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There cannot be many companies in this day and age who do not have some kind of "market information system" or sales and marketing database?

The data processing power and storage capacity of computers and databases, allowing us to store organise, retrieve and evaluate market information, has been present now for many years and is no longer the sole preserve of data processing departments or computer programmers.

Today low cost user friendly database applications and the increasing simplicity of WYSIWYG query languages, such as in Microsoft's Access database program, must only serve to reduce the entry barriers to companies and their sales and marketing departments wanting to get the benefits available from databases. Are there organisations out there not using the power of computers to assist and automate their sales and marketing operations?

The jargon in this field includes Contact Management Systems, Telemarketing Systems, Direct Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, etc etc. At a basic level these all refer to obtaining the ability to acquire, retain, use and get value from raw data. (jargon?) There are many different ways databases can assist and enhance routine sales and marketing tasks.

Often the required raw data is sitting about all over companies gathering dust. Many companies will have spent many tens of thousands to acquire this raw data but have not thought to justify investment into systems to retain, organise, use and convert that data into profits or knowledge.

This is not rocket science, it is not hard to start making use of computers and databases to build an asset of information that you can put to work.

Some basics...

Small business?

You may have started knowing your customers personally and being the only one interacting with them, but then perhaps:

- You took on employees who also talk to your customers ... pretty soon you have no idea the last thing discussed with them, by whom, on which day, what was promised, when it was delivered.

- You may start to advertise perhaps getting leads in some paper format or on bingo cards, these are hot leads and should be followed up immediately.... what happens if some do not buy now but may in 6 months... do you have an automated system in place that will prompt you to contact them again at the right time.

- You improve your service or introduce a new product which might be of value to your existing or past customers, how easy will it be to contact them all, by telephone, by mail?

- Your new super sales person makes loads of contacts and is bringing the business in, what happens if you fall out and the contacts leave in your sales persons head or their personal organiser! - Sales people will always remember their past customers. The question is, as you were paying for these sales people to generate those contacts, was there a system in place to ensure your business can still access them?

- You run a car MOT testing station that tests cars for private clients, you know that car you tested today will need another MOT in 12 months time. Do you post them a polite reminder with a provisional appointment?

Medium sized enterprises?

It is surprising how often specific "marketing" tasks become the domain of the secretary of the sales office who is not given training on databases which could automate many routine marketing tasks and enable much more to be done. Plenty of industrial companies do not differentiate between sales and marketing and while there may be less reason for them to do so, than for example in FMCG, there are some things:

- What happens to all those sales leads and contacts that you collected at that trade show 3 years ago? How many of them are actually customers now so long after the show? .... can you evaluate the effectiveness of your trade shows over such a time period?

- A competitor has production / quality / financial problems, how fast can you locate their customer base and offer to resolve their supply problems?

- Are you tracking where your leads are coming from, automatically, which industry sector, which part of the world, from which of your initiatives, what types of individual? .. can you pick up if one sector or other has suddenly become prime prospecting ground for your offerings, before the opportunity has passed.

- You get regular amalgamated sales statistics from your industry association, does it take you longer than half an hour to generate your organisation's returns? Does it take longer than half an hour to calculate your revised market share on receiving the amalgamated returns?

- You want to run a hospitality event for your top customers and key members of their decision making units but have no idea what the most suitable event would be?

- You are concerned about low customer facing time from your outside sales force, do you have the ability to focus your promotions and appointment making activities to reduce travelling time between calls?

If someone is absent for a couple of days, how easy is it for others to cover their important appointments, calls they had planned to make, quotations or other customer facing "to do" actions?

Of your team of telemarketing people, who is making the greatest impact, taking the most calls, sending the most quotations? When you increased your activity in that area as a whole did you get corresponding results?

If B2B and using distributors, do you track contacts according to the level in your sales channel they operate, do your distributors trust you are building your and their business and share data with you, or do they argue you should stop messing with their contacts?

If a specific opportunity arises in a market sector, perhaps a sector that has been affected by a foreign currency change, a regulation, earthquake or other act of god, how easy is it to identify and select occupants of that market sector from your marketing database?

Are you able to focus your sales and marketing activities on the customers and prospects your information systems tell you offer your organisation the highest lifetime profitability?

Forward planning, how easy is it for you to plan your selling, marketing and promotions activity? how much do you routinely gather about the future into your knowledge base... when will the relevant trade shows be over the next few years? when will the main industry magazines go to press? when are the deadlines for specific accounts or industries? when will new legislation come into force affecting your business?

Pulling information together?

Company systems (usually mainframe computer systems) often lack even a basic capability to process sales prospecting information or less tangible data about actual customers.

A raft of marketing database programs have sprung into life (links to some at the bottom of the page) which allow sales and marketing people to develop value and glean knowledge from such prospecting or deeper customer data. Genuinely interested sales and marketing people are however likely to want to customise these systems perhaps to correlate data from various sources.

In many inside sales offices the ERP or MRP system, or whatever it may be called, is likely usually to provide the basic requirement of ..... "PRICE AND AVAILABILITY".... it is however amazing how many of these systems require inside sales people to visit multiple screens within the program before they can answer their callers query.

During the call it may become apparent that this is a new contact at an existing company, do your sales staff have the ability to easily capture some information about that contact while they are on the phone? Does your system prompt your sales staff to mention a problem invoice on this account which is causing grief in accounts receivable at this moment?

Expanding the information defining existing customers can help your sales team at new prospects and help identify valuable potential accounts. When your people are starting to work on company XYZ do they know a list of likely products that this company will be using because that is what other companies of this type have bought from you in the last 12 months.

When visiting an existing customer can your sales team get a detailed summary of their commercial activity, delivery and order status, payment history, contact activity to indicate areas of concern and opportunity?

Do you have trouble calculating the ROI of your marketing activities to such an extent that you have to fight for your budget year after year and board members from finance, production and engineering remain sceptical about the results. If you are not able to calculate the ROI on your own programmes, in order to make reasoned investment decisions between them, you cannot expect people from other disciplines to be other than sceptical.

Summary

In summary, there is phenomenal potential for sales and marketing personnel to gain value and knowledge and affect the outcomes of their work by utilising the mass of often disorganised data which is present in every company and starting to expand on this to build a real information asset which they might liken to a knowledge base.

There are plenty of standard off the shelf products people can start with which have developed because of the inadequacies of many mainframe systems in this area. With possibilities to share and exchange data across different applications increasing, the potential to gain real commercial advantage over less proactive rivals has never been greater. Do not assume your rivals are active here because often they will be unaware of the potential from the gold mine of data and information simply lying around them.

Author: Mark Abraham (mark@sticky-marketing.net) 06 April 2001

A series of articles on database applications, in sales and marketing, will be published here. If you would like to contribute or make comments, please use the form at the bottom of this page. To be notified when new editions are available complete the form at the top left of each page..

Jargon Buster

B2B: abbreviation for "Business to Business" rather than "B2C" Business to Consumer.

Contact Management Systems: quite widely available now in software form these allow you to maintain contact details such as addresses, phone, fax numbers and email details and better ones track the contacts you make with people. You could consider these to be a computer version of filofaxes though some can work across a network.

Customer Relationship Management: this term is also descriptive so indicates its meaning that you are able to manage your relationship with your customers in all the stages that it is likely to progress through.

Direct Marketing: Not so much a piece of jargon as a descriptive term when your organisation is trying to communicate directly to individuals rather than using mass communication methods such as broadcast or print advertising. Direct marketing can use the phone, the mail, email or the Internet.

ERP Enterprise Resource Planning System or MRP Manufacturing Resource Planning System, these are usually mainframe based computer software systems which run many aspects of a company. Typically they tend to be strong on manufacturing control and bills of materials, sales and purchase order processing shipping / receiving and invoicing and financial credit control areas, often they are very weak for handling sales and marketing information more complex than basic existing customer records.

FMCG: common abbreviation for "Fast Moving Consumer Goods".

Mainframe Systems: Medium sized companies typically use a large computer program of one kind or another in which most transactions take place and much mission critical business information is kept, key supplier and customer detail, financial control and sometimes wages and or production control.

MOT.. Ministry of Transport Annual Vehicle Inspection which is required in Great Britain on every car which is over three years old.

ROI: Abbreviation for "Return on Investment" which can allow two different projects to be evaluated, for their business effect, enabling a choice where resources are limited. Other measures might include "payback time" the amount of time it takes to get your money back after investing it in a project.

Telemarketing Systems: As the name implies this is a system that allows you to conduct telemarketing, the system may identify callers by caller ID and automatically bring up their record to save time hunting for it, it may also allow hands free dialling from the computer record and prompt users for daily tasks and tasks to run though with each call. The "Call centres" that have been proliferating in recent years operate sophisticated telemarketing systems.

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