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Avitage Announces Participation as Founding Partner in New Value Mapping Consortium
- Consortium to Provide Free ValueMapper™ Software that Makes Solution Selling Possible

Waltham, MA. Friday Feb 27, 2007 – Avitage, a marketing and sales communications service company that helps companies execute the complex, business-to-business sale through innovative communications, announced today their participation in the new Value Mapping Consortium.

The Value Mapping Consortium (www.valuemapping.net) was formed by over a dozen companies and thought leaders in the marketing and sales process and effectiveness space, to provide Product Marketing organizations innovative software to solve this pervasive problem once and for all. It is the brainchild of Bob Schmonsees, author of the definitive book on marketing and sales alignment and effectiveness, “Escaping The Black Hole” (Thomson/AMA 2005).

“You can’t sell a solution unless it solves a customer’s problem,” says Schmonsees, “so the first step in any solutions centric transition should be to explicitly define a product’s value and differentiation in the context of specific customer’s needs and issues. I know this sounds like Marketing 101, but the truth is that most companies are so enthralled with their product’s features that they skip this fundamental first step.  As a result, their solutions selling initiative flounders because it’s built on a weak foundation.”

Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage and a Founding Member of the Consortium, agrees, “Few companies do an effective job of developing and communicating solution-centric sales messages. The Value Mapping process provides product managers and marketers with a proven technique that will immediately improve both the customer relevancy and sales readiness of their messaging. As such, a well constructed Value Map will become as critical to the product marketing function as an accurate forecast is to Sales.”

About Avitage
Since 1994, Avitage (name derived from audio-video montage) has helped sales and marketing professionals communicate more effectively and sell more efficiently.

For companies engaged in business-to-business solutions selling, Avitage brings selling messages to life for the sales channel and customers by combining multi-media and web technologies with new production and delivery processes.

Avitage improves sales conversations with customers, reduces dependency on the six-legged sales call (multiple people on a call), improves the consistency of message delivery and reduces the time and effort needed to find and assemble communications for customers.

The Avitage Marketing and Sales Communication System uniquely enables sales people to access and use media to produce programs that are tailored to the specific interests of each stakeholder and buying situation. The system supports ALL the delivery methods available today including traditional PowerPoint, on demand programs and live web meetings.

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