The purpose of Service Marketing and Sales process is twofold:

• Marketing – To understand the marketplace served by the providers of IT, to identify customers, to market to them, to generate marketing plans for IT services, and support the selling of IT services
  
• Sales – To match up customer wants and needs with IT service capabilities, and to sell appropriate IT services
  To match up customer wants and needs with IT service capabilities, and to sell appropriate IT services.

Outcomes

As a result of the successful implementation of this process:

• Existing and potential customers have visibility and understanding of IT capabilities
• Awareness of IT services and capabilities is stimulated
• Customer and marketplace trends and opportunities are understood
• IT service contracts are established at the optimum price point for both customer and provider
• The IT organization is promoted as the IT service provider of choice
   

Scope

The process addresses marketing to both general and specific customer needs. It involves working with current internal and external customers as well as identifying potential customers. It supports the marketing and selling of both current services and potential solutions and services. 

Includes

• Understanding the market, customer segmentation, the opportunities and the competitive (to the IT service provider) threats
• Developing the list of prospects
• Generating marketing and sales collateral; communicating the features, advantages, and benefits for unique buying criteria
• Negotiating and closing sales within pricing guidance and rules

Excludes

• Deciding to commission service and solution extensions (Portfolio Management)
• Developing solutions and services (Realization category of processes)
• Implementing solutions (Transition category of processes)
• Preparing contracts (Service Pricing and Contract Administration)
• Establishing pricing guidance and rules (Service Pricing and Contract Administration)