Sales and Marketing

Increasingly, the customer doesn't really care which twitter handle is your official support or marketing channel or where the appropriate place on Facebook is to engage with you. This puts serious strain on organizations that have traditionally broken out functions by sales, marketing and support. Social Channels require that we rethink how we engage and route the right discussions to people with the best answers - be those in traditional customer touch point roles or experts hidden inside organizations. As important, we still need to have a process and the needed technology to move social media discussions into traditional process that's often powered by CRM, Call Center or other programs.

This session will address key approaches to designing support, engagement and sales for social channels.

Panelist - Peter Simonsen, Sr. Director, Web & Community, QlikTech International AB

Peter Simonsen leads global web, community and social media programs for QlikTech, a leader in user-driven Business Intelligence. Prior to QlikTech, Peter spent more than 10 years building and managing best-in-class corporate websites and executing innovative web marketing programs for companies like Cadence, Hitachi Data Systems, Intershop, and Informix.

Panelist - Daniel Zucker, Social Media Manager, Autodesk

Dan Zucker is Autodesk's Social Media Manager. In this role, Dan works with social media stakeholders thoughout the company to help guide corporate social media strategy, share best practices, and manage central social media infrastructures. Previously, Dan worked in Autodesk’s Manufacturing Industry Marketing group where he focused on sustainability, managed Global Citizenship programs at Sun Microsystems and managed outreach programs at Headlands Institute, an environmental education organization based in Marin County. Dan completed his MBA with University of San Francisco in 2008.

Panelist - Franck Ardourel, Sr. Director, Online Marketing, 24 Hour Fitness

Franck Ardourel joined 24 Hour Fitness in April 2008 as Online Marketing Director. In his role, he has been responsible for defining and implementing the strategy of distributed web properties i.e. 24hourfitness .com, mobile, Tablets, My24 iPhone and droid Apps, kiosk and social media. His background is varied, having held management roles in marketing and web operations for large organizations such as Intuit, United Airlines, and GE Capital. But, he also worked at Zinio, a small start-up in the digital publishing industry. Franck has an M.B.A. in Marketing from Paris Sorbonne University (France), and in IT from International University of America.

Customer Relationship Management is the program and system of record dedicated to managing customer relationships. But the customer or prospect never touches the CRM system. More over, during the sales process, the sales team needs to reach deep into the organization to find the right information, people and data to keep moving the customer forward in the sales cycle.

These critical steps are not covered by a traditional CRM system. But decisive use of collaborative constructs can be instrumental in making sure that we fill these white spaces in collaboration effectively.

This session will break down the elements of the traditional B2B sales cycle and show where collaboration improves engagement between sales and other important constituencies - marketing, subject matter experts and of course, the customer.

Part I: Lead by Steve Bamberger

How Social Business accelerates a Multi Channel Sales Strategy

Today’s more complex sales engagements typically involve multiple stakeholders, many of whom are often not your employees. Third party vendors, integrators and service providers are often an integral part of the sales process. Successfully supporting these multi-party/multi-channel sales efforts requires more effective communication and collaboration. In this session you will learn how Toshiba has leveraged their powerful social business network to better align sales initiatives with their strategic partners and vendors. Real world case-studies, strategies and techniques will be presented, highlighting various ways that Toshiba has improved the transparency of vendor sales support and fostered more unified collaboration and communication with their strategic partners within their dealer and direct sales channels.

Part II: By Erin Grotts

Driving Sales from the Inside Out: Why Internal Social Media Matters

Last year, SUPERVALU launched a strategy that would effectively transform the entire company over the course of several years. The company employed all of the usual strategic levers, but added a new social media platform to help create an atmosphere of transparency, collaboration and unity. As the company’s use of Yammer began to heat up, so did the intensity of sharing sales-driving ideas across brands and geographies. Today, the company credits this use of social media as a key to creating a consumer-centric, sales-focused environment that encourages innovation and collaboration among its front-line associates – the people who make the sales every single day.

Speaker - Steve Bamberger, National Training Manager / Web-Le@rning and Collaboration, Toshiba America Business Solutions

Steven Bamberger is responsible for driving the creative use and delivery of e-learning and collaboration at Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS), a leader in Document Imaging and Managed Print Solutions. During Steven’s 12 years with Toshiba, he led the migration of classroom-based training programs to the web and developed a thriving virtual campus with diverse curriculum that has served over 28,000 unique learners. Most recently, Steven and the TABS Education and Development team have begun to leverage Social Business Networking to their blended learning model to enhance the educational experience of their nationwide audience of online participants.

Speaker - Erin Grotts, Director of Internal Communications, SUPERVALU

Erin Grotts is the Director of Internal Communications for SUPERVALU, one of the largest companies in the U.S. grocery channel. As America’s Neighborhood Grocer, SUPERVALU serves communities across the country though a network of approximately 4,300 stores. Erin leads all company internal communications for 135,000 employees in the traditional retail, Save-A-Lot, wholesale and supply chain areas. She has been responsible for the integration of social media as a primary information vehicle across the company. Prior to joining SUPERVALU, she managed communications functions at Starbucks and Harrah’s Entertainment.

Part I: By Kelly Ripley Feller

Is Your Social Strategy Not Working? Blame Marketing

Social media pundits have long waxed poetic on the important benefits the use of social tools will have on the enterprise. And not since the advent of the internet itself has a business topic been so exhaustively covered on blogs, television, magazines, newspapers, and Facebook walls. Yet despite all this attention, marketing executives still don’t get it. In fact, in a recent study, eMarketer found that most marketing executives believe social media is very important. However, it still falls toward the bottom of the list of priorities. In this session I will explore some of the real reasons social media remains an enigma for marketing professionals—especially those in the B2B space—and offer some tangible suggestions on how to help executives embrace it with their minds and their money.

Part II: By Ted Sapountzis

The End of Social? Lessons from SAP

There is no doubt that social media is one of the most over-hyped topics in the industry today. In this talk, I will discuss SAP’s efforts in truly embedding social in our sales and marketing activities and the lessons we have learned in our quest for social nirvana.

Speaker - Kelly Ripley Feller, Corporate Director of Social Media, Citrix Systems

Kelly has been in "traditional" marketing roles for the last 15 years, marketing everything from organic foods and senior housing to infrared thermometers and computer software & hardware. She’s worked with a variety of big technology companies including Intel, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Intuit, SAS Software, Symantec, and IBM and even some smaller companies & non-profits. Kelly was a founding member of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence where she was focused on company-wide guidelines, programs & strategies that helped further the adoption of social media across Intel, particularly in the B2B space.

Today Kelly is Corporate Director of Social Media for Citrix Systems where she leads a team focused on enabling others to leverage social tools across the company in an effort to engage customers and prospects on the social web. Her key areas of expertise include social operations & infrastructure for the enterprise, social risk mitigation, social monitoring & metrics, and social campaign strategy.

In her dwindling spare time she writes blogs & Twitters avidly and is also a classical singer who performs at local schools and senior homes with the Intel choir (yes, Intel has a choir & they still let her sing in it). She holds a BA in Communications and Political Science from the University of Michigan.

B2B customer relationship management doesn't start and finish at the time of a sale. At most organizations this is an ongoing effort, often led by dedicated teams. This panel will feature practitioners who are using social and collaborative practices to work with B2B customers, and provide them with better account management and customer support.

Part I: Lauren Vargas

Communicating Like Humans

Break through online and offline silos and start building content and conversations inspiring B2B prospects and customers. Discover the right blend of art and science your organization needs to execute to get people excited about doing business with your company. Explore the dynamics of B2B relationships and what you need to know to build a long lasting relationship.

Part II: Michael Procopio

Insight from Social Media to the Enterprise

Moderator - Esteban Kolsky, Founder & Principal Analyst, ThinkJar LLC

Esteban Kolsky is the Principal and Founder of ThinkJar, an advisory and research think-thank focused on Customer Strategies.

He has over 22 years of experience in customer service and CRM consulting, research, and advisory services. Most recently he spent eight years at Gartner, focused on Customer Service and CRM research. While there he coined the terms for EFM (enterprise feedback management) and CIH (customer interaction hub). In addition, he wrote on the social networking topics that led to today’s revolution and assisted Fortune 500 and Global 2,000 organizations in all aspects of their CRM deployments.

Mr. Kolsky is currently researching and advising vendors and organization how to extend customer interactions from the CRM niche to the entire organization in their efforts to become Social Businesses.

He attended California Polytechnic University at Pomona, where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration and minors in Computer Information Systems, Telecommunications, and Economics.

Speaker - Michael Procopio, Social Media Strategist, Blogger, HP Social Intelligence Practice

Michael has 25+ years experience in pre-IPO and Fortune 500 high-tech organizations as a business leader and technology and marketing manager. His accomplishments include 2500% ROI on a social media promotion, growing and sustaining premier telecommunications and network management companies. He has direct experience in social media, product marketing, product management, technical marketing and training. He is a frequent speaker with experience in Europe and the US for groups up to hundreds.

In his current role Michael consults with HP customers on social media and social intelligence.

Michael is a member of the Society for New Communications Research, IEEE and has co-authored two articles on social media. He teaches sessions and consults with various groups on how to approach social media situations including community, marketing campaigns, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and ROI of social media. He is a trained HP Wikipedian. He is also a member of the HP Digital Marketing Council which helps set best practices.