is best done by a partner. As companies cut their operations to the bone, they will come to rely more and more on partners to execute a part of their business solution. That is why outsourcing, collaboration with suppliers, and market-entry alliances remain critical business strategies, even while frivolous deal-making has declined. But the stakes in these new alliances are even higher than before. We know that traditionally one- to two-thirds of alliances fail. Today's environment punishes severely companies that blindly repeat yesterday's mistakes. We have to do better. Fortunately, we have learned much in the past decade about how to manage alliance strategies. This panel brings together a wealth of experience and knowledge to share with you the state of the art in the field. Moderated by Ben Gomes-Casseres, author of two books on alliances and a business professor at Brandeis University. Event Presented in Collaboration with A.S.A.P. (the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals)

Integration of Marketing and Sales - Myth or Reality?

Featuring: Mike Bosworth, Acclaimed Author of Solution Selling

Date: Wednesday - February 12, 2003, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriott, 781-229-6565

In this tough economy, companies have a difficult enough time overcoming market challenges, so they cannot afford to have internal challenges such as frictions between Sales and Marketing. But aligning Sales and Marketing is not an easy task - these organizations often been at odds for as long as most of us can remember. When revenue goals are falling short, Marketing often complains that Sales is not doing a good job closing the leads that they are given, and Sales complains that Marketing is generating junk leads. How do you integrate Sales and Marketing to get the teams to collaborate toward the company's objectives.

• Aligning sales & marketing goals
• Building processes to eliminate finger-pointing and drive integration
• Collaborating to define what a good lead is
• Attacking the market aggressively without stepping on each other
• Sharing knowledge about the customer and what works in the sales cycle
• Developing a process where Sales can help Marketing achieve its goals (e.g., generating quality leads, building case studies, getting customer references, etc.)
• Developing a process where Marketing can help Sales achieve its goals (e.g., qualifying leads, nurturing leads within marketing that are not ready for sales, etc.)

Behind the Scenes with the Board

Featured Presenters:
David Barrett (Partner, Polaris Venture Partners)
Maia Heymann (Director, Fleet BancBoston Ventures)
David Orfao (Partner, General Catalyst)
Bill Schnoor, Moderator (Partner, Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault)

Date: Wednesday - November 13, 2002, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Burlington Marriot, 781-229-6565

Working with the Board of Directors and Investors can be extremely rewarding, as Boards often have valuable connections and experience that a company can leverage. Indeed, this is the reason the specific Board members and Investors were often selected. But how do you work with the Board to get the most value out of those interactions? Moreover, how do you handle difficult times when hitting aggressive targets is proving difficult? This interactive session will address many challenging issues on how to work with the Board including:

• What happens behind closed doors after a senior Sales, Marketing, or Bus. Dev executive presents to the Board?
• How do you handle a Board discussion where the company falls short on its Sales, Marketing, or Bus. Dev goals?
• How can senior executives set expectations with the Board - how do you manage expectations in a tough market?
• What should the senior executives do if they feel the CEO is not doing a good job in setting reasonable expectations with the Board or not properly representing them to the Board?
• What can Boards and Investors do to help a company achieve its Sales, Marketing, & Bus. Dev objectives - how do you get the Board and Investors to provide effective help?
• What kind of relationship can senior Sales, Marketing, & Bus. Dev. Execs build with the Board? What role should the CEO play?
• What kind of progress are Boards and Investors looking for in the area of Sales, Marketing, & Business development in today's tough business environment?
• How much should you involve your Board in setting your go-to-market strategy, which cuts across Sales, Marketing, and Business Development? What's the best way to leverage their experience here?

Demand Generation: Building The Right Leads to Close Sales

Download Presentations

Featured Presenters:
Doug Barth (Principal, SimplyDirect)
Mike Kozub (CMO, MarketSoft)
Patrick Perugini (author of Perpetual Marketing, Principal, Maccel Group)
Chris Selland (founder, Reservoir Partners; former VP, Yankee Group)
Sham Sao, Moderator (CMO, NETSEA; VP Marketing & Bus Dev, InfoLenz)

Date: Thursday - July 25, 2002, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: HealthPoint Fitness and Wellness Center, 840 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451

Demand Generation is a critical issue for companies today. With tough economic conditions making it difficult to close sales, it is more important than ever to have as many solid leads as possible. Key issues to be covered include: Cutting through the clutter: How to cut through all the marketing noise and grab the attention of your targets, especially high-level executives. Closing the Loop: Sales often complains that leads are bad, but how to you capture feedback in a constructive way to actually improve lead generation. Market Feedback for Better Leads: How to you improve your lead generation by listening to your customers, especially when no dollars are available for market research. Sales vs. Marketing vs. Technology Marketing generates leads, but Sales also prospects and calls into accounts. Technology also plays a role. Defining the right roles is critical.

Taking Advantage of Channel Conflict

Featured Guest: Tim Furey - Partner, MarketBridge

Date: Thursday - April 25, 2002, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Bay Colony Conference Center, 1100 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451

There are often talks of overcoming channel conflict, but the reality is that all channel conflict is not bad. There is, in fact, a "right level" of channel conflict. The problems with too much channel conflict are obvious, but too little channel conflict may result in under-coverage or missed opportunities. Tim Furey is the co-author of The Channel Advantage, a definitive guide that examines the whole field of channel strategy and management, published by Butterworth-Heinemann in 1999, and endorsed by the CEOs of America Online, Lotus Development, Ocean Spray and Xerox. As a part of this discussion, NETSEA is bringing together a panel of regional executives who will share their experiences in managing channel conflict. The event will also cover issues of channel conflict where different departments within a company are running the different channels. For example, Sales is running direct sales, Marketing is running an E-Commerce site, and Business Development is working with partners to drive sales. This magnifies the issue as a result of organizational divisions. As always, there will be ample opportunities for networking both before and after the event.

Panelists will include Bob Celluci (VP Channels, Authoria); Christian Heidelberger (CEO, ChannelWave Software); Cary Johnson (Principal, Accelerant Executive Partners); Kevin Rhone (CEO, SmartTime); Bob Washburn, President (Washburn Group); and Mike Reed (VP Business Development, TopLayer Networks).

Motivating Sales, Marketing, & Business Dev in a Tough Environment

Featured Guest: Gary Tubridy - SVP, The Alexander Group, Inc.

Date: Thursday - January 17, 2002, from 6pm - 9pm

Location: Bay Colony Conference Center, 1100 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451

The discussion will focus on how to design jobs, organizational structures, incentive compensation plans and other motivational programs to drive performance. How to adjust these levers in difficult times, without compromising the integrity of your original plans. And how to ensure that sales, marketing, and business development all have the right incentives to work together and deliver results.

Gary Tubridy is a Senior Vice President of The Alexander Group, Inc. and located in Stamford, CT. His consulting work is focused on increasing marketing and sales effectiveness. He has personally managed projects in sales organization design, sales force sizing and deployment, sales performance management, and sales compensation program design. He has significant experience diagnosing sales management issues (e.g., declining or flat sales growth, increasing losses to competition, sales force turnover), and developing action programs to improve results. He is one of three founding stockholders of the Firm.

Mr. Tubridy was in marketing with the IBM Corporation prior to entering management consulting. With IBM he was responsible for accounts in the manufacturing, process, and financial services industries. He coordinated large account marketing activities, customer and sales representative training seminars, and local selling efforts for four national account sales teams.

ROI, CRM, & Other Bedtime Stories

Featured Guest: Barry Trailer - President, Sales Mastery, Inc.

Date: Thursday - October 18, 2001

Location: Heidrick & Struggles, 40 William Street, Suite 350; Wellesley, MA 02481

Companies are increasingly requiring ROI analyses before pursuing any major initiatives, including CRM initiatives. However, getting involved in traditional analyses of ROI can lead to a trap of complex analyses and questionned assumptions. In this meeting, Barry presented some alternative approaches to highlighting the ROI from a CRM investment - approaches that are simpler to understand, and more convincing to upper management.

Barry Trailer has consulted with companies with complex B2B sales for the past twenty years. He spent nearly nine years with Miller-Heiman, consulted throughout the 90's in sales process, and with his partners started a software company which was acquired by FrontRange Solutions (formerly GoldMine Software Corporation). With FrontRange he served as VP of North American Sales, VP of Corporate Initiatives (focusing on ROI) and finally, acting as President of the GoldMine Division. He is now founder and president of Sales Mastery, Inc., an independent sales consultant in Colorado Springs.