This week, Catalog Success welcomes its newest Web columnist, Terry Jukes. A veteran of the catalog business who served as president/CEO of H.R. compliance materials cataloger G. Neil. and president of Misco, Terry heads B2B Direct Marketing Intelligence, a B-to-B consulting firm. Terry will address B-to-B catalog/multichannel issues every week and invite and encourage your questions, thoughts, ideas and insight.
Recently, I’ve had several discussions regarding “name” vs. “site” management. One, in particular, started as I discovered that more than half of a client’s prospecting volume was being mailed to “new” names at existing buying sites (on the surface, a very logical tactic). I say “new,” but they are really replacement names.
As many companies are now prospecting using a combination of private and public databases, and a myriad of firmographic and transactional selections, it’s important that we not forget to take the higher level, site view. Here are some tips to help you in this process:
1.Take a look at your prospecting mail going to existing sites. Examine your CTA (cost to acquire) of this group, especially the marginal decile.
2. Do the same for the prospecting mail/return going to totally new sites, and compare the results.
3. Ask yourself what telephone programs could be funded with the money you’re spending to get replacement names, especially when you consider that a well planned call to get a replacement name might actually generate an order 10 percent of the time. Same is true if you decide to use an e-mail or solo mail program.
4. Go on to develop a site profile online where your CSRs can input and update site contact information by name, function and, most importantly, decision maker status or rank.
Augment this with RFM and P (product sales) data (Q/Q and Y/Y) and buyer ranking by name. Aggregate to the site level. Add in site potential and/or “share of wallet” indicators based on site sales, employee size, SIC code, geography or some other predictive data points, such as the number of PCs at a given location, if you sell them.
Keep it real time and present it to the rep with an incoming call. You have a powerful online database update tool, a site history picture and a sales tool combined.
5. Drop an inactive name, but never drop the associated site. Chances are the site (i.e. a hospital or office tower) is still there. Mail a functional or humorous title slug like “Office Manger Who Walks on Water.” Develop reactivation programs to reignite the site.
Taking the site view becomes more important when you sell fewer sites (i.e. hospitals), but multiple people per site (i.e. orthopedics, radiology, admissions, trauma, etc.).
Terence Jukes is President of B2B Direct Marketing Intelligence, Inc., a strategic consultancy based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that services clients in the U.S., Canada, France, the U.K. and Germany. You can reach him at (954) 566-4451 or www.b2bdmi.com .
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