If you don't know about CLOSE - Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness - then you should. Here's the idea: The CMO Council partnered with Oracle and the Wall Street Journal to form an affinity network and online community channel that will help sales, marketing and channel professionals further their interactions, increase understanding of their allied functional areas, and provide the necessary tools, techniques and best practices for improved customer acquisition and value building.
I've been invited to become a partner with them in this endeavor, which is truly "close" to my work, as those of you who read this blog know.
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As a partner, I'd like to ask you to participate in the CLOSE Survey. It'll only take you 15 minutes and they'll share the results with you. |
This is a major study to understand where and how greater efficiencies and cooperation between departments can drive sales. Connecting sales and marketing efforts to streamline customer acquisition and how it's achieved is critical to achieving the growth your companies need to meet strategic goals. What you learn may be some critical "light bulb" ideas to help you make valuable changes within your own organizations.
Integration between these departments is something many of us have struggled with for years. By participating in this study, you can take the next step in actually helping develop processes to making this integration a reality. Go take the survey today.
One of the other things CLOSE is doing is hosting one-day strategic invention workshops around the world to formulate best practices to drive sales effectiveness through closer alignment and integration with marketing.
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As a partner, I'm privileged to offer you a link with a 25% discount to attend these workshops [but use the links below to register]: April 29, 2008 in Sao Paulo, Brazil - Register here May 12, 2008 in California at Stanford - Register here |
These interactive workshops will establish best practices specific to where and how sales and marketing organizations should be deriving greater business value from tighter synergies, unified strategies, better information sharing and analytics, and well-defined measures and metrics.
Now you have the opportunity to participate in making a difference in how the gap is bridged between sales and marketing. I'm thinking that these workshops, studies and the CLOSE community are onto something we've needed to address for a long time.
Finally, you can go out and Join the Close community and work with all of us to generate best practices that can change the landscape of how sales and marketing drive value...together.
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