Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

William,
I use salesforce.com but only when I've had several conversations with prospects. Until then, it's all in an excel spreadsheet.

Vic,...thanks for the idea on the memory stick!

Michael

Hi William

There was a time when due to the limitations of databases, PC’s, RAM and earlier contact management systems, when it was common practice to keep a number of databases in order not to gum-up or slow down the main database of customers and “Hot” prospects. The accepted procedure was that a lead or “cold” prospect would graduate to the main database once a set of pre-defined criteria had been met, such as qualifying their level of interest to an acceptable level or issuing a quotation.

This inevitably caused real problems as diligent sales people tried to apply decent management procedures to the prospects database, such as putting in call back reminders, actions to send some further information or referring a query to another member of the sales or technical team. Urgent reminders would be missed because the salesperson was working in the wrong database and any attempts to produce a sales forecast were stymied by the need to reconcile two or three sets of opportunities in different sets of data.

Moreover, other members of the company hadn’t a clue as to the work that was being carried out on a private database and to all intents and purposes; hard graft on prospects was all but invisible to managers who were trying to report on the levels of activity their teams were engaging in. The end result was duplication of effort, endless unnecessary reports and missed actions which resulted in lost business.

Keeping things on an Excel spreadsheet is an invitation for all these problems to manifest themselves rather quickly and as the medium is volatile in comparison to a modern CRM system, it’s a very useful way of irretrievably losing the odd months worth of sales work.

Modern CRM systems, whether they are used in SFA mode, prospecting mode or early opportunity tracking mode should allow you to keep all your record on the same database without allowing you to clog the system up. There are few limitations these days to the number of records which can be stored, so it is up to you, or more accurately to your supplier, to train you how best to separate out the prospecting records from those which you wish to devote a more in depth treatment to. This can be achieved by coding the records via user defined fields which indicate the status of a record and using a pre-defined search to ensure that only the correct category is brought to your screen for a given set of tasks.

Some CRM systems such as Maximizer allow records to be designated as leads, allowing them to be worked on as a separate category whilst remaining within the whole database. For prospects which are literally an unqualified name, address and telephone number, where you have the intention to develop your understanding of the value of the business by establishing contacts and asking a few sales questions, it is even possible to designate the records as private, preventing them from confusing other members of the sales team by their presence. To reassure management of your activity levels, it is still possible to produce a report on these records, indicating their number and what you have been doing with them.

If they turn out to be turkeys, they can be marked as such, but left on the system. Far from clogging things up, their presence and their clearly marked status will prevent you or a colleague from wasting further time on them in the future.

Further development which allows a fiscal opportunity to be defined – a possible sale with a monetary value, a percentage chance of closing the sale and a close date - will produce a further group of records containing additional information pertinent to realistic sales forecasting and worthy of applying a more rigorous approach to structuring the work required to bring the business in. This is possible within SalesForce.com, but not to my mind with the ease you will find in some other CRM systems.

To keep early, unqualified prospect information in a variety of unconnected information systems is the electronic equivalent of keeping scraps of paper you scribbled down in the field or on the phone in a shoe box in the hope that you would remember to do something with them. Usually, you don’t and a few years later, when clearing out your files you’ll scan them and wonder why on earth you never got round to contacting that little company which now occupies a 100 acre site and has just spent £100,000 with one of your competitors.

Even in the days of the paper records in a ring binder and a paper sales-organiser, I always used to keep all my newly gleaned names and addresses which I gained at various reception desks in the same diary I kept my appointments and follow-up calls in. That way, I had a single source to refer to when making my next set of appointments and qualifying my leads.

Go for a single system for all your data. Its decent configuration you appear to be lacking, not inherent problems in letting a modern CRM system take care of your coldest prospects.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions

What is the business benefit of your prospect database?
Prospects don't turn into customers overnight and automatically.

If it's just a mailing list turn to mail listing vendor; they'll help you to manage and update database on monthly fee. Data storaging. I assume, is not your core business.

If it's an issue of lead generation and management so you should be able to develop the relationship towards inguiry and purchase. Remember the phases of relationship building: unaware, aware, interested, trialist, buyer, customer, advocate. So the first three steps should segment your prospect database; i.e. you should be able to differentiate your messaging/offering to these prospect groups. And if you have different target groups already (male&female, burchaser&spesialist&desicion maker&underwriter) this will result a complex database segmentation. Basic rule is to minimise: do only as many segments as you can easily handle and is rationally affordable.

More important than hardware storaging is updating and maintenance: who is going to manage the database and how? When you have the communication plan and managing system there, IT specialists can help you.

Remember you are going to invest a great deal of money on the communication with your target group so it's going to be a brand asset for your company and the starting point of your sales pipeline.