Regarding your comments on Sales & Marketing above, I would somewhat disagree with your comments but not for the standard reasons one would expect. I've written extensively on this subject on my blog and elsewhere. You can search my blog under "sales" . Here is a representative post, http://www.emergingtechnologypartners.com/e-lou... .
I would argue that changes in the marketplace have changed the sales process, so today's requirements are different than say 10 years ago. They haven't gone away as many in the OSS community would argue. In some cases, these changes are so dramatic that companies fail or will fail.
The real dramatic shift has been [and will continue to be] from put direct sales expertise to a Marketing expertise. I have consulted with many execs over the years and I have found that more often than not they do not understand what sales folks do for a living and probably understand less about sales process. Hence the rapid adoption of SFA and CRM with little measurable successes until recently. In fact, I would argue CRM is best used as a process, KPI, and IS Tool rather than as a Sales Force monitoring tool. Just look at recent deployments and you will see the real value moving from sales to process automation.
Marketing is a dynamic area. Many [read most] technology companies either do not have a marketing group at all or the have a small group that focuses almost exclusively on "Product Marketing", which is a very small subset of marketing functionality.
My belief is that going forward, company success will become more and more a function of marketing execution.
All Comments
Regarding your comments on Sales & Marketing above, I would somewhat disagree with your comments but not for the standard reasons one would expect. I've written extensively on this subject on my blog and elsewhere. You can search my blog under "sales" . Here is a representative post, http://www.emergingtechnologypartners.com/e-lou... .
I would argue that changes in the marketplace have changed the sales process, so today's requirements are different than say 10 years ago. They haven't gone away as many in the OSS community would argue. In some cases, these changes are so dramatic that companies fail or will fail.
The real dramatic shift has been [and will continue to be] from put direct sales expertise to a Marketing expertise. I have consulted with many execs over the years and I have found that more often than not they do not understand what sales folks do for a living and probably understand less about sales process. Hence the rapid adoption of SFA and CRM with little measurable successes until recently. In fact, I would argue CRM is best used as a process, KPI, and IS Tool rather than as a Sales Force monitoring tool. Just look at recent deployments and you will see the real value moving from sales to process automation.
Marketing is a dynamic area. Many [read most] technology companies either do not have a marketing group at all or the have a small group that focuses almost exclusively on "Product Marketing", which is a very small subset of marketing functionality.
My belief is that going forward, company success will become more and more a function of marketing execution.
Best,
Ken