Call for Entries: ITSMA’s 2006 Marketing Excellence Awards

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts—March 23, 2006—ITSMA, a membership community that helps companies market and sell technology services and solutions, today announced the call for entries to its 2006 Marketing Excellence Awards competition. They honor marketing that achieves excellence in the three most critical aspects of success: innovation, execution, and business results.

The awards are open to all companies worldwide that market and sell technology-related services and solutions. Applications are available on the Web at http://www.itsma.com/News/mea; the deadline for submissions is Friday, June 16, 2006.

“The discipline of marketing, especially in the services and solutions space, is undergoing dramatic changes,” said Dave Munn, president and CEO of ITSMA. “This year, we’ve introduced several new awards categories to recognize best practices in such emerging areas as account-based marketing and relationship building, as well as in solutions marketing, competitive positioning, and increasing sales effectiveness. We look forward to honoring the new heights of achievement that technology marketers are realizing today.”

Entries for the 2006 Marketing Excellence Awards competition may be submitted in the following six categories:

• Launching New Solutions: Designing, developing, and bringing integrated solutions to market in a time-effective manner.

• Sharpening Competitive Differentiation: Demonstrating differentiation at both the company and offering level, as well as in specific target markets.

• Generating Demand through Micro- and Account-Based Marketing : Designing, launching, and managing focused campaigns for highly targeted audiences in specific segments and individual accounts.

• Increasing Sales Effectiveness: Improving the entire sales process for services and/or solutions, including opportunity analysis, sales enablement, and account management.

• Strengthening Customer Relationships: Creating and managing well coordinated relationship-building programs for existing customers.

• Enhancing Marketing Leadership: Aligning marketing with business strategy, improving organizational focus and discipline, and expanding strategic roles and responsibilities.

The 2006 Marketing Excellence Award winners will be announced at a special awards dinner at ITSMA’s 2006 Marketing Conference on November 15, 2006. Past winners have included Accenture, AT&T, BEA, BearingPoint, BT, Capgemini, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, IKON, Lucent, Oracle, and Sprint Nextel, among others. See http://www.itsma.com/News/mea for more information.

About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA members include business leaders such as Accenture, BT, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing ^SM, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.