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SolutionsInsights

Understanding the Roles, Responsibilities and Future Opportunities for a Solutions Marketer

For nearly a decade, we've seen IT and other high-technology companies struggle to make the transition from selling primarily products to creating and selling real customer-centric solutions. As companies have moved to a more solutions-based business model, there has been a need for a new type[...]
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Steve Hurley

Solutions Marketing: The four P's are OVER

Virtually every marketing student on the planet can recite the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Since the early 1960's when Harvard Business School professor Neil Borden first described them as key elements of the marketing mix, the 4 P's have held their ground as the foundational[...]
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SolutionsInsights

Why is customer-centric marketing still more talk than action?

Michael Shrage’s recent Harvard Business Review post, Great Customers Inspire Great Innovations, got me thinking: Why, amid so much evidence of the power of customer-centric business, are so many companies still mired in inside-out operations? Why do we hear so much talk but see so little[...]
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Steve Hurley

Marching forward with solutions marketing...at least on the Web

Notwithstanding the endless angst about "solutions" as a meaningful term, it's clear that B2B technology firms continue to march ahead promoting their solutions offerings and capabilities. Our latest evidence comes from a web-based analysis of 51 of the world's leading B2B technology firms[...]
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Steve Hurley

Solutions Marketing: Should it be taught at business schools?

I’ve had the good fortune to teach an MBA level Solutions Marketing  course  for the past three years. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the only Solutions Marketing course taught to MBA students anywhere in the US. I teach the course at the Hult International Business School. Haven’t[...]
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SolutionsInsights

The four engines of B2B marketing success

A friend recently had the good fortune not only to take over marketing for a successful B2B firm, but to do so with a mandate to build a new strategy that ensures a much greater impact on the business. He's a bit like a kid in a candy store. He's got budget to spend, executive support for more[...]
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SolutionsInsights

Outsourcing reality show illuminates the buying process

About a month ago, the good folks at the Outsourcing Institute asked me to contribute some  "lessons" for services marketers based on their web-based reality show, The Transaction. No cash involved, but it sounded like an quick PR hit for me while helping out a great organization. When I[...]
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SolutionsInsights

Words and Meaning: The Power of Alignment

Suzanne Lowe from Expertise Marketing has a great piece in her June newsletter on the importance of developing a common lexicon for marketing and business development in professional service firms. Pointing to common misunderstandings between business leaders and partners, on the one hand,[...]
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