for J. William Bennett

William Wrigley, Jr. (1861-1932) once said "When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."  Without experiential deliberation there can be no change. Without change there can be no progress.  Doing something "the way its always been done" or finding no fault in a faulty process, is as common today as it was in Wrigley's day. Not addressing such issues can render your business unnecessary.

Professional Experiential  Portfolio

for

J. William Bennett

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is not often that an IT technician gains a significant amount of business development experience.  But when that technician is engaged in commercial software sales and IT services consulting for nearly 25 years, something is bound to rub off.  Besides my considerable IT product marketing experience, outlined below, my MIS Bachelor of Science curriculum at Colorado Technical University, included several latter day e-business and e-commerce courses that has kept my knowledge up to date.

    1.   Introduction:

During the period from 1984 to 1988, the JOBTRAC product development [Development] reached a point where traditional marketing efforts were required to push the product from the author's 'intellectual garage' to the commercial software marketplace.

Bennett Software Inc. (BSI) was born prior to the new digital age internet marketplace, but many of the disciplines were the same.

2. Bennett Software:

   From developing a marketing plan to producing the graphic design of printed advertisements, I spent a good part of this four years learning marketing concepts and methodologies.

I employed several marketing approaches during this period: Direct mail (3x5 card inserts in trade publications, and mass mailings); I designed Trade Publication Advertising (Mainframe Journal, Computerworld); and trade show participation (AFCOM, SHARE) - I also designed the trade show booth and artwork.

 

Market Intelligence services (Computer Intelligence [CI] see: http://www.hartehanksmi.com/default.aspx?p=citechnologydatabase) were used to manage cold calling, mailing and advertising target development.  This was an era slightly prior to the Internet boom and little was done in e-Commerce, email marketing or portal subscription.

 

The direct marketing approach worked best.  Direct mail produced sales leads better than any other medium of that era.  Although trade advertising provided name/brand recognition, direct calling (cold calling) of well qualified CI targets had the most impact.  One-on-one interaction with the prospect, learning their needs and requirements, proved to us the concept of integrated marketing.  Our sales, development and marketing efforts all became tuned to the analysis of our market segment by direct contact with prospects.

3. GOAL systems:

Through 1991 I worked with GOAL Systems, the company that purchased JOBTRAC [1988].  I continued to be involved with marketing of this product.  It represented a new product niche in which GOAL was not previously involved, so many of the BSI marketing plans were adopted by GOAL.  While at GOAL I trained product managers and sales associates on product features and functions, competitive response and approaches to the market segment.

4. The Bennett Group:

In 1993 I returned to more traditional IT consulting work when I joined KPMG as a Manager in their Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in Lexington, Mass. [now Bearingpoint]. In that position I learned the methodologies and processes employed by the 'Big 6' consulting firms of the day. 

When the national ATG practice was dissolved in 1995, I returned to running my own consulting practice.  The Bennett Group Inc (BGI) enjoyed moderate success and the marketing materials and methodologies adopted e-business presence [retired website: www.bengroup.com] while sustaining the professional consulting deliverable aspects of the larger firms.

Again, I designed marketing materials, brochures and trade show booth artwork. We advertised in technical publications, such as NaSPA magazine [www.naspa.com], for which I did ad composition [Artifact].  I developed all the artifacts, sources and documentation for the GSA Schedule of which BGI was a participant for 8 years.

In 2001 through 2003 I assisted Systems Management Assoc. (SMA) [see: www.SMAUSA.com] a commercial software company, develop a marketing plan for IBM mainframe prospects. Artifacts of that plan are confidential. However, a letter of recommendation from SMA indicates my contribution to marketing was valuable and a marketing brochure was entirely my design and content.

5. Web Design

Since 2003 I have engaged in web design and content management. I developed several sites for Globallink [www.gltradeconsulting.com www.glholdings.com], the FEMA PMO Web portal (intranet site for DHS - Not publicly available) and the Lighthouse IS site: www.lighthouse-infoservices.com . I also have engaged in click-link marketing (Google, Yahoo, CIO.com, TEC, etc) and PPC (pay per click) campaign design.

6. Summary

A mentor of mine once described sales as a 'push' and marketing a 'pull'.  That was back when marketing was more advertising and research studies and sales involved pressing the flesh.  The internet has changed that simple view considerably and forever.

Whether it be a marketing plan or negotiating an agent contract, my product management experience in software is quite broad.  The most difficult area of marketing is locating the target audience focal point.  Or, "Where are our potential buyers looking these days for solutions?"  This is a research niche that can be a real challenge to fill. I've been successful in meeting that challenge with regard to Software Marketing.

I bring a certain visibility and notoriety to market research in information technology software.  Mostly due to my involvement in well known products and my professional relationships with some of the worlds largest consultancies and integrators, I have a fairly extensive network of resources to tap for this type of research.

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