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Add You - Unlocking Sales Among Untapped Prospects, Engineering Marketing/Sales Processes for Maximum Results
IntroductionExhibitions are one of the best ways to put your company and products in front of your customers and prospects in order to obtain good quality leads. They are also one of the most expensive forms of marketing and can easily over run their budget. This article will highlight some of the key points you should consider when preparing for an exhibition.Set a TargetAlthough it may sound like jargon you should always set a target for your exhibition. If you always attend the same show year after year then look back at what you achieved previously and aim to do better. You may be launching a new product; trying to attract new customers; obtaining new leads or investigating a new market. If you can’t think of a goal or your historical information shows a poor return then consider spending the money in a different way. Could you achieve the same return at a lower cost using another form of marketing?Choosing the right showAre you looking for a new market or launching a new product? Answering this question could lead you to choose entirely different events. A new market is most likely to mean a new show either in a different geographic region or in a different market category – a food show instead of a chemical show for example. A new product may well be best launched to your existing customer base who attend your main industry event. There are likely to be far more opportunities for you to exhibit than there is budget to pay for them.Speak to the organisers, obtain their attendance records, see which customers visit historically and what jobs they have in their companies. Talk to your customers, competitors and industry contacts and get their views on the show. Is it growing? Is it well attended for the price? You can have the ‘best in show stand prize’ but if no one is there it will not make you fell any better. Small shows can be very successful but attendance is likely to be limited, huge events may be exciting with lots of visitors but if no one can find you then they can be an expensive waste of time.PlanningStart well
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base
Very often you will find that the students from different organizations in High School such as the football team or the chess club will initiate their own High School fundraising event. This is because often such organizations do not have the financial support of the school itself or because the school is unaware of their situation with regard to the lack of funds. Or it may be that the school budget has already been allocated to other school activities or developments for that year.Many of the High School fundraising events which take are usually there in order to help enhance a particular school activity such as the Junior or Senior Prom dance, some annual out of town travel (a skiing holiday) or just to help with the schools basketball or football games. Whilst you may find that the schools, Math's, Debate or Drama club will looking at having a fundraiser in order to raise funds for uniforms, costumes or props that they need.Today there are plenty of companies who offer their products and services in order for such fundraisers to take place. There are some candy manufacturers who offer more than half of the profit from all the candy you sell at a candy bar fundraiser to the schools. In some cases these companies will also offer free shipping and free booths and banners for those schools that are specially in need. Not only is this a great way of raising funds for the High School but you will often be able to keep the profits before handing over the rest of the money to the candy manufacturer.Another idea that a High School could try in order to raise funds is by having an auction. At this the students will auction off their talents such as mowing some ones lawn or the cheerleading group may offer to do a cheer camp or give some other group dance lessons. It may be that honor students at the school will offer up their services to tutor someone for a particular fee. However, when looking at this type of fundraising event for your school it is vital that the school gets both the permission of the student and their parents for them to be involved.
Untapped prospects are a) accounts and sites with the same characteristics as your best customers, but are not in your marketing database, and are therefore invisible to you, and b) unidentified key player contacts within accounts and sites you are already targeting who are in the decision-making group for your product or service. These contacts are especially significant, because they represent a segment of your market you may now believe is visible to you but in fact, is not.
HOW THE STAUTS QUO CREATES BLIND SPOTS
Many marketing and sales techniques in use today practically assure that your company is overlooking major parts of
your available market, missing viable prospects in the part of
the market you are actively targeting.
DATABASE BUILDING BY DRIVE-BY
Sales people, including those that work for channel companies, generally build market knowledge through referrals and drive-bys. A “drive-by” is a situation in which a sales person
is on their way to an appointment and notices a large building
with an impressive logo and thinks, “They must buy what I sell somewhere in there.” The sales person adds the company name to a list of cold-call accounts. When business is slow, they might pull out that list of cold call accounts. Sales management works diligently to keep sales people from spending any time on untested accounts, and that is an absolutely correct posture for them to assume. Ideally, it is a salesperson’s job to close deals, not find and cultivate new opportunities.
RELYING ON LISTS
Rented lists are one of the most common ways that marketing tries to build market knowledge and generate leads on behalf of sales. Have you ever taken the time to look at those lists? Massini Group has, and what we see is not encouraging. We’ve found that even list sources with relatively strict selection criteria can be 50% or more off target from how they were described. If you doubt this, look at the list of respondents
to your latest email or direct mail using rented lists. In one particular case, an enterprise software company found 53%
to 76% of its respondents were “off target”. In another, a
storage systems company found that eight in nine of the respondents was “off target” even though selection criteria were very strict and the source deemed credible. Worse
yet, you have absolutely no leverage to push list owners to develop contacts at accounts that are not presently in their list.
Another appealing source of information to tackle the problem of gaps in market visibility is a commercially compiled list or database. However, like rented data, in and of themselves they are not comprehensive.
A computer hardware company that uses a major provider of IT-installed base data recently estimated that the source had detailed information for just one third of its market.
COMMERCIAL DATA SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOUR COMPETITION TOO
Also remember that your competition has access to the same commercially available sources. And so does every other company that is marketing and selling any product even remotely similar to yours. This translates to a massive amount of competition for mindshare among the unfortunate individuals whose names appear in those databases.
"AUTOMATING THE PROBLEM" WITH CRM AND SFA
A growing number of companies are investing in CRM or SFA solutions with the expectation that they will improve marketing and sales operations. Unfortunately, these tools generally
only increase the velocity of the status quo. If no specific effort is made to change the culture, improve the methodology
or advance the science of market penetration, then a system
to automate the processes will not help—it will only automate and accelerate a flawed and ineffective process.
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base o
Business Customer Service - Satisfying Your Customers Without Breaking the Bank - by Malcolm MillsBUSINESS, is selling to customers. Let’s face it. Even I’m selling you something I‘m selling you on an idea. It's free... but I’m selling. I know you’ll benefit from it because it’s information and we all need specific information to profit these days. And when you profit, I profit.Think about this.·Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. Sir Ralph RichardsonHey, it really is a Tough World Out There! (That's my book title) Yes, business is getting more and more complex by the minute. But does it have to be extreme?The short answer is NO, it doesn’t.But still, the fact of the matter is that 50% of all customers leave their supplier within a year or two. So who is kidding who? Is the Buyer kidding the Seller or the Seller kidding the Buyer? Who is doing what, wrong? Why the fickle finger of fate in so many fine and frustrated faces? Oh, oh, which finger is that? Darn.You probably work for (or own) a company who is facing this exact problem. You are losing clients. Customers are ditching you like unfaithful lovers at Mardi Gras.So what are you doing about it? What steps are you taking to resolve this colossal negative predicament?Well at least you’ve recognized there’s a problem but hold on to your hat there, Fireball. Before you wade in and take wild physical action, you need to take a look at a few things before you can even think of knocking down walls.I know you think you’ve heard this all before in a hundred different formats …well, maybe you should listen this time? In simple terms, how about letting your brain kick in before the rest of your anatomy, okay with you?Nothing happens on it’s own, you have to make it happen. Stop, step back, dissociate your head of all of the technical wizardry and complex software you’ve spent a bundle on in the past few years and follow these few simple steps.Read this first. 1. Question yourself about y
RELYING ON LISTS
Rented lists are one of the most common ways that marketing tries to build market knowledge and generate leads on behalf of sales. Have you ever taken the time to look at those lists? Massini Group has, and what we see is not encouraging. We’ve found that even list sources with relatively strict selection criteria can be 50% or more off target from how they were described. If you doubt this, look at the list of respondents
to your latest email or direct mail using rented lists. In one particular case, an enterprise software company found 53%
to 76% of its respondents were “off target”. In another, a
storage systems company found that eight in nine of the respondents was “off target” even though selection criteria were very strict and the source deemed credible. Worse
yet, you have absolutely no leverage to push list owners to develop contacts at accounts that are not presently in their list.
Another appealing source of information to tackle the problem of gaps in market visibility is a commercially compiled list or database. However, like rented data, in and of themselves they are not comprehensive.
A computer hardware company that uses a major provider of IT-installed base data recently estimated that the source had detailed information for just one third of its market.
COMMERCIAL DATA SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOUR COMPETITION TOO
Also remember that your competition has access to the same commercially available sources. And so does every other company that is marketing and selling any product even remotely similar to yours. This translates to a massive amount of competition for mindshare among the unfortunate individuals whose names appear in those databases.
"AUTOMATING THE PROBLEM" WITH CRM AND SFA
A growing number of companies are investing in CRM or SFA solutions with the expectation that they will improve marketing and sales operations. Unfortunately, these tools generally
only increase the velocity of the status quo. If no specific effort is made to change the culture, improve the methodology
or advance the science of market penetration, then a system
to automate the processes will not help—it will only automate and accelerate a flawed and ineffective process.
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base
Why send video email? Why would you want to send video email when you can send an ordinary email, that is the question? What is the difference?When you send video email, you bring message to life by adding audio and visuals to your message which will make it much more effective than an ordinary email.You never get a second chance to make the first impression. In this fast-paced world you have to move ahead of your competitors. It is no longer big fish eat small fish, it is now fast fish eat slow fish!Your clients are always comparing services and you want to be seen using the latest cutting edge video streaming technology in your communication and not stick with the old methods of communication. The world is changing very fast and you must keep with it or be left behind among the stragglers.Many people are auditory and visual and when you add sound and pictures into your message you get their attention. It has been proven in research that we only retain about 10% of what we read, but we retain 50% of what we hear and see!Now you see why you want to send video email instead of ordinary email? When was the last time you sent a vide email? If you haven't sent a video email, you are still using the old technology. Your competitors who send video emails will have a winning edge over you!Seeing is believing, would you like to see and hear me talking to you simply by clicking on a video email link or read an ordinary email?You can demonstrate your product when you send video emails to your clients and a picture says a thousands words but a moving picture with sound says much more!Imagine millions of people in the MLM business using this latest video streaming technology to communicate effectively with their marketing group and creating a second stream of income for themselves and their groups!Video email is the next big thing to mobile phone! If you have missed the mobile phone business, this is the time to get in on the video email business. Will there be competitors? Of course, there will be as many as what you now see in the
Another appealing source of information to tackle the problem of gaps in market visibility is a commercially compiled list or database. However, like rented data, in and of themselves they are not comprehensive.
A computer hardware company that uses a major provider of IT-installed base data recently estimated that the source had detailed information for just one third of its market.
COMMERCIAL DATA SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOUR COMPETITION TOO
Also remember that your competition has access to the same commercially available sources. And so does every other company that is marketing and selling any product even remotely similar to yours. This translates to a massive amount of competition for mindshare among the unfortunate individuals whose names appear in those databases.
"AUTOMATING THE PROBLEM" WITH CRM AND SFA
A growing number of companies are investing in CRM or SFA solutions with the expectation that they will improve marketing and sales operations. Unfortunately, these tools generally
only increase the velocity of the status quo. If no specific effort is made to change the culture, improve the methodology
or advance the science of market penetration, then a system
to automate the processes will not help—it will only automate and accelerate a flawed and ineffective process.
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base
A profession or hobby that uses a power-driven machine tool such as a lathe or drill to shape metal, is known as machining. The person specializing in its use is called a machinist. A machine shop that is run from home is called a home machine shop.Most machining operations are those that remove metal from an item or those that add metals. There are typical tools that are used in home machining. A lathe is a machine tool that creates sections in circles by rotating a metal work piece. A drill or punch press is used to remove metal in the form of a hole. Some other tools that are used in machining are saws, grinding tools and milling machines.Advanced machining operations make use of electrical discharge, electro-chemical erosion and laser cutting to shape metal work pieces. Many car restorers have good home workshops and a wide array of tools. There are also individuals who build up a home workshop with the scheme of building some project in the long run. They eventually get sidetracked into building the machine tools and their accessories themselves.There are magazines that provide advice on ways of solving problems being faced in the home shop. It is also possible to get information about a used lathe and other machine tools, in case the owner's manual is missing. These magazines and sites have a list of operating instructions on the various tools used. They also give detailed information about various manufacturers and their details.Information about various new technologies that are being used, are also discussed. New techniques such as computer aided manufacturing processes, which have brought about a revolution in the machine shops, are also discussed. Home shop machinists can use this type of technological software to get the desired product results.
COMMERCIAL DATA SOURCES ARE AVAILABLE TO YOUR COMPETITION TOO
Also remember that your competition has access to the same commercially available sources. And so does every other company that is marketing and selling any product even remotely similar to yours. This translates to a massive amount of competition for mindshare among the unfortunate individuals whose names appear in those databases.
"AUTOMATING THE PROBLEM" WITH CRM AND SFA
A growing number of companies are investing in CRM or SFA solutions with the expectation that they will improve marketing and sales operations. Unfortunately, these tools generally
only increase the velocity of the status quo. If no specific effort is made to change the culture, improve the methodology
or advance the science of market penetration, then a system
to automate the processes will not help—it will only automate and accelerate a flawed and ineffective process.
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base
The “hard” skills necessary for an executive protection specialist (EPS) and/or personal protection specialist (PPS) are often perceived as being that of a policeman or (elite) soldier. Though there can be certain similarities i.e. the use of handguns, hand-to-hand combat and the ability to control a vehicle, most people having worked both in executive protection and either of the latter careers, will deny that the skills are parallel. They may look alike but the methodology of each skill differs from segment to segment.However, the psychological skills needed are almost identical. Knowing basic psychological skills is essential in this line of business, as it is in law enforcement and military combat. Any person taking responsibility for another person’s life will have to consider the adaptability of his/her psychological capabilities in a variety of situations. These will include but are not limited to; adaptability in awkward situations (state of mind going from humble to authoritative or vice versa), adaptability in different work atmospheres (Keeping body and mind relaxed when waiting for a client and suddenly change to a high stress level) and the ever so popular question of considering life-or-death situations (can I kill or will I freeze?).Knowing, and openly accepting, your physical and psychological limits are a lifesaver. Not only will it save your own life, but it could very well save the lives of your teammates and your client.Since training in this area is almost non-existing in the private sector, allow me to suggest a few easy-to-conduct training scenarios:1. Take a student or new EPS/PPS to a party and assign him to a “VIP”. It can be your own private party and the “VIP” can be whomever you choose, but be sure to let the “VIP” know that the EPS/PPS are there to look out for them. Depending on your assessment of the EPS the assignment can be a very attractive woman (possible problem: jealousy or multiple worshippers) or a man with a tendency towards drinking (possible problem: inappropriate and/or reckless behavior). Now observe the EPS/PP
In our experience, these tools take significant time to implement and are initially focused on late-stage pipeline accounts and customers, thereby providing no assistance at all to individuals trying to grow their business, generate leads, or meet aggressive sales targets beyond the installed base.
SHEER NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH
No single source of market information can assure you
comprehensive market visibility, coverage and penetration.
But even a variety of sources of accounts, profiles, attributes
and contacts do not necessarily solve the problem. If all of
the sources that you acquire essentially offer overlapping
views of the market, you have not gained a thing, except maybe a false sense of security. For instance, having 100 contacts
at one account and none at 99 other accounts is not helpful.
In another scenario, having detailed knowledge of 10% of
the installed base of a complementary product is necessary,
but not sufficient.
The key is to develop a single data set built from multiple sources, and then develop metrics that illuminate the gaps, both in terms of overall scope and of depth of knowledge. This is an on-going process, and additional sources should be reviewed and added as they become available. The biggest returns are realized as gaps are filled and marketing and sales efforts are directed at the newly discovered accounts and untapped prospects.
FINDING BETTER POINTS OF ENTRY
Tired of fighting to get past gatekeepers? Wouldn’t it be better for you to locate a different individual within the same target company that is not constantly subjected to such a barrage? The response rates that most email, direct mail and telemarketing generate might suggest so. Massini Group definitely believes so. This is not to say such sources of information are not useful. Use them to clarify your vision of the available market, but seek a more fruitful path of entry into the target company.
Most sales process training available today makes it a point to differentiate between the individual within your target company that can make the decision and those that prepare the decision maker to do so. Called the point of entry, or point of receptivity, this individual lives every day with the pain that you seek to remedy.
Depending on the industry, this individual is probably not someone whose name appears in SEC filings. But they are the key to your ability to get your foot in the door. They can identify all of the players in the process and provide your sales people with the internal intelligence needed to advance the process. Your challenge is to find them. This is where alternative sources and data gathering techniques should be used to fill in the gaps left by commercially available sources of information. For example, by first seeking the individual with operational responsibility for the solution they were offering, a data warehousing company increased its appointment-setting rate five times over, making it possible to utilize a face-to-face, scheduled meeting to get past the CIO’s phalanx of gatekeepers.
INCREASING MARKET VISABILITY: THE MASTER TARGET SITE LIST
The key to successful market penetration lies in exposing untapped prospects by improving the quality of the data
upon which you base your programs. This is not accomplished simply by “buying a better list.” It is done by qualifying existing data, verifying it, identifying and filling in the gaps, and engineering an improved system that allows you to continually improve and augment the data throughout the sales cycle—all while furnishing your sales force with higher-quality, on target leads. The result is greater market visibility in the form of a Master Target Site List that accurately represents your full potential market.
Creating a Master Target Site List is a process, not an event. If your current marketing practices are based on sales-force or third-party data sources, the steps are straightforward:
• Build a comprehensive list of members (sites) in each market segment.
• Assign a value to each member that is shared by sales and marketing.
• Identify and quantify additional information gaps (e.g., incomplete data in title field).
• Methodically gather data to fill the gaps.
• Maximize the value of new visibility to untapped prospects by aggressively communicating to those companies and individuals.
Once developed, the Master Target Site List provides the following critical benefits:
• Guarantees the list contains only those companies your sales force agrees are valuable. Therefore, any time or money spent to develop a lead or sale will be on target in terms of company/site.
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