Who is it for?
Sales, marketing and business development executives with IT or communication companies who need to rapidly achieve significant and profitable new business results from limited resources.

Why Marketing Planning for ICT vendors?
ICT vendors need to generate profitable new business with limited marketing budgets in line with the trend for sales teams to move towards profit rather than just revenue based compensation plans. So the marketing challenge is to generate high quality new business opportunity for "in house" sales and possibly alliance partners or channels to achieve the financial objective.

- Grow Profitably
- Increase Repeatability
- Obtain Results From Limited Funds
- Support Channel & Alliance Growth

The key factor for profitable new business is repeatability of ICT solution sales, and to achieve that goal requires a structured marketing planning approach. The foundation planning structure introduced in this workshop will formalise the ICT solution and 'go-to-market' plan to ensure the sales teams ultimately receive the right quality of opportunity for profitable results in shortest time.

How do you benefit?
Delegates will gain a structured step-by-step insight and understanding of how to develop an ICT Marketing Plan for profitable new business growth at low cost and in the shortest time. A significant consequence of this planning approach is a closer relationship between the sales and marketing organisations.

What is the course outcome?
This expert facilitated training workshop provides the delegate with a comprehensive structured insight on how to create a Marketing Plan for profitable ICT solution sales growth. The plan template can then be readily applied by the delegate to their ICT solution sales targets for new business after the workshop.

Course overview
09:30 Registration
10:00 Introduction to training objectives and agenda
10:15 Importance of repeatability & Marketing Plan structure overview
10:30 Plan Step #1 Formalise Repeatable ICT Solution
11:30 Plan Step #2 Describe Competitive Positioning
12:00 Plan Step #3 Set Profitable New Business Objectives
12:15 Lunch
12:45 Plan Step #4 Define Target Markets, Accounts, Decision Makers & Influencers
13:30 Plan Step #5 Finalise Action Plan, Budget & Review Schedule
14:00 Summary, assessment & close

Course Leader
Neil G MacArthur is Director of Strategy & Training at IDL, the Thought Leadership IT and communications analyst www.idlworldwide.com.
Neil MacArthur was the Course Director for Marketing Planning at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is a senior IDL training practitioner who has delivered over 10,000 delegate days of ICT vendor training in Marketing Planning worldwide based upon the very successful IDL "Repeatable Solution Sales" planning framework.

Course Materials
All delegates will receive a paper copy of the course materials including a Marketing Plan template plus the option to select copies of "real world" documents presented in support of the insight being discussed.

The "In house" and "One-to-one" training option
If the Intellect member company has five or more delegates who wish to attend this course, then it can be delivered at the company's location to save travel costs, and provide a training event
that will focus upon the individual company objectives and ICT solutions. This session can also be run as a one-to-one session at a convenient place and time that suits both the delegate and trainer.

Testimonials
"Professional, authoritative, and value for money. Neil MacArthur covered a lot of ground in four hours, and left me in no doubt as to his depth of knowledge of business development in ICT sales."
Richard Spooner, Marketing Manager, Cadcorp - October 2011

"This course was very focused on addressing the challenges my business faces in translating our technical capability into repeatable business products. The presentation approach was pacey, dynamic and well structured. The materials were highly relevant and supported the presentation completely. My expectations were high and they were still exceeded!"
Andy Lawton Smith, Director, Mercato Solutions Ltd - October 2011

"As a technical person with responsibility for sales I have had a wide range of advice on marketing but had difficulty knowing what would be effective on a tight budget. This course helped me prioritise what I need to do and what not to do. The key benefit were the examples of what the outputs would look like. The presenter was well informed about the IT industry and very credible. We were sent the follow up information we requested in a prompt manner. I would certainly recommend the course."
Glyn Jones, Business Development Manager, Savant Limited - October 2011