Perhaps not surprisingly, thought leadership topped the list when ITSMA recently asked marketing leaders at big tech and IT services firms which tactics will be more important in 2010. According to ITSMA, 77% of respondents cited thought leadership development as a priority, beating out references and testimonials, senior executive programs, and social media. 

For most B2B firms, however, thought leadership is getting a great deal more lip service than investment. Other than top consulting and professional service firms like McKinsey, Deloitte, and Accenture, few B2B firms have yet created a focused and well-organized thought leadership marketing program. My own recent review of 72 corporate members of theInstitute for the Study of Business Markets, for example, found that only 24 of these manufacturing, industrial, and technology companies even had a link to thought leadership content on their home page.

All too often, thought leadership in B2B is thinly funded (if at all), episodic, and superficial. 

• There is no dedicated staff, no editorial calendar for content production, and a heavy reliance on subject matter experts "volunteering" their nights and weekends to bang out a few white papers, articles, and blog posts. 
• Content tends to overemphasize company promotion and underemphasize customer and market evidence. 
• Publications typically are one-off productions with little coordinated effort to leverage new thinking into multiple formats, networks, and channels.  

To make a real impact with customers and create real distinction in the market, thought leadership needs focus, depth,and continuity.

Consider, for example Accenture's years-long in-depth research on high performing companies. They focus on strategic challenges facing each industry the company serves, orient primary research and publications to different executive roles among their client base, and deliver insights across a wide range of online, face-to-face, and social media platforms.

Not every company has Accenture's deep pockets, to be sure, but the lessons are clear. And it's not just a matter of blogging more and getting more content onto Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -- although social media clearly IS critical for thought leadership dissemination and engagement. 

At a more fundamental level, companies looking for greater impact with thought leadership need to consider four essential dimensions of program development:

1. Points of View: Effective thought leadership is rooted in compelling, differentiated, and evidence-based points of view on important business challenges -- not product features or quick opinions or the experience of a single client engagement. Companies need to invest the time, research budgets, and analytic expertise it takes to create points of view that really matter. You've got to take a stand, but in ways that are not simply provocative but rooted in primary research and real world experience. (For a guide to developing effective points of view, check out Solutions Insights' Point of View Development Template.)
2. Internal Education: Especially with the rise of social media, you're relying more and more on a great many employees to tell your story, not just a few executives or subject matter experts. Investing in internal education around your points of view is critical to equipping marketing, sales, and other customer-facing employees (which could be anyone online) to engage constructively on the issues that matter in ways that demonstrate real expertise. It's also a great way to generate more insight and tap more internal experience to feed into Point of View development.
3. Market Engagement: Publishing and disseminating content is what most people think of when they consider thought leadership marketing. But the traditional reliance on white paper publishing, conference speaking, and pushing for mainstream media coverage is far too limited in today's always-on, socially networked world. Market engagement today is about pervasive presence and ongoing conversation; publishing is just the beginning of the process. And the development of more substantial points of view makes it much easier to produce steadier streams of useful content across multiple platforms.
4. Program Operations: Making this all work requires dedicated staff, disciplined processes, and clear metrics and accountability. This doesn't have to mean huge staffs or budgets, but it does mean accepting that the "volunteer" work on nights and weekends is unlikely to have a serious impact or create distinction against competitors with a more organized and funded approach. Rather, you need to bring together people, processes and tools that can do the research and analysis, generate compelling points of view, and sustain the internal and market engagement required to reap the benefits effective thought leadership can provide.

Based on our own research and experience working with thought leadership programs across the IT and professional services sectors, Solutions Insights has developed a four stage roadmap for thought leadership program development, as you can see below. It's a simple model that necessarily abstracts a great deal of nuanced reality, but it should be useful in evaluating your own programmatic maturity and considering next steps for improvement. We'd love to know what you think of the roadmap -- and please weigh in with comments on your own approach and experience. We're still learning, too.

Let's make sure we're all looking through the same lens when we talk about a solution:

"A solution is a combination of products, services, and intellectual capital, focused on a particular customer problem which drives measureable business results".

This is a definition that came out of literally 2 years of discussion and debate among senior solutions professionals at 25 leading technology companies over a 2-year period at ITSMA, which is the leading services and solutions marketing association for tech companies.

There is more than a grain of truth expressed in the sentiments that a solution can't be productized.  However...we respectfully disagree.  Nearly all technology-based companies can and should have a significant portion of the content for every solution productized.  The elements of an offer that can be productized include processes, tools, technologies, methodologies, etc.  Call it what you will -- standardized, replicated, packaged, productized -- they all describe the same process of taking the variability out of creating and ultimately delivering solutions. It stands to reason that the lower the variability, the higher the probability of implementation success, leading to higher margins and higher customer satisfaction.

We believe that companies should strive to be on the right side of the Solutions Matrix (shown below) where repeatability should drive consistency, leading to higher quality standards, more reliable KPI's, and ultimately greater sales at higher margins.

Let's assume that you agree that productizing solutions is something a company should strive to do.  On the surface, at least, the benefits certainly seem to be there for those who are successful.  So where do you start?  How do you go about turning complex solutions into product-like offerings?  The first step is to get a sense of the portion of your solution(s) that you think can be productized.  The entire range, of course, stretches from 0-100%.  We refer to this as the Solutions Productization Continuum.  At the lowest point of what we call Blue Sky Creation (0% reusable components or other inputs), everything is considered a beta, with all of the applicable methodologies and systems that comprise the new offering being built from scratch.  In general, we tend to find systems integrators to be the closest to this end of the spectrum -- Northrop Grumman IS, Accenture, Raytheon, CSC, etc.   At the most standardized region of the spectrum which we refer to as Factory Produced (100% reusable components and other inputs), nearly all of the solutions components have been used, proven successful, and are available to "cut and paste" into new offerings.  While we don't konw anyone who is at the 100% productized level -- which would likely indicate that the offering isn't in fact a real solution -- companies such as Polycom, Lenovo, and even parts of Hewlet-Packard and IBM come close. We know, for example, that IBM has succeeded in applying SKU numbers to some of the highly replicable solutions.

Of course, it is unlikely that any company will have a true solution that is completely a Blue Sky Creation or would be considered Factory Produced.  Most solutions are based upon previous customer experiences and contain elements of value that the vendor feels can be reproduced for other customers.  However, in order for the solution to have direct business value to a specific customer, it almost always needs some alteration or renovation that takes in consideration the unique business model and/or performance of that specific customer.

The key question is, then, what is the optimum point on the Solutions Productization Continuum?  To answer this question, you need to first decide upon the goal of your overall solutions business.  What portion of your total business do you want to be based upon your solutions?  Can you make the changes organizationally, culturally, and operationally?  What are the financial and operational indicators that will determine whether your solutions business is successful or not?  What is the "tipping point", after which the marginal investment in increased productization will result in a negative financial return?

The answer, of course, is...it depends!  Some of the defining factors that will shape your productization strategy include:

• Are you primarily a product company or a service company?  What is your service-product mix? 
• What is the level of complexity of your core solutions?
• What components of your solutions are the most costly as variable components, and can they standardized?
• If you standardize certain solutions components, will that change the perception to your customers so much that the offering will be considered a generic version that isn't seen as adapted to their technology environment or business operations?

Remember -- solutions productization is in general a very good thing to invest in.  Before you embark on an initiative to drive high standardization into your core offerings, however, be very clear that it's both strategically aligned with your own business model and it be be done in a way that provides you with a measureable financial return.



• What topics should we highlight?
• How should we produce and package thought leadership content?
• How should we promote it?
• How can we measure success?

Absent good answers, thought leadership initiatives quickly fall prey to more traditional priorities around lead generation and sale support. The irony, of course, is that good thought leadership has increasingly become a prerequisite to making lead generation and sales support actually work with high value deals. Absent something interesting to talk about related to core customer issues, would-be buyers pay little attention to straight-on sales pitches.

ITSMA's announcement last week of the winners of its annual Marketing Excellence Awards featured two great examples of thought leadership marketing from IBM and Deloitte. Although few companies have committed to thought leadership investment at anywhere near the level of IBM and Deloitte, the basic lessons from their winning initiatives are totally applicable to any B2B firm that needs thought leadership. 

Full disclosure: I served as a judge for this year's awards program and used to run the whole program when I worked for ITSMA. And, yes, I cast my votes for both winning initiatives, so was pleased that the other judges agreed.

The Global CEO Study

IBM's biennial Global CEO Study is a massive undertaking focused on digging deep into top CEO concerns around the world. The 2008 edition, "The Enterprise of the Future," involved face-to-face interviews with 1,130 CEOs and public sector leaders from large organizations in some 40 countries. Released publicly in May 2008, the core report highlighted five strategic attributes that CEOs are trying to build into their organizations:

• Hungry for change
• Innovative beyond customer imagination
• Globally integrated
• Disruptive by nature
• Genuine, not just generous

Filled with data and analysis by industry, region, and more, the IBM report provides a wonderfully insightful look at how CEOs are dealing with the biggest questions of business strategy, culture, and organization.

The Risk Intelligent Enterprise

Deloitte's Risk Intelligent Enterprise program also addresses some meaty concerns: how companies should think about risk at the most strategic level. Through a series of white papers and other thought leadership publications and activities, Deloitte has taken a strong stand on what "risk intelligence" actually means, how it relates to business strategy, and how to operationalize it across the organization in even the most complex environments.

Perhaps most important, the Deloitte program highlights the idea that risk management is not just about avoiding overly risky behavior, but also about taking intelligent risks in a properly managed way to support growth and change.

Based on ongoing research as well as Deloitte's extensive experience working on risk management with companies of all stripes, the Risk Intelligent Enterprise program helps companies understand one of today's most critical management issues in a thoughtful, creative, and responsible way.

Lessons Learned

Stepping back from the specifics of these two initiatives, I see six general lessons for thought leadership marketers at any level:

1. Put Customers First. It sounds obvious to say that thought leadership marketing should focus on what your customers really care about, but far too many marketers take a product- or solution-first approach and try to fit some larger issue neatly around their offering. Buyers don't care about your offerings by themselves; they have their own problems to worry about. Engage them where they live. IBM is trying to build relationships with CEOs, so they research and talk about what other CEOs are doing. Deloitte works especially closely with Boards of Directors, CFOs, and other C-level executives; it's hard to think of a C-suite issue more pressing these days than risk management. What do your customers and prospects really are about?
2. Do the Research. Thought leadership without real research is just opinion, and opinions are a dime a dozen. Show buyers serious research, though, and they're much more likely to pay attention. You might not be able to interview 1,130 CEOs around the world, but you can survey and interview your customers and prospects, produce serious case studies (not puff piece "success stories"), and comb the literature and online conversation to produce new insights.
3. Say Something New. Thought leadership without a differentiated point of view is just an echo of conventional wisdom. Why should customers listen to your version then they've already heard it before -- or if you're only telling them something they already know. Smart customers want to be challenged. If you're not sparking at least some disagreement and debate, you probably haven't said anything new. None of IBM's five attributes are themselves shockingly new but the synthesis suggests and aggressive and innovative approach that goes well beyond conventional thinking. Deloitte's focus on the upside as well as the downside of risk clearly stands apart from the post-Wall Street collapse mentality of compliance first, last, and always.
4. Build a Pervasive Presence. Long gone are the days when thought leadership marketing meant publishing a white paper, research report, or journal article and then moving on to the next project. Media fragmentation, information overload, and the power of social media make it critical that thought leadership marketers put substantial energy into getting the word out across a broad range of media and activities. IBM's 360 degree campaign for the CEO study included traditional activities (email, Web, direct mail, advertising, press and analyst briefings, sales enablement, video, etc.) as well as a number of newer approaches (blogs, podcasts, online innovation jams, and branded content). IBM also produced 15 "flavors" of the main report for different industries and C-suite positions. Deloitte has similarly tapped a wide variety of media and activities to engage clients, prospects, and market influencers. For thought leadership marketing today, think multi-media, social media, and complementary online and offline engagement to build a strong presence wherever your stakeholders already spend their time.
5. Stick with It. IBM's CEO study is a two year project, and the 2008 version is IBM's third such study. To maximize marketing impact, IBM organizes a "teaser phase" (outreach to build awareness before the formal launch), a "reveal phase" (a multi-faceted public launch to build buzz internally and externally), and a "sustain phase" (ongoing engagement to dig more deeply into the issues with customers and others). Deloitte launched the Risk Intelligent Enterprise effort in 2006 and has continued to explore the issues, refine the point of view, publish, and engage. The point is to pick a core issue for your customers and stick with it. Thought leadership takes time. It's better to pick one or two issues and work them hard for several years than to flit from one issue to the next in a more superficial way.
6. Confirm the metrics. Far from an airy initiative, thought leadership marketing can and should focus on core metrics essential to business development and growth. Objectives for the IBM initiative revolved around relationship building with CEOs, corporate visibility and interest, ongoing engagement with key contacts, and sales leads. Deloitte takes a similar approach, focusing on competitive differentiation, influencer relations, client connections, and business development support. Setting and gaining organizational agreement on clear marketing and business development objectives provides the grounding and accountability that marketers need to justify the necessary investments.

Serious thought leadership marketing is not easy, but taking these six lessons to heart will go a long way toward success. At least that's my opinion! What do you think?

When I checked out the series, however, I realized this was a much bigger deal. Endless "experts" (including, at times, me!) pontificate about what companies need to do to market and sell high-stakes services. Some of the advice is even good. But capturing the real feel for such a complex process is extremely difficult.

The Transaction documents on video the real-life effort of a buyer team from Kodak in its effort to find and hire an outside firm to handle all of Kodak's recruitment, hiring, and on-boarding of new employees. A marketing and sales reality show, no less.

The brainchild of Outsourcing Institute CEO Frank Casale, the video series (each episode is under 15 minutes) documents critical moments throughout the buying process, from initial conception to signing the deal. 
Kodak begins with a list of some 50 providers to consider, narrows the list through research and due diligence, creates a finalist pool, and moves to a final decision (spoiler alert: although the final episode is not yet posted, the actual deal went down last year when Kodak signed a three-year contract with HR outsourcer Pinstripe). 

Episode 7, the one for which I provided some lessons learned, shows the team debriefing its recent site visits to two finalist candidates. 

Overall, it's a wonderful way to provide real insight into the buying process, something that all marketers struggle to understand -- and that the vast majority of case studies, white papers, conference presentations and the like do little to illuminate. 

And make no mistake, it's a buying process, not a sales process. The Kodak team is anxious to decide (the whole process in this case was less than two months), but they are firmly in control. Marketers (and sales people) would do well to keep this basic reality at the forefront of their thinking.

So kudos to the Outsourcing Institute for creating the series and to Kodak for being brave enough to allow their buying team to work on camera. A definite thumbs up from this satisfied viewer.

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, and marketers and business developers on the other, about such basic terms as "return on investment," Lowe suggests that PS firms would be well served by investing some time in building common understanding. 

Most important, she says, is defining marketing and business development "up" to a more expansive and strategic view: 

For example, why should the term "marketing only connote the limited activities of, let's say, "building awareness," or "sales support?" Shouldn't the term "marketing be understood to also include targeting and segmentation? Pricing? Client loyalty? In many professional firms, marketing does not mean these latter terms, only the former.

To which I can only say, Amen.

It's not just professional service firms, of course. Many of the technology firms we work with suffer from the same problems: confusion over key terms and meanings, and a general defining "down" of what marketing is all about. And now that we're all trying to sort out the tangled terms of Web 2.0/social media/social networking/social web/marketing 2.0, the language problem is only getting worse.

But all is not lost, and Lowe is right to suggest that lexiconical alignment (if there is such a phrase!) can be a powerful force. 

Just consider the confusion around the word "solutions." If marketing is often misunderstood, the "S" word is subject to near-universal confusion. For companies that have taken the time to work through a solutions lexicon and taxonomy, however, the benefits have been substantial. 

My old company ITSMA has been in the forefront of this work in the IT sector, and my colleagues and I here at Solutions Insights have continued to work with clients in similar fashion. In a great many cases, progress on the real work of bringing new offerings to market, sharpening marketing messaging to emphasize strategic business problems rather than product features and functions, and reorienting sales forces to sell integrated business "solutions" could only happen after all the relevant stakeholders agreed on a common language.
As it has been with solutions, so it can be with "marketing." In Lowe's own words, "New understandings of terms will foster practitioners' ability to grow the 'right' revenues, gain meaningful market share, and optimally serve clients."

What do you think?

Photo credit: greebile

Note: Cross-posted with Reputation to Revenue

According to a recent ITSMA study of large technology and consulting firms: 

• Only half of large B2B tech firms have an established program to monitor online conversations about their company.
• Only one third of the companies have identified internal subject matter experts and assigned them to engage with customers and others in online social conversations.
• Only half of the companies have a well organized process for disseminating content through social media channels.

Further, in all three of these areas, most of the companies with such a program in place have implemented it only within the past year.

Not surprisingly, many solutions marketers are wondering what types of initiatives make sense, how they should organize, and how best to measure the impact of their efforts. The pace of change with social media is overwhelming, and the array of options seemingly endless.

From our perspective here at Solutions Insights, the proper starting point is your solutions strategy. Focusing on core priorities for solutions can provide essential guidance for what types of social media initiatives might be appropriate.

For many solutions companies, those priorities include: identifying new opportunities, creating compelling offers, strengthening customer connections, and accelerating the sales cycle. If these are your priorities, a social media strategy for solutions might look something like this:

1. Identifying new opportunities for growth: Using social tools and processes such as crowdsourcing and innovation jams to identify customer challenges and potential solutions faster and across a broader range of constituents
2. Creating compelling offerings: Using collaboration tools and online communities to maximize customer involvement throughout the offer development process to ensure alignment with customer needs
3. Strengthening customer connections: Using listening tools, blogs, Twitter, communities and other social tools and channels to build trusted relationships by providing ongoing customer education and support
4. Accelerating the sales cycle: Using internal communities and collaboration tools to assist the sales force with faster and easier access to essential resources and subject matter experts

The point, of course, is that social media is a means, not an end. It can be awfully tempting to just jump into the social media waters. But "let's set up a YouTube channel and get a bunch of people on Twitter" is hardly a recipe for solutions success. Social media can indeed play an important part as companies look for new ways to generate growth and maximize results with limited resources, but only if strategy comes first. 

For more on tapping the power of social media for solutions marketing and sales, including our four-phase approach to building an integrated, sustainable program, check out our new Point of View report, Socializing Solutions: Tapping Social Media for Solutions Success.

Your solutions are – or at least should be – different, too. They should stand out from the offerings of your competitors. Even more important, the differentiators that you’ve architected into your solutions should be clearly understood and valued by your customers. You’ve spent a lot of time and money designing your solutions offerings; you should make sure that you’re leveraging differentiators that matter most.

Working with a wide range of companies in recent years, we've observed that solutions marketers often make several important mistakes in developing and creating message for their solutions. In too many cases, they fail to see that their supposed differentiators are not that different; they overestimate the importance of what may well be unique features of their offerings; and/or they overlook “hidden” differentiators that actually do hold real value to their customers. 

The following seven-step Differentiator Model provides a sure-fire way to gain a realistic understanding of what your solutions differentiators are, how important they may be to customers, and how best to leverage them in marketing and selling activities.

1. Identify all potential differentiators. List everything that you believe differentiates your solution from competitive offerings. These can be anything from unique features or supporting services to the way you write service level agreements (SLAs) or measure return on investment (ROI).
2. Articulate the value and benefits. List the real value and benefits of each differentiator. Be brutally honest in doing this; exaggerating the value is not helpful!
3. Compare your differentiators to the competition. Review the entire list to determine where you may have significant differentiators compared to your competition. Again, be brutally honest.
4. Create a Differentiator Grid. Create a simple grid and plot each differentiator according to degree of uniqueness (from the competition) and customer impact (i.e., how meaningful it is to customers). The grid will show clearly which differentiators are most significant and could be most effective if emphasized in your marketing and sales tools and messages.
5. Develop a Perception Map of your prospects and customers. Plot the current perception of your differentiators as best you can. To what extent do customers and prospects perceive your differentiators as truly different? Do this on two levels: the perceived degree of differentiation, and the strength of the perception.
6. Use your Differentiator Grid and Perception Map to guide development of marketing and sales materials and tools. This doesn’t necessarily mean mean that all investments focus on the strongest differentiators -- although playing to strengths is certainly important. There may also be good reason to invest in areas where your differentiators are weak or nonexistent.
7. Integrate your differentiator strategy into your overall marketing strategy. Create a full roll-out plan of how you will leverage the differentiators, including activities, costs, time lines and responsibilities, and how these activities will complement your other marketing plans.

In today’s highly competitive market, the key to your success in selling solutions is your ability to articulate how your solutions are different from competitive offerings, and how these differentiators will benefit your customers’ business performance. Determining which differentiators are truly worth emphasizing, though, is not always obvious. Following the seven steps in our Differentiator Model, will dramatically increase your chances of focusing on the right differentiators for the right customers and prospects with the right materials and tools.

What do you think? What tools or processes have you found to be helpful in defining differentiators for solutions?

Over the next several months, we'll release a series of short, research-based perspectives on how companies can improve performance in their solutions businesses.

Our first Point of View, Adjusting to the New Reality: Four Steps to Solutions Growth, is available now. It outlines four initiatives companies can take to accelerate solutions growth through the rest of 2009 while also repositioning their organizations for longer-term success.

Based on new research with our partner ITSMA, the Point of View highlights findings from a survey with more than 30 B2B solutions providers on four critical initiatives:

• Improving the solutions development process
• Reorienting value propositions and messaging
• Enhancing customer connections
• Better equipping the sales force to sell solutions

For example, we see that companies are looking mostly to develop more packaged and "mass-customized" solutions rather than relying mainly on fully customized, one-off solutions. Only 16% of the companies surveyed are looking to increase the number of highly customized solutions.

You can download the Point of View pdf here. We'd love to know what you think.

The rules are these:

• Authenticity Trumps Celebrity
• Niche is the New Norm
• Bite-Size Communications Dominate
• Personal Utility Drives Adoption
• Consumers Own Brands

As the title says, this is consumer-oriented, but the application to B2B and solutions marketing should be clear immediately, and not just in thinking about Gen Yers. Consider the perspective of the buyers you're trying to reach in B2B:

• Authenticity: Let me speak with and learn from real experts, and get the real story. No hype allowed.
• Niche: Know my industry and my business; don't bother with your generic pitches and solutions. 
• Bite-Sized Communications: Don't waste my time! I will eventually dig into the details, but you've got to pique my interest pretty damm quick.
• Personal Utility: What's in it for me? You've got to pay attention to my personal-professional agenda as well as my company's.
• Brands: Personal and peer experience is what matters; I could care less about your carefully crafted messages and materials.

Maybe us boomers and Xers are not so different from the next generation after all. 

What do you think?

Cross-posted with Reputation to Revenue.

Let’s face it: Most solutions are complex offerings. To succeed with solutions, you need deep knowledge of your customers, an ability to collaborate and share resources and assets internally, and a dedication and commitment to ensuring your solution actually works in the customer environment. Sometimes I think our clients wish they were selling golf balls or running shoes - products that are easy to explain, easy for customers to understand, and suggest a clear vision of how customers will use them!
 

While few of our clients have actually abandoned their B2B careers, they have had to work very hard to figure out how to manage a solutions business effectively. One important step that many of them have taken is establishing a solutions council. These councils are designed to ensure coordination and collaboration across business units and other intra-company boundaries so companies can build, market, and sell integrated solutions more effectively.

To look more closely at the critical role that solutions councils can play, we recently interviewed a number of our clients from several industry segments, including information technology, systems integration, and telecommunications. Their solutions offerings typically include a combination of hardware, software, and professional services.

All of these companies have extensive experience in setting up and running solutions councils, so our clients had a great many lessons to share across several dimensions of council management. I outline ten critical lessons below.

Defining Roles and Responsibilities

• Include the right level of senior people from across the organization. As a team, council members should represent all of the organizational constituencies that have the knowledge required to make informed decisions about the solutions portfolio; they should also have authority for the assets needed to create and enable the envisioned solutions.
• Get CXO sponsorship. The council needs to be seen as having the clear and strong support of the executives at the very top of the organization.  
• Empower the council to make decisions. The council cannot be seen simply as an advisory group; instead, it should hold ultimate responsibility for the overall success of the solutions business.  
• Give the council a collective budget. The council needs the ability to make significant budget decisions, which directly affect all of the major stakeholders on the council. 

Sustaining Interest and Effectiveness – Processes and Activities

• Clarify precisely what a solution is. This is the real starting point for a solutions business, and the council should take ownership of the taxonomy and make this a gating factor before any money is invested in solutions activities.
• Employ proven portfolio management processes and tools. The council needs easy access to the right information at the right time to make good solutions portfolio decisions.
• Don’t forget to develop an internal marketing program around the council. Given the potential importance of the council, and the level of individuals that should be on it, it will raise a lot of eyebrows around the company. Shed a lot of light on what the council does and who’s involved. 

Sustaining Interest and Effective – Running Council Meetings

• Keep the meetings strategic. Interest will flag quickly if the meetings bog down in long discussions or disputes over tactical issues. 
• Pay attention to interpersonal dynamics. Solutions councils will  live or die based upon the council members ability to operate as a cohesive team.
• Make sure council members are always prepared to make decisions. A lesson that nearly all interviewees provided was that the meetings need to be decision-oriented.  Each council members needs to do the preparation necessary to be able to make informed, effective decisions. 

Conclusion: Councils Matter!

At Solutions Insights, we feel strongly that a decision-making body for solutions that cuts across all key groups within a company is not a “nice to have”, but a “must have.” It is critical to solutions success. Research several years ago from ITSMA, an association of technology solution providers, seems to bear this out. A survey of its members showed that roughly half of the respondents’ companies had some form of a solutions council in place. Further analysis indicated that respondents in companies that had a council were more satisfied with their solutions development processes, and believed they were more effective in marketing and selling their solutions.

However, simply establishing a solutions council gets you only half way home. As these 10 lessons demonstrate, how you organize and manage the council will ultimately determine its success in driving solutions growth and profit.

What's your experience?

Photo credit: ego technique