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Suggest You - Unlocking Sales Among Untapped Prospects, Engineering Marketing/Sales Processes for Maximum Results
You can't sit in a boring meeting, in a boring boardroom, and expect to generate much beyond boring ideas! But we do that over coffee and boring bagels in almost every conference room and practice group all over America on any given day.We belong to groups all our lives: in our company, Little League, PTA, religious and civic organizations. We often serve on multiple committees concurrently!Yet when we consider the amount of time spent in meetings, we can see that making the most out of our time could be a valuable life skill. Improving our own meeting effectiveness is a win-win: we make our own time more productive and increase the effectiveness of the group. The effectiveness of all groups can be vastly increased when you increase the effectiveness of each individual.People do not naturally want to work in groups. Before you operate differently within a group, you have to think differently: you first have to think about the way you think! Among professionals the word "creativity" can derail conversation in one second flat. It's too touch-feely. It isn't about results. The word innovation implies too dramatic a change, the kind of change that threatens to leave people behind.In the year 2005 can we dare to think differently?In First Among Equals, McKenna and Maister submit that professional groups lack one thing. What is needed, they contend, is an approach that will create a more inspiring system that provides for higher levels of shared enthusiasm, decision making, performance, participation, and morale.Running an effective meeting and participating effectively is a skill few people have mastered. The irony is that in the real world, most ideas get hatched at meetings. The time spent in meetings will play a great part in developing the next generation of Generating X leaders. So let's look at how we can begin to create an atmosphere that can give birth to more creative ideas.Let's begin with what you want to accomplish. You want to push people out of their Stupid Zone, a place of metal and ph
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality l
Sylvia Acevedo needed a break from her technology job so she bought an old Victorian house to remodel into a bed and breakfast. "Being an engineer working in technology, I really felt I didn't do a lot of tangible work. But with the bed and breakfast, at the end of the day, I felt like I had actually done something."And, of course, she had—because as she renovated the house, she transformed it into a beautiful B&B. She had no problem communicating with the construction crew, who were mostly Hispanic, because she grew up speaking both Spanish and English. "My mother was from Mexico and all of my grandparents lived there," she says."People would see me talking to a crew of workers and I literally would have contractors stop and hand me the phone, asking me to translate for them," she says. That's how she realized communication between Hispanic construction workers and non-Spanish-speaking supervisors was really a problem.Being a software engineer, Sylvia's mind immediately went to solving the problem. "I think it's because I've always been an innovator and I see things maybe in a way that provides a side-door solution. I don't just look at the situation and say, 'Okay, it's a bottleneck'. I try to look at new ways to solve the problem. And in this particular situation, the problem was communication." But she didn't follow through on her ideas for a few more years.After two years of renovating and running the B&B, Sylvia was ready to get back into the technology field, so she hired a manager for the bed and breakfast, and started a software development company with three others. A few years later, Sylvia and her partners later sold the software company."That was really interesting," she says, "because we sold it for stock and then the stock market crashed. But that was an important learning lesson because I learned a lot about creating a company that supported intellectual property and taking it from literally concept to actually building a company."By this time she had also sold the B&B for a tidy little sum and was ready to solve the communic
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 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.
• Guarantees you are seeing the entire list of companies or
sites within a given geography that correspond to your target
market criteria. Thus your untapped prospects are minimized, and you are calling on a much greater percentage of the overall market. Each lead will be truly incremental to the current sales force funnel.
• By knowing your entire universe through your Master Target Site List, you are taking a critical step toward being able
to market efficiently and effectively, and in alignment with
the needs and expectations of your sales force.
• Sales force resources are not wasted qualifying leads;
the sales force can concentrate on converting quality leads into sales.
The payoff potential is enormous in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing operations, alignment between marketing and sales, and the ability to rapidly sequence actions based on an objective understanding of the gaps in your knowledge base.
PROOF: MASTER TARGET SITE LIST = BETTER RESULTS
Example #1: Fortune 1000 Storage Company
ASSIGNMENT: This company was seeking to substantially increase penetration of their storage products among the 4,000 largest hospitals in the U.S.
MEASURE: Gain initial responses from qualified targets in order to initiate a marketing dialogue.
KEY STRATEGY: Compare traditional direct marketing with the Master Target Site List approach while gaining initial responses. The incumbent approach involved use of direct mail targeted using rented lists. The rented lists had exactly the selection criteria they wanted and were generally known to be the best sources available. The direct mail seemingly produced good results, generating a 4.5% response in a market generally known to produce only 0.5% response. However, of the 450 responses, only 100 actually hit the target list of 4,000. The remaining responses were from a) hospitals that were too small, or b) allied industries (companies selling products to hospitals). Of the 100 in the target list, 50 were from hospitals with previous sales processes underway and thus did not present new sales leads. This left only 50 new hospitals that would be considered “good” prospects for the sales force. Thus, the “successful” direct mail program really only generated that same anemic 0.5% response the market “expects.”
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Using the Master Target Site List approach to achieve the same objective, the company purchased an unlimited-use list of contact names and cross- indexed them with the target 4,000 hospitals. There were 2,500 of the contact names that connected to the target hospitals. The remaining names, those not on the target list, were discarded for a lack of fit (prior to any further investment by marketing or sales). A telemarketing effort was directed at the 2,500 names, and 900 offers were accepted, representing 600 of the target 4,000 hospitals. All 600 sites were in the Master Target Site List of 4,000 hospitals and none of them had a prior sales force relationship (both of those factors were confirmed prior to the telemarketing effort).
RESULTS: The Master Target Site List approach resulted in 12 times the number of accepted offers by qualified prospects, compared to the previous direct marketing approach.
To further emphasize the value of the Master Target Site List approach, the cost of the rented list approach was three times the cost of the Master Target Site List of 4,000; therefore, the overall benefit of the target universe base approach in terms of cost-per-outcome was 36 times better than the standard approach. The tremendous improvement experienced by this company exemplifies the rationale for using the Master Target Site List approach. If you allocate some of your marketing funds to developing and maintaining the complete target universe, your marketing programs will perform better in terms of achieving sales goals, and will easily pay for themselves.
Further Proof: Fortune 500 Computer Company
ASSIGNMENT: A leading direct-sales computer manufacturer had been given aggressive new objectives for the expansion of PC and server sales in several markets: K-12; higher education; state, local and federal government; and healthcare. This
directive came on the heels of this business unit having achieved only 91% of their revenue objective in the previous fiscal year. Massini Group helped their marketing team discover
untapped prospects—the set of prospective customers who were currently not being engaged by their direct sales force. The challenge was to first identify these customers, then form
viable relationships with them, and bring them all the way through the sales process—into the company’s online store
to purchase products.
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality le
Your Marketing Doesn't Look Very Professional - In the Eye of the BeholderDo you frequently have someone tell you, "Your marketing doesn't look very professional," or "You ought to change ........ in your marketing" Or another one I hear very frequently is "I'd be embarrassed to say that." Or "I might have deliver if I say that."Trying to Satisfy All Results in Satisfying Almost No OneDoes it seem that, as you are trying to satisfy everyone that you can't arrive at something that works? You get pulled in too many directions.How many people do you listen to before deciding on what works and what doesn't?Focus More on THE BUYERS Than Those NOT BUYINGFirst, the most important thing in your marketing is what works, not what some one or two random people say.Let's look at it this way, marketing that works might have 5-10%, or even more, people responding to it. That also means that 90-95% of the people that read it either just didn't respond for whatever reason including it just wasn't the right time, or out and out didn't like it.At 5% response that marketing was working, yet 95% of the people that saw it might tell you to change this or change that if you asked them. In fact they did tell you something, they didn't respond.Marketing That Works vs Marketing That Doesn't Work Let's redefine what doesn't work and what does--marketing that doesn't work is getting no one, or very few people responding to it. So, when you get 5% responding, you should be jumping with glee, and then looking to see what IS working, and how you can move that up to 6%, to 7%, to 8%, to reach more people. To do that listen to those that ARE buying, not to the ones that AREN'T buying. Find out what is compelling those to buy that are buying and turn that up a bit. If you see an increase of even a few tenths of a percent aren't you going in the right direction?Whose Opinion Counts Anyway? A g
"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 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.
• Guarantees you are seeing the entire list of companies or
sites within a given geography that correspond to your target
market criteria. Thus your untapped prospects are minimized, and you are calling on a much greater percentage of the overall market. Each lead will be truly incremental to the current sales force funnel.
• By knowing your entire universe through your Master Target Site List, you are taking a critical step toward being able
to market efficiently and effectively, and in alignment with
the needs and expectations of your sales force.
• Sales force resources are not wasted qualifying leads;
the sales force can concentrate on converting quality leads into sales.
The payoff potential is enormous in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing operations, alignment between marketing and sales, and the ability to rapidly sequence actions based on an objective understanding of the gaps in your knowledge base.
PROOF: MASTER TARGET SITE LIST = BETTER RESULTS
Example #1: Fortune 1000 Storage Company
ASSIGNMENT: This company was seeking to substantially increase penetration of their storage products among the 4,000 largest hospitals in the U.S.
MEASURE: Gain initial responses from qualified targets in order to initiate a marketing dialogue.
KEY STRATEGY: Compare traditional direct marketing with the Master Target Site List approach while gaining initial responses. The incumbent approach involved use of direct mail targeted using rented lists. The rented lists had exactly the selection criteria they wanted and were generally known to be the best sources available. The direct mail seemingly produced good results, generating a 4.5% response in a market generally known to produce only 0.5% response. However, of the 450 responses, only 100 actually hit the target list of 4,000. The remaining responses were from a) hospitals that were too small, or b) allied industries (companies selling products to hospitals). Of the 100 in the target list, 50 were from hospitals with previous sales processes underway and thus did not present new sales leads. This left only 50 new hospitals that would be considered “good” prospects for the sales force. Thus, the “successful” direct mail program really only generated that same anemic 0.5% response the market “expects.”
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Using the Master Target Site List approach to achieve the same objective, the company purchased an unlimited-use list of contact names and cross- indexed them with the target 4,000 hospitals. There were 2,500 of the contact names that connected to the target hospitals. The remaining names, those not on the target list, were discarded for a lack of fit (prior to any further investment by marketing or sales). A telemarketing effort was directed at the 2,500 names, and 900 offers were accepted, representing 600 of the target 4,000 hospitals. All 600 sites were in the Master Target Site List of 4,000 hospitals and none of them had a prior sales force relationship (both of those factors were confirmed prior to the telemarketing effort).
RESULTS: The Master Target Site List approach resulted in 12 times the number of accepted offers by qualified prospects, compared to the previous direct marketing approach.
To further emphasize the value of the Master Target Site List approach, the cost of the rented list approach was three times the cost of the Master Target Site List of 4,000; therefore, the overall benefit of the target universe base approach in terms of cost-per-outcome was 36 times better than the standard approach. The tremendous improvement experienced by this company exemplifies the rationale for using the Master Target Site List approach. If you allocate some of your marketing funds to developing and maintaining the complete target universe, your marketing programs will perform better in terms of achieving sales goals, and will easily pay for themselves.
Further Proof: Fortune 500 Computer Company
ASSIGNMENT: A leading direct-sales computer manufacturer had been given aggressive new objectives for the expansion of PC and server sales in several markets: K-12; higher education; state, local and federal government; and healthcare. This
directive came on the heels of this business unit having achieved only 91% of their revenue objective in the previous fiscal year. Massini Group helped their marketing team discover
untapped prospects—the set of prospective customers who were currently not being engaged by their direct sales force. The challenge was to first identify these customers, then form
viable relationships with them, and bring them all the way through the sales process—into the company’s online store
to purchase products.
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality l
Develop an effective benefit message and you’re well on your way to building your company’s entire marketing program. After all, you need focus to create success. Without it you can wind up expending effort without getting the reward (income, that is) you’re looking for.Start with these three ingredients:Understanding of what the customer needs and wantsKnowledge of the competition’s strengths, weaknesses and messagesInsight about what you offerGather the information and chart it. What you’re looking for is a hole where there’s a customer need that you address and hopefully, the competition doesn’t.Found it? That’s the core of your message. Found several holes? You’ll need to prioritize.Now, write alternative introductory sentences. Remember, they need to be customer-benefit oriented, that is, they need to explain what the customer GETS. Got your alternatives ready? Here are seven questions to ask of potential benefit messages. They’ll help you find the promise or message that will get you the most mileage:1) Is it meaningful?This is where knowledge of the customer comes into play. Your benefit message should be based on the real needs of the people who use your products or services.2) Is it sustainable?Establishing your unique position doesn’t happen overnight. The message you choose should be based on what you can deliver long term.3) Is it believable?Can you keep the promise you're making? For example, if your benefit message centers on “superior service,” do you understand what your customers’ expectations are? Are you committed to making good on this promise over time?4) Is it unique?Often there are many providers of a product or service. How do you set yourself apart from the rest of the pack?5) Is it concrete and easy to understand?If you ask your audience to think too hard, they probably won't! Simple, straight-forward messages work best.6) Is it in your own words?If you’re going to be saying th
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.
• Guarantees you are seeing the entire list of companies or
sites within a given geography that correspond to your target
market criteria. Thus your untapped prospects are minimized, and you are calling on a much greater percentage of the overall market. Each lead will be truly incremental to the current sales force funnel.
• By knowing your entire universe through your Master Target Site List, you are taking a critical step toward being able
to market efficiently and effectively, and in alignment with
the needs and expectations of your sales force.
• Sales force resources are not wasted qualifying leads;
the sales force can concentrate on converting quality leads into sales.
The payoff potential is enormous in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing operations, alignment between marketing and sales, and the ability to rapidly sequence actions based on an objective understanding of the gaps in your knowledge base.
PROOF: MASTER TARGET SITE LIST = BETTER RESULTS
Example #1: Fortune 1000 Storage Company
ASSIGNMENT: This company was seeking to substantially increase penetration of their storage products among the 4,000 largest hospitals in the U.S.
MEASURE: Gain initial responses from qualified targets in order to initiate a marketing dialogue.
KEY STRATEGY: Compare traditional direct marketing with the Master Target Site List approach while gaining initial responses. The incumbent approach involved use of direct mail targeted using rented lists. The rented lists had exactly the selection criteria they wanted and were generally known to be the best sources available. The direct mail seemingly produced good results, generating a 4.5% response in a market generally known to produce only 0.5% response. However, of the 450 responses, only 100 actually hit the target list of 4,000. The remaining responses were from a) hospitals that were too small, or b) allied industries (companies selling products to hospitals). Of the 100 in the target list, 50 were from hospitals with previous sales processes underway and thus did not present new sales leads. This left only 50 new hospitals that would be considered “good” prospects for the sales force. Thus, the “successful” direct mail program really only generated that same anemic 0.5% response the market “expects.”
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Using the Master Target Site List approach to achieve the same objective, the company purchased an unlimited-use list of contact names and cross- indexed them with the target 4,000 hospitals. There were 2,500 of the contact names that connected to the target hospitals. The remaining names, those not on the target list, were discarded for a lack of fit (prior to any further investment by marketing or sales). A telemarketing effort was directed at the 2,500 names, and 900 offers were accepted, representing 600 of the target 4,000 hospitals. All 600 sites were in the Master Target Site List of 4,000 hospitals and none of them had a prior sales force relationship (both of those factors were confirmed prior to the telemarketing effort).
RESULTS: The Master Target Site List approach resulted in 12 times the number of accepted offers by qualified prospects, compared to the previous direct marketing approach.
To further emphasize the value of the Master Target Site List approach, the cost of the rented list approach was three times the cost of the Master Target Site List of 4,000; therefore, the overall benefit of the target universe base approach in terms of cost-per-outcome was 36 times better than the standard approach. The tremendous improvement experienced by this company exemplifies the rationale for using the Master Target Site List approach. If you allocate some of your marketing funds to developing and maintaining the complete target universe, your marketing programs will perform better in terms of achieving sales goals, and will easily pay for themselves.
Further Proof: Fortune 500 Computer Company
ASSIGNMENT: A leading direct-sales computer manufacturer had been given aggressive new objectives for the expansion of PC and server sales in several markets: K-12; higher education; state, local and federal government; and healthcare. This
directive came on the heels of this business unit having achieved only 91% of their revenue objective in the previous fiscal year. Massini Group helped their marketing team discover
untapped prospects—the set of prospective customers who were currently not being engaged by their direct sales force. The challenge was to first identify these customers, then form
viable relationships with them, and bring them all the way through the sales process—into the company’s online store
to purchase products.
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality l
What are meeting minutes?Minutes provide a summary of what was discussed at a meeting, what actions were agreed, who will action any issues and by when. They also contain a list of those present at the meeting and apologies for absence.Why do you need meeting minutes?Minutes act as an aid memoir for those who attended the meeting and are also a useful for summary for anyone who was unable to attend. Everyone attending should ‘sign off on’ the minutes to confirm what is recorded is reliable, and this prevents any later arguments regarding what actions were agreed.For regular meetings e.g. project meetings for an ongoing project, it is good practice to check through the previous minutes at the beginning of a meeting and note whether the actions mentioned have been taken. This is often the first thing on the agenda.What does the minute taker do?The person taking minutes will make notes of what transpires in the meeting, write them up (sometimes in a specific format agreed in advance), distribute them to all who attended for sign off, then distribute a final copy to all who attended and anyone who sent apologies. This person will probably also be responsible for keeping copies of minutes on a file for future reference.Sometimes a full recording of who said what is required. On other occasions minutes may consist only of a brief note of what was discussed and what actions were agreed.Importantly minutes should be issued as soon after the meeting takes place as possible, although for detailed minutes the writing up might take as long as the meeting, or longer. (This won’t be the case if the minutes are discussion and action points only.)Who should the minute taker be?The person taking minutes will ideally have some knowledge of the subject of the meeting but should not be the chair of the meeting. It is just not possible to satisfactorily chair a meeting and take minutes.Ideally the minute taker will not be a participant in the meeting at all; their role will be simply to take minutes.
MEASURE: Gain initial responses from qualified targets in order to initiate a marketing dialogue.
KEY STRATEGY: Compare traditional direct marketing with the Master Target Site List approach while gaining initial responses. The incumbent approach involved use of direct mail targeted using rented lists. The rented lists had exactly the selection criteria they wanted and were generally known to be the best sources available. The direct mail seemingly produced good results, generating a 4.5% response in a market generally known to produce only 0.5% response. However, of the 450 responses, only 100 actually hit the target list of 4,000. The remaining responses were from a) hospitals that were too small, or b) allied industries (companies selling products to hospitals). Of the 100 in the target list, 50 were from hospitals with previous sales processes underway and thus did not present new sales leads. This left only 50 new hospitals that would be considered “good” prospects for the sales force. Thus, the “successful” direct mail program really only generated that same anemic 0.5% response the market “expects.”
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Using the Master Target Site List approach to achieve the same objective, the company purchased an unlimited-use list of contact names and cross- indexed them with the target 4,000 hospitals. There were 2,500 of the contact names that connected to the target hospitals. The remaining names, those not on the target list, were discarded for a lack of fit (prior to any further investment by marketing or sales). A telemarketing effort was directed at the 2,500 names, and 900 offers were accepted, representing 600 of the target 4,000 hospitals. All 600 sites were in the Master Target Site List of 4,000 hospitals and none of them had a prior sales force relationship (both of those factors were confirmed prior to the telemarketing effort).
RESULTS: The Master Target Site List approach resulted in 12 times the number of accepted offers by qualified prospects, compared to the previous direct marketing approach.
To further emphasize the value of the Master Target Site List approach, the cost of the rented list approach was three times the cost of the Master Target Site List of 4,000; therefore, the overall benefit of the target universe base approach in terms of cost-per-outcome was 36 times better than the standard approach. The tremendous improvement experienced by this company exemplifies the rationale for using the Master Target Site List approach. If you allocate some of your marketing funds to developing and maintaining the complete target universe, your marketing programs will perform better in terms of achieving sales goals, and will easily pay for themselves.
Further Proof: Fortune 500 Computer Company
ASSIGNMENT: A leading direct-sales computer manufacturer had been given aggressive new objectives for the expansion of PC and server sales in several markets: K-12; higher education; state, local and federal government; and healthcare. This
directive came on the heels of this business unit having achieved only 91% of their revenue objective in the previous fiscal year. Massini Group helped their marketing team discover
untapped prospects—the set of prospective customers who were currently not being engaged by their direct sales force. The challenge was to first identify these customers, then form
viable relationships with them, and bring them all the way through the sales process—into the company’s online store
to purchase products.
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality l
So how much can an MT actually make?MT salaries can vary greatly, and your actual earnings will depend on a few different factors. For example, an MT who works from home and has her own accounts will usually make more money than an MT who works for an online service or at a traditional job setting.According to the U.S. Department of Labor the average earnings for MTs in the year 2004 was between $11.50 and $16.32 per hour. MTs in the higher earnings range (10%) earned $19.11 per hour.Now, keep in mind that’s just a statistic. How much you actually earn can vary greatly and it’s really difficult to come up with a “true” earnings statistic.If you work from home on your own accounts there may be months where you have extra work and months when you have less. Your earnings could also differ dramatically from another fellow MT who works from home on her own accounts.A great advantage about having your own MT business is you can truly have control over your earnings. The more accounts you have, the more money you’ll make.As your business grows you can hire subcontractors and take on even more work. There really is no limitation in how large your business can grow.You may also choose to have a smaller and easier to handle business. You can always work a little extra to increase your earnings, or simply take on the amount of work that suits your needs.If you have a home based MT business and you do all the work yourself, you can make anywhere between $20,000 a year to $50,000 a year. A larger transcription service, which hires subcontractors can earn between $50,000 a year to $200,000 and upwards.Medical transcription jobs outside the home can vary just as much, depending on where you live. Earnings can be from $9.00 per hour to $22.00 per hour.It’s really difficult to say exactly how much your medical transcription salary will be. But one thing to keep in mind is the earning potential is there and there are many opportunities for you to take.This is TRULY a business which allows you to have control over how much y
MEASURE: To meet or exceed sales goals by growing the revenue from the small/midsize segments in excess of targeted levels.
KEY STRATEGY: Rapidly increasing visibility to untapped prospects through the use of Master Target Site Lists focused on each key market segment.
ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Overall, the company needed to gain control of their complex sales process, and Massini Group teams worked with them to accomplish this goal. A four-phase, end-to-end marketing and sales funnel program was implemented, based on the Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy.
1. Created Master Target Site Lists (master list of target sites), starting with an extensive analysis of the business unit’s existing sales database. This process confirmed 69% of their target sites were untapped opportunities—target sites and contacts with which they had not established a measurable relationship.
2. Identified key decision-makers at a much higher percentage of the Target Sites, using telemarketing assets (the idea is not to use inside sales resources to create your Master Target Site List, but to use them later to exploit it).
3. Secured email opt-ins among known decision-makers, by using a combination of telemarketing, direct mail and email, supported by a Web-based resource center.
4. Followed-up the opt-ins with aggressive e-marketing, to either cause interested prospects to visit the online store, or motivate the prospect to establish a relationship with an account manager for near-term sales.
RESULTS: Since the Dialogue Strategy methodology was implemented in mid-2001, our client has increased their coverage of targeted sites to 100%, and their contact coverage (identification of at least one decision-maker at a target site) from 31% to 88%.
Additionally, they converted high percentages of their untapped prospects into partially and fully engaged relationships* with target accounts over the six measured quarters. A significant percentage of those relationships converted into business, and their all-important revenue performance ballooned to over 130% of target.
CONCLUSION
Many companies are experiencing underwhelming sales figures because their database marketing programs only effectively target and sell to one third of their market potential. The remaining untapped prospects must be identified, targeted
and cultivated to produce the sales figures necessary to keep companies competitive.
Developing a Master Target Site List, which includes previously unidentified accounts and sites, and previously unidentified key players, is the key to:
• Increasing market visibility.
• Developing programs that yield a greater number of higher quality leads than traditional marketing and sales-funnel strategies.
This is true whether companies depend on ad hoc sales, drive-bys, rented lists, internally developed marketing lists, or automated sales-funnel systems. Combined with the Massini Group Dialogue Strategy, the Master Target Site List methodology enables strong ROI, and sales growth superior—by orders of magnitude—to other industry practices.
The net result of this engineered approach is greater market visibility, increased operational efficiency, improved alignment and relations between marketing and sales, and clear action directed by concrete gap analysis.
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