Whitepapers are designed to be educational tools and have proven highly effective in educating potential customers about the value of specific products and technologies. Collateral is a more direct approach to convincing the customer that this particular product is the best solution to the problem. Collaborative Strategies programs of performing competitive analyses are designed to understand the current market, who the major and emerging players are, how to position your product relative to competitors and what to expect from those competitors in the near future. This applies to both technologies as well as products. Seminars are an effective way not only to educate your potential buyers, but to gather qualified leads.
Most vendors have a very narrow perspective of the market, trends, and issues.
However, CS, has a broad perspective and can talk to business users in their language. We have developed a seminar model that starts with an overview of the content area, i.e. groupware, collaboration on the Internet and intranets, knowledge management, etc. The presentation next moves to specific products in the content area. Seminars are offered to prospective purchasers by the vendor, as an educational forum. If there are customers available to speak, a testimonial and case study on their implementation can be part of the session.