When is a prospect not a prospect? When they are purely a suspect (or at least have a pulse)!

Just think how leads come into your business.

Unlike traditional marketing where specific, targeted campaigns generate a qualified response, today a company’s broad presence on the web can mean that response is uncontrolled and is not necessarily representative of a valid lead for your sales operation. Potential customers today go online to research products and services, review recommendations and compare prices. This means an initial enquiry may not generate a sale for a considerable time and the enquirer can only be viewed as a ‘suspect’ – not even a prospect. 

So, once a ‘suspect’ is acquired, a relationship must be created to establish qualification and evaluate and build on the potential until such time as the lead is ready to be passed to sales. But what constitutes a ‘sales-ready’ lead? This is a strategic decision to be agreed upon between sales and marketing. Remember, it may vary by type of prospect, by product or market.

This ‘pre-sales’ process is known as Lead Nurturing and involves scheduled time or event driven communications aimed at establishing the prospect’s needs and delivering soft sell support, with appropriate messaging, landing pages, tracking and measurement.

These communications can take the form of blogs, newsletters, thought-leading statements and tailored, personalised messages, normally delivered via e-mail marketing techniques or social media.

Insight into the behaviour demonstrated by different profiles of suspects, prospects and customers will enable a company to build a lead nurturing strategy that ensures as many as enquire turn into customers or repeat purchasers as possible. The strategy also controls the level of resource used to convert the sale, meaning improved ROI.

BBC News education correspondent reports that spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales

Sean Coughlan, BBC News education correspondent, has reported that customer spending on a website can be cut in half by a spelling mistake. Quoting on-line businessman Charles Duncombe he says that an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half and that misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website's credibility. The concerns were echoed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). This holds true not just for websites but for all marketing collateral. How many times do I wince at the misuse of punctuation – especially the apostrophe.

The classic 4 Ps of Marketing have gradually grown to 8, as we all know; the most recent being “Physical proof” which covers aspects of the external appearance of professionalism and reliability such as what your premises look like and does your website seem plausible.

Your use of English says potentially more about you than anything.

This is why I am now offering a three tiered service to help organisations avoid these pitfalls. The service offers

1. Proof-reading

This is the perfect service where your manuscript is virtually complete, but needs those final checks for spelling, punctuation and grammar corrections.  

2. Copy editing

Copy Editing includes the Proofreading services, but also focuses on modifying any ambiguous wording, awkward sentence construction, or unnecessary repetition.  

3. Rewriting

A more involved editorial role in rewriting or reworking your manuscript where paragraph construction is revised, or bulky sections of text are restructured, where necessary or requested.

Contact me at info@dmcounsel.co.uk for more information.

Turbocharge automotive marketing

The key to building insight about automotive customers and prospects lies in bringing together everything you know about them. This can reveal the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ but what if you were able to add the ‘why’ factor?

To achieve this you must also include attitudes and aspirations that drive their purchase decisions.

Consider the scenario where information acquired through tracking response and behaviour is matched to the researched view of attitudes and aspirations to create profiles. The outcome can then be used to create communication strategies to ensure no opportunity is lost and the customer or prospect is always directed towards the best next action, driving relevant, targeted communications.

A good example of this occurred when consulting for an automotive manufacturer. A list of potential customers for a new mid-range car was tested and ostensibly, the profiles absolutely matched the positioning of the model to be sold. However, research revealed their preference for a pre-owned luxury car with personalised plates to disguise the age of the car, as they could not afford their ideal car new. So a new mid-range car proposition would have been totally irrelevant and failed.

Such insight can also be used to determine how best to move customer relationships forward or flag danger signs. Does recent action (or inaction) indicate possible churn? Has an enquiry been exceptionally different to all those before? Are they approaching a milestone in their relationship with the company?

Similarly with prospects – insight can help in directing their passage through the ‘prospect funnel’ and reduce the number that are normally haemorrhaged on the way through.

The Need for a Relationship Management Framework

The concept of ‘customer-centricity’ is extensively evangelised alongside CRM and so companies feel it behoves them to adopt this principle, whether or not it is appropriate for their businesses. The senior management agonise about how they are going to make this momentous change from being product-centric to being customer-centric.

But from experience, it can be stated that some businesses – in fact, some sectors of business – will always require an element of product-centricity. It is finding the balance point that is important; there can be a significant difference between being customer-centric on the one hand, and being product-oriented but customer service driven on the other. Some will argue that CRM is dead and that it is the customer experience that is central these days – usually meaning the outcome of the customer’s experience of your website or call centre or, in the case of retailers, their face-to-face encounter with store staff.

But doesn’t this too involve the customer’s experience with the product? Sure, they will tell their friends if they had great service or encountered an intuitive website – but just as a well-managed complaint or timely offer can promote loyalty, it is vital to understand that dissatisfaction with the product can overshadow the whole relationship. Likewise, companies need to understand how the customer wants the relationship to be managed – what channels of communication are preferred, what kind of proposition is welcomed.

Here again there is a balance point that has to be identified and acted upon. There are those customers who, unless they receive every offer going, feel unloved; and at the other end of the spectrum there are those who want to be left to their own devices. Either could be your most loyal customer and that loyalty will be reinforced if you understand how they want to be dealt with.

Companies run into problems with their customer strategy because they do not apply a similar approach to all aspects of relationship management. The solution is to build a management framework that, through a relationship management system (RMS), integrates commercial objectives with current and planned technology, the skill sets of the human resources, business and market intelligence, and the dialogue between company, customer and supplier.

The starting point is to understand whether your business is ready for a management strategy. If it is, the framework will provide an initial view, a process for achieving the required initial status, thereafter evaluating the position of the business at every stage to keep the company on the roadmap to success.

United we stand, divided we fail!

Data warehouse and data mart are frequently misunderstood terms with many having strong beliefs regarding their use and benefits. From a technology stand point there really is no difference in that both are databases tasked with processing, combining and structuring data in order that its use will benefit the business. Probably the most distinctive attribute of a data warehouse or mart is its architecture and design and these are heavily influenced by the business requirements. A balance must therefore be struck between an infinite ability to load any data with little or no recourse to technical rework versus an adaptable "business focused" design that reflects the corporate structures and processes and most importantly is recognisable by the people who will use it. 

There has been much debate about whether the business or IT should lead information provision. IT is unlikely to be in a position to fully appreciate how the business could take advantage of the data because they are not involved in the daily process of sales and marketing of their company’s products and services. But equally, the business not really wanting IT to be involved in analysis and reporting, do not fully comprehend the nature and nuances of the data that is available to them, after all it was IT that designed the systems in the first place!

Without a thorough understanding of the data it is highly likely that irrespective of who performs the analyses the wrong conclusions will be reached.  Despite some product vendors exploiting this divide of opinion to their own advantage, it has been proven beyond doubt that the greatest successes come from those organisations that have created a culture where business and IT truly work together with complementary objectives and common business goals.

This is by no means an easy recipe for success with possibly years of divided working practices and politics to overcome but with strong leadership and active project sponsorship at the highest-level of an organisation success will be inevitable.

The Technology Doesn't Work

Since the early eighties companies have endeavoured to use new technologies to make better decisions: Executive Information Systems, Decision Support, Data Warehouses and Data Marts, Business Intelligence, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), and now CRM.

All of these technologies have provided significant business benefits too many early adopters them, but for all their success there have been just as many organisations that have failed to reap the expected benefits.

The reasons behind these disparities have been much commented upon with some organisations using the failure of others as justification in itself not to proceed themselves and instead to continue with business as usual. The most common grounds for failure have been quoted as:

·        The technology didn’t work

·        The information was unreliable

·        IT didn’t understand what the business required

The most successful adopters recognised early on that technology was simply the enabler, not an end in it self. Yes, sure there would be the occasional bug in the latest software but these had to be overcome. Probably the most prolific area for disparities between success and failure are with the comprehension of the business requirements.

Here, as with all projects, if the requirements are not clear to all concerned then success is jeopardised and the business will certainly suffer as a consequence. The main barrier is all too often the lack of an enterprise-wide culture, with no sharing of knowledge or resources. These "turf wars" are fuelled from two directions. Firstly from the traditional establishment structures that support the natural tendency to contain information within departmental boundaries and a reluctance to share information within the business. Secondly they are fuelled by the technical complexity and high level of investment in IT systems meaning that control and access remain vested in the upper echelons.