The dizzying barrage of new marketing technologies is leading to confusion, the rule of "hype," and bad marketing investments and decisions. Beyond "e" is designed to help sales and marketing executives look beyond current e-business fads to understand the fundamentals that will distinguish sales and marketing leaders in the future. The book provides a blueprint for using advances in technology¡ªincluding but not limited to the Web¡ªto get more marketing power for less money.
Drawing on case studies from leading marketers such as IBM, Eastman Chemical, eBay, CitiGroup, GM, Dell and many others, author Stephen Diorio explains how sales and marketing leaders can:
* Identify where technology can help them grow their businesses faster and get more mileage out of their sales and marketing dollars;
* Develop an action plan to take action today and create competitive advantage tomorrow;
* Anticipate the dramatic changes technology will bring to traditional marketing operations, marketing channels and customers in the coming decade.
The winning strategies in Beyond "e" are based on original best practices research and interviews with thousands of customers and sales and leading marketers, and technology trend analysis from the META Group¡ªthe leading IT advisory firm.
From the Back Cover
If E-Commerce Isn't A Silver Bullet, What Is? How to Use CRM Tools, Interactive Marketing, Online Marketplaces and Other New Technologies to Drive Revenue Growth
Five years into the "e-business revolution" most businesses are still struggling to harness the power of new marketing technologies and stretch their sales and marketing dollars. Beyond 'e' will help sales and marketing executives see through the smoke of current e-business fads to understand the fundamentals of marketing strategy, and how to apply them in the midst of powerful and confusing new technologies. Beyond 'e' reveals how leading-edge businessesfrom IBM, Eastman Chemical, e-Bay, Citigroup, Dell, and othersuse cutting edge technology to to improve everything from sales force efficiency to brand management and email marketing.
Based on thousands of interviews with sales and marketing managers in Global 2000 companies, this essential guide to smarter marketing through technology covers:
Ways to repackage or redesign products for Web-based distribution channels
New approaches for managing an ever-expanding number of third-party distribution channels
Ways to transform your call center from a phone-answering department to a high-impact sales team
Beyond "e" explains the benefits of today's complex technologies in language anyone can understand, and reveals what marketing executives must do over the short- and long-term to master today's technologiesand win customers.
"Beyond "e" hits home on the emerging theme of sales force effectiveness, and looks beyond the e-business fads that have burned many managers. It's a tactical handbook for anyone struggling with the fundamentals of using technology to maximize their sales and marketing efforts."
--Don Peppers, President, Peppers and Rogers Group
"Beyond e goes beyond the typical marketing fluff. We began implementing these ideas immediately"
Robert Stagno, Vice President of Worldwide Direct Marketing, IBM
"...An outstanding blend of strategic insights and pragmatic
advice."
Dale Kutnick, CEO of The META Group
"How will sales and marketing executives survive the next technology cycle? How can we turn technology chaos into advantage? What are the best opportunities to take right now? This book will help you answer those questions for your organization, using strategies based on the innovations and forward thinking of some of America's top companies..."
From the Foreword
Technology has transformed the ways that marketers must approach operations, channels, and customer bases ... and changes in the next decade will be even more dramatic. Beyond "e" shows marketing managers how to successfully blend current and future technologies into their existing marketing strategies, broadening their marketing reach while simultaneously focussing on the wants and needs of particular groups and even individual customers.
Each of the book's twelve chapters outlines how technology will impact a particular aspect of sales and marketing, laying out specific management strategies for taking advantage of these opportunities. Based on research conducted by IMT Strategies, Beyond "e"provides insightful analyses and hands-on recommendations, including:
Branding strategies to meet the changing needs of online buyers
How to integrate interactive direct marketing tools into existing marketing mixes
Six fundamental ways that networks will revolutionize the flow of information
Techniques for mastering customer service delivery across many channels
Seven short-term tactics to protect margins and boost market share
How to maximize new, technology-enabled, peer-to-peer networking systems
Ways to transform call centers into strategic traffic cops
Strategies to organize around customers and processes, instead of products and business units
Far too often, successful marketing and business strategies are squeezed and distorted to make them fit into flashy new technologies. Beyond 'e' puts the cart once again before the horse, providing new tools to support rather than replace current selling approaches and showing marketers how to use today's exciting web-based technologies to create solidly constructed, effective, and powerful marketing programs.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:A MUST BUY FOR EXECUTIVES, January 22, 2002
Reviewer: (Topton, PA, United States) - Steve Diorio has written a meaty and relevant book about selling technologies. In an age when there is so much E hype and fluff that only serves to confuse, we needed a book that was born from practical, everyday consulting and research in the offices of the best companies. The salient ideas about which Mr. Diorio expounds are absolutely critical for growth and profit. They carry with them an imperative that to ignore the protocols of this newest e technology will lead to peril and a fatal falling behind the power curve.
I read the excellent reviews in which professors recommended Beyond E. They were impressive. But, this book was written for executives and senior managers who have the very life of their corporations in the palm of their hands. It is obvious that Mr. Diorio has spent considerable time with his clients and sweat blood with them to achieve the best e-practices in marketing, promotion and selling.
I believe the book is about stretching the IT and Internet sales budgets so that busineses can grow at an accellerated rate. The book Beyond E is truly futuristic because it clearly outlines what the best companies have been doing and what the leaders of tomorrow (the followers of our leaders today) will be doing in late 2002 and in 2003. The blueprint is drawn up, the creation of dynamic selling technologies has been built, but, sadly, few understand it, and even fewer have actually implemented it. Companies like Dell Computer, IBM, Charles Swab, Amazon and e-Bay are only a few of these futuristic leaders that Mr. Diorio writes about. They "get it". How long will it take others? Mr. Diorio lays out in detail what needs to be done right now.
Mr. Diorio is like a drum major for executives to immediately order "the engineering of sustainable technology innovations into the sales and marketing process", to quote Stve Diorio. The traditional software analysts and programmers in companies are not prepared for the accelerated rate at which customer service and marketing creativity must be coded to stay abreast of changing customer needs and wants.
It is about knowing the mind of the customer and changing systems at every level of the company so there can be real-time change. I got a distinct sense of urgency in reading the book. As a management consultant, I now feel driven to alert my clients that "getting it" is urgently critical. Steve Diorio virtually screams out at us that positive results can be realized only from the implementation right now of dynamic marketing, selling and customer service e-systems.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:FINALLY... someone with substance!, December 15, 2001
Reviewer: (San Francisco, CA) - Finally a book that doesn't force-feed you candy-coated customer experience stories that are interesting but don't tell us anything we do not already know.
Having read most of the more celebrated sales and marketing books of the last decade, this one actually has some substance behind it. I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of research and experience that stands behind this book. Instead of providing a few nice anecdotal cases about customer-centricity or customer loyalty, this book provides a comprehensive view of how technology is changing sales and marketing practices throughout an organization and across all brands. Most importantly, it provides you with actionable insights into modern sales and marketing best practices.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:Beyond E is a home run, December 6, 2001
Reviewer: A reader
Steve Diorio has given form to and captured the elusive ingredients that so many of us have missed as we have poured money and effort into our internet sales strategies only to be rewarded with an empty feeling and an ache to know where we have gone wrong.
It is clear that his experiences with the best companies in the internet sales universe have given him a perspective that wins the game. He is really generous to share his knowledge in this well written book that gives the interested executive an unbeatable step by step perspective. Steve seems to know more about how to successfully harness the internet than anyone I have read or met.
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