Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Kiran,

Without more info to go on e.g.

- Does the company sell through a channel? For now, I'll assume no.
- How long is the sales cycle and who is the target market? If it's SaaS ERP I'm guessing your selling into the NetSuite or BusinessByDesign markets so probably lower-end. Sales cycle is probably anywhere from 3-6 months once the company is at the qualified stage.
- Is the company short of funds? I'm going to guess yes since everybody is these days.

All of that assumed, I would put a heavy emphasis on traditional web based in-bound strategies first. e.g.
- Make your website a lead generation machine
- Optimize your site for the Search engines through key word and link building.
- Create plenty of thought leadership content. SaaS and ERP both lend themselves really well to this.

I would back that all up with a solid lead nurturing program. In my experience (also in marketing ERP products) this is the one step that most vendors don't do very well.

Good luck in your interviews!

Melissa Paulik
The Marketing Survivalist

How is your employer planning to generate the leads? Does the sales team go on its own, or do they mine the current acc or is it that sales team just pursue random or informed leads? The marketing team should build up upon the current sales effort to grow rather than generating a completely diff path.

For marketing website will be your major weapon, make sure you have a demonstration available for interested people, either they call a sales lead, or preferably can see a flash demo online. The service should be convincing (software, SAP, has already convinced customers here) and make sure the demo is not too long but still manages to answer the general queries on various modules, inter communication, what all technologies you can plug youself to.

Do a research on what other components are used, if any, with your service and if you are communicating well to customer that you support them.