Executive targeting & relationship building New Ideas for B2B CMO

Presented by Mitch Bishop, CMO iRise

How do you reach the CIO/Executive sponsor in a Fortune 1000 company, if you are a small enterprise software company? Throw out the marketing mix and focus on the basics...building long-term relationships with your customers. iRise has used technology and automation to create an amazing machine that has achieved 400 customers to date, 200 of those are Fortune 1000.

The iRise CIO executive roundtable program is the secret sauce to their marketing success; 5 years of fine tuned event performance. There are 3 roundtable events a year in various cities around the globe. The return over the last 5 years is 10 TIMES! The meetings are for 2 days, structured to provide content from a “Rock Star CIO” on day 1 and a day of networking at a motor raceway on day 2 for great peer-to-peer networking and discussion. As a follow-on to the event, each CIO is asked to provide 3 referrals for contact and those that decline the meeting, iRise schedules a follow-on meeting on their calendar. All that it takes to get a pilot is for the CIO to show up to the meeting and listen for 5 minutes! (If we all were so lucky to have amazing products to market!)

iRise has tried other events including CIO conference, CIO Advisory board and CIO local dinner events. None of these events provide as much value and return as their roundtables. For those who participate in CIO conferences, Mitch recommends getting the right ground cover by underwriting the event with focused activities before, during and after the event. Before the event get the list of attendees and invite CIOs to a dinner the night before the event, during the event make sure you have a key speaking slot coupled with booth on the show floor and after personal email follow-up. The after is the hardest part, it is time consuming, it requires lots of internal follow-up, yet invaluable to the sales process.

For more details regarding customer research, data acquisition and analysis process at iRise, review the presentation or contact Mitch Bishop directly