In an exhaustive intensive session on May 21, during the ACCM Conference in Boston, a panel of B-to-B catalogers shared numerous tips on myriad ways to build, activate, reactivate and maximize sales from customers within your housefile.
Led by Terry Jukes, president of his consulting firm Business-to-Business Direct Marketing Intelligence, the panel also included Dave Giroux, GM of the Personnel Concepts unit of Brady Corp.; Rich Harney, VP of Conney Safety; and Mike O’Connor, president of Abbott Cards. Below are selected tips from their session. The individual speaker’s attribution is included in each tip. And at the bottom of this story are each of their e-mail addresses so you can contact them if you have any further questions or would like them to elaborate on any of their points.
Inactive Customers
1. Take those customers and mail them catalogs without the customer name you have, but with a humorous title slug, such as “human resources manager that walks on water.” Make it politically correct, use double-size inkjet print. That catalog will be shown around the office, Jukes said. “It really works. We’ve had some clients with two- to three-times the response rate vs. simply mailing an 18-month-old lapsed name,” he pointed out.
Outbound Telemarketing
2. Determine the right balance of (outbound) telephone contacts, Giroux said. Identify what your profit threshold is, then determine how big the territories are and what you need in telemarketing. “We set a minimum of 60 dials a day,” he said.
3. Conduct an extensive statistical modeling program to determine who your best customers are. Then require telemarketing reps to treat these customers as well as account reps do. “We brand these customers as diamond customers,” Giroux said. “So whether you’re in customer service or fulfillment, you see diamond customer come up on your screen and treat them accordingly.”
4. Deploy low-cost telemarketing. “There were always campaigns we wanted to test,” Giroux said, “but it was always cost prohibitive. So we sought out a low-cost telemarketing center, and 13 months ago, we launched one in the Philippines. Manilla is booming. You have airline call centers there, Dell, others. [The call center industry] is about 10 percent of the Philippines’ GDP now.”
Giroux said that he recommends the Philippines over other foreign call center hubs, such as India, because of the Westernization of its culture, and American companies’ “easier ability to have accent neutralization.” Government subsidies are also enhancing the call center scene there.
Personnel Concepts and four other Brady brands started call centers in the Philippines, first outsourcing to local call center firms. “Now,” Giroux said, “we’re three months into our own Brady-owned call center.”
5. Use low-cost, foreign call centers carefully. Giroux noted that you can’t entrust foreign call center reps with your best customers. Instead, he recommended the following uses for them:
* reactivation of reaquisition campaigns,
* test campaigns around niche products and markets
* welcome calls for new buyers and thank you calls for recent buyers
* take some normal leads from higher-wage reps
* data collection
* follow-up calls on shipments
* reorder reminder calls
* lead generation and follow-up
Finding Customers Who Want to Spend More
6. “I guarantee you there are people on your database now who want to spend more money with you,” Conney Safety’s Harney said. “But they don’t, because all you do is send them a catalog or some e-mail in some fashion or another.”
So…be willing to provide a more personal or relationship-based approach. In his previous position with Lands’ End’s B-to-B unit, Harney discovered pockets of car dealerships, cell phone dealerships and banks, all of which he noticed had contractual relationships with the cataloger. “I asked them,” he said, “‘why buy from us?’”
7. Harney offered a multi-step plan on how Conney Safety goes about maximizing revenue from customers:
a. Find them by SIC code, use a DUNS number (Data Universal Numbering System, provided by Dun & Bradstreet) that shows the breakdown of corporate families so you can determine who to mail to, know what industry a company is in, how big it is, who runs it and who owns it.
b. Research your customers by calling them up and asking them why they buy from you, Harney said. “Find out if there’s any dissatisfaction. Behind every dissatisfaction, there’s a point of solving problems, a way to relieve pain for them. Take those pain points and talk to someone up the DUNS chain and tell them ‘here’s what I’m doing for you.’ Then link pain points back to strengths,” he added.
c. Size up customers’ companies. How many employees does the family of companies represent? How much total spend? Is the gap between current family spend and potential spend significant?
d. Look at the higher value family targets and see if there’s any commonality. “Consider their SIC, marketing position, customer profiles and geography,” he said.
e. Sell them. Assign a relationship manager to the family or cluster of companies. “At Conney Safety, we find some of the best relationship people are telemarketers,” Harney said. “We look for nontraditional places to find them.”
8. Create customer loyalty, said O’Connor of Abbott Cards. “Excellent customer services is key to turning buyers into loyal multibuyers,” he pointed out. “CSRs are the voice of your company, so they must answer the phone with a simile. Train CSRs to think and not read from a script. Empower them to close the sale, make them the customer’s advocate.”
You can reach these speakers at dgiroux@personnnelconcepts.com (Giroux), rharney@conney.com (Harney) and info@abbottcards.com (O’Connor).