“News,” most any “news” has its own intrinsic appeal.  Humans are conditioned, probably evolved, to being attracted to things which come across as “news.” The appeal of news is hard-wired into our psyche, and it is our nature to be drawn to news.  

In ancient times, news could be a matter of life or death, so news always drew attention.  Good news or bad, the proclamation of “news” is powerfully effective, which is why it is often incorporated into headlines.  It’s even morphed into just the idea of “news” – because something “new” or an “announcement” can trigger the same effect.

Today we’re hit with more news than we can handle, so our brains will filter the majority of it out on a subconscious level.  We tune in figuratively and literally to news which is relevant and useful.  Otherwise, we’d spend our whole day listening, watching, and reading the news. 

Relevant or useful news is still likely to catch our senses and give us cause to focus.  One way to leverage the value of “news,” in a way that helps your organization to build prospect and customer relationships, is with a quality newsletter. 

To build perceived value over time, a newsletter must be an honest effort to inform your public – to provide your readers with material that helps them one way or another.  If it’s just another advertisement with some news about your firm thrown in that readers could probably care less about, it will only be another reason for your audience to “opt out.”

A good newsletter can build your reputation, establish credibility, and invite your prospects and customers to see the potential for your products and services.  The more effort you put into helping your readers, the higher the likelihood that they will want to reciprocate by doing business with you. 

With the low cost of producing an HTML email, the cost of producing and distributing a newsletter is generally less than the cost of print production.  However, don’t rule out a print version for more lasting impact, which will not get blocked by SPAM filters!  Either way, your newsletter can be integrated with your website, to provide easy access to support materials and links to integrated direct response offers.  Newsletters are a super way to build repeat traffic to your website, draw in registrations, download requests, and more! 

For more ideas on producing newsletters I’ve posted an article on the “Resources Page” of the First Direct web site – click here for a link to the section on “Free Sales & Marketing Tips” and then select the article entitled, “Newsletters – To Print or Not to Print.”

GoldMine Success© is an example of a newsletter that truly strives to provide value to its readership.  I love to receive communications back from recipients thanking us for ideas and information!  I also like getting topic requests.  As the publisher, we put in considerable effort to give our customers material they can use to help them market better, sell more, and manage smarter! (Please give us your feedback.)

Who hasn’t heard the following expressions to describe sales: contact sport, a numbers game, and dialing for dollars.  I’m sure you all have.  Surely the sales professional is a lot more than these things.  But let’s face it – if we wait for the business to come to us, we can go out of business while we wait.

Salespeople usually try to find a good reason to follow up with a prospect or customer, such as a new special promotion, an answer to a question, an important expiration date, etc.  These reasons provide justification, or even motivation, for contacting someone.  And because they are understandable, the prospect or customer is often more responsive to approaches for this reason.  Plus, sometimes the right simple touch can strengthen your business relationship and reinforce loyalty.

One thing salespeople and marketers need to do is find and leverage more good reasons to reach out.  This should be easy … there’s no shortage if we just think about it.  Here’s a list of ideas which you can put to use:

- Elapsed days since a purchase or the last interaction
- Anniversary date of new customer relationship
- Invitation to a special event, conference call, etc.
- New product or feature announcement
- Special promotion or price change
- Awards or other special accomplishments
- Staff changes, moves, name changes

Some of the suggestions on this list you can apply with very little planning & preparation, while others require more work.  The common factor is the need to be proactive – to identify a tactic and take the necessary steps to put it into practice.  This is one area where marketing & sales can, and should, work together as a team very effectively!

Your CRM software can be a useful tool.  With features such as scheduling, queries, triggers, and automated processes, your software can provide you reminders, lists, and/or even automatically handle the fulfillment.  For example, on the anniversary date of a “customer start date” my system automatically queues a very short & sweet email to each customer from me.  It’s written in a very personal tone.  And it produces fantastic results!

Nobody should be sitting around waiting for the phone to ring!  There are too many good reasons to pick up the phone or to start an email to find more business.  Instead of making excuses for why you don’t have business, start finding reasons to touch base with your prospects & customers!

I’m going to explain a way you can double or even triple the size of your marketing list. In the process, and as a result, you find that you can increase your closing percentage, and increase the lifetime value of your customer base.

Let’s start with a basic premise regarding any established organization that does B2B sales and marketing:  The “house file,” the database of prospects and customers, is their most valuable list.  Firms can’t afford to sit on it - it must be constantly expanded, maintained, protected – and used! 

To show the importance of the practices, illustrated below are painful experiences which I believe most sales people can relate to:

• You call an active prospect only to learn they are no longer with the company and their replacement was never supplied your information and are already dealing with a competitor.
• Your prospect replies to an email with the news that the purchasing agent bought your product elsewhere.  (Our prospect is sorry!)
• A decision maker in the organization, who you were not in communication with, received a special offer from a competitive firm and has been speaking with them.  Your prospect says, “It’s out of my control.”
• Your prospect is glad to hear from you because they lost your contact information.  Unfortunately, because they came across a competitor instead when they searched on the web for your product, and just signed an agreement with them.

Enough … I’m getting depressed just writing about these situations.  You get the idea, and you know the sick feeling in your gut, let alone the expletives we want to shout out when this happens.  But I have some good news, and it’s not that I just saved 15% on my car insurance!  There is a way you can reduce the likelihood that you’ll become a victim of these kinds of sales’ sob stories. That’s right – instead of losing sales, you can be increasing sales! 

The answer is to double or triple the size of your marketing list!   I know what you’re thinking: Great idea – why don’t we just triple the size of our advertising budget too? 

But I’m serious; there is a way to double or triple the size of your marketing list, without renting one more list or attending another trade show.  The answer is to add “influencers” and “key contacts” to your existing house file of prospects and customers. 

Inside nearly every organization we deal with there are at least 1 or 2, maybe even more, individuals who may have some influence in the buying decision that affects us.  Chances are we’ve heard their name, or they’ve even been on conference calls and in our demonstrations. 

Day in and day out we have opportunities to enhance our house files with these names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses.  Unfortunately, many sales people who are in the best position to capture this information fail to take an extra moment to update the database with all the needed information when they have a chance to. 

Entering the information alone may not be enough!  We may need to “flag” or “code” the contact properly in order to ensure that these individuals are included in marketing communications.  (Attention GoldMine users - think “merge codes.”)

There’s a saying in direct marketing, “when you need the list it’s too late.”  Here’s why…

It only takes a moment to enter this information properly – but it’s a “now or never” moment.  If we forget to do it at the same time we have the opportunity to collect it, we probably won’t ever do it.  And, then, when our broadcast email goes out to our target list, our influencers and decision makers won’t be on the receiving end.  You know what happens then … refer to the sob stories.

Here are some reasons for having more than one key contact on your marketing list:

• Don’t rely on your prospect to share information you supply them internally in their organization.
• Just because the decision maker remembers your product, doesn’t mean they remember you.
• Cover your bases in case your primary prospect leaves or is ineffective as your advocate.
• Have a back-up in case one contact “unsubscribes” to your marketing communications.
• Your marketing message may have more appeal to one person than another.

So, listen up for more names during sales calls and meetings.  Search for other key players on their website.  Pay attention to “bounce-back” and “undeliverable” emails as a sign that your contact is a goner.  Look for good contacts in “away messages.”  When your contact is out, askthe receptionist for who else you can speak to. 

Good sales people should know all the ways to get names – the issue is taking the time to update your database!  If you need a reason to remind you, just wait till you hear your next “sob story!”

A name, address and phone are not enough for marketing and sales purposes.  And, most of what’s missing belongs in fields, rather than notes.  But for too many organizations the challenge to do much better gets the better of them!

Your organization’s house file, its database of prospects and customers, is one of its most valuable assets.  It can be much more valuable if you give it the attention and effort to improve and maintain it!

Say for example that you market to other businesses. A simple analysis of your firm’s database may reveal many significant issues with your house database including but not limited to:

• Inaccurate and Out-of-Date Information – Incomplete and incorrect company and contact information is too common.  To make matters worse, B2B contact information changes approximately every 2 years.  Therefore, on average, contact information is likely to be out of date if it hasn’t been verified within two years.

• Lack of Complete Contact Information – Missing details regarding contacts themselves such as titles, phone extensions, emails, faxes, merge codes that differentiate contacts based on whether they are decision makers, influencers, and other roles that you must target in your sales and marketing processes.

• Missing Target Data – Facts that are used to segment your database in order to target campaigns, analyze the market, qualify the prospect, etc. are lacking. This may be demographic information or specific facts about their operation and needs.

• Major Milestones – Failure to record key dates and other details that should have been recorded along the way in the relationship, e.g. creation dates, start, end, and renewal dates, approval dates, etc.

• Transactional Data – Information on purchases, returns, credit information, etc. that can be useful for sales, marketing and service purposes.

There are a variety of reasons why organizations fail to have this information in their database.  Beginning with - they never thought about doing so - all the way up to people who don’t enter the information as instructed to.

The solution begins here …

Albeit you may have some technical hurdles to overcome, but for the most part there are enough ways to store the information.  Usually, I find the problem has less to do with technology and more to do with best practices.  However, if you fail to put enough forethought into your needs and uses for the information, you can expect poor results with capturing data. 

The real problem begins and ends here …

Assuming you’ve got a properly designed database, then it’s a matter of adding to and maintaining it.  Here’s where it gets especially difficult because you have people involved -- people who have to be trained, and reminded again and again to ask for and enter the right information. 

This problem has to be met like any management challenge!  Procedures must be planned and documented.  People need training and ongoing reinforcement.  Results have to be measured and the findings used/shared to provide feedback.  Take advantage of techniques that have worked well in other organizations with their databases.

There are rewards for overcoming the challenge …

In conclusion, marketing depends on good data.  Most direct marketing strategies and tactics rely on a database to target and deliver relevant and compelling messages.  Your marketing success begins and ends with your ability to effectively use your database.  The quality of your database and your skillful use of it is as much a key to your success, and a competitive advantage or disadvantage, as any other aspect of your firm.  Even more so!

The "Merge Code" feature in GoldMine can help you to market better by assisting you to reach more decision makers and influencers within the firms you are targeting. Adding key additional contacts to your direct mail and email campaigns is one way to better penetrate targeted firms, thereby helping to ensure that your message reaches someone who may find it appealing and act on it.

While Filters and Groups help you to segment your database, merge codes help you to identify the correct individuals within those records that should receive your communications. GoldMine lets you associate one or more merge codes for each contact's mailing and email address. It takes extra effort to code them in two places, but it does let you distinguish who should get email and who should get snail mail. Make sure to populate the lookup lists with codes so that entries into records are consistent.

Remember that when you're merging letters or emails based on codes that it also applies to the primary contact, so they should be coded too!

Too much of anything, even a good thing, can lead to problems. So it is with the popular use of SPAM email and mass faxing.

With anti-spam blocking and FCC banning unsolicited faxes, what are businesses to do? To begin with, careful attention to documenting and honoring opt-in and requests for removal/opt-out. Then make sure selective before any broadcast transmissions in order to ensure we do not violate the wishes of our consumers, let alone the laws which may subject us to costly fines.

GoldMine has several features that aid one with managing email and fax distribution lists including but not limited to:

· Drill down option with filters to limit records that have opted in/out
· Merge codes to identify at the contact level for both print and email
· Fields to designate multiple other criteria which is the basis for including or excluding records

(If handling email "removal requests" automatically is your goal, check out BounceLinker. This powerful GoldMine add-on is a must for any GoldMine user that does volume email marketing. In addition to handling "removals", it can also identify records with undeliverable emails, and even attach automated processes in the event of a duplicate or removal request.)

Ok, you have your GoldMine installed and you want to add a user.  You open up the User Settings and click ‘New’.  You fill in the desired username, full name and the password.  You also see this curious checkbox with the word ‘Master Rights’.  You are not exactly sure what this means, but you’ve heard somewhere it has to do with administering GoldMine.  What you have heard is true, but there are many more truths in life and it is these other truths that can hurt you.

Within GoldMine there is something called a Master Rights account.  This account is similar to the administrative user account in Windows NT, 2000, and XP Pro.  With Novell, it is the Supervisor account and in Linux it is the Root account.  Users that have been granted the rights these accounts carry become ‘all powerful’.  They can also become ‘all dangerous’.  The choice to grant master rights to your GoldMine users is not something to be taken lightly.

GoldMine master users are permitted access to all portions of GoldMine and can bypass any security features.  The only areas of GoldMine a master rights user cannot venture are the Personal Base of the InfoCenter and the Personal Rolodex of other users.  Everything else is wide open.  It is for this reason you should have no more master rights users within the organization than is absolutely necessary, and those that do have these rights should be clearly defined as users that genuinely need total access to GoldMine.

Master Rights Do’s:

• Do give at least one user master rights.  You need this to add users and do system administration.
• Do give master rights to ONLY those users that have a genuine need.
• Do change the passwords of master rights users frequently.
• Do change the default Master account password after GoldMine is installed.  Better yet, create a new master account under a different username and remove the original ‘MASTER’ account.

Master Rights Don’ts:

• Don’t give master rights to a user just because they are ‘the boss’.  This one can be tough to avoid, but try for the sake of your sanity.
• If you are undocking licenses for installations on remote machines, don’t undock all the user accounts available unless at least one has been granted master rights.
• Don’t give out master rights user passwords to non-master rights users.

Used wisely, GoldMine’s Master Rights can be a wonderful thing and can reduce the workload of administrators by spreading the administrative load.  Used unwisely, these rights can become one of the worst administrative nightmares you will ever encounter.

This article begins with the premise that you already know what GoldMine Automated Processes (AP) are.  What you may not recognize is that one of most important GoldMine Automated Process may be the one that decides which other Automated Processes should be assigned to a record(s). Automated Processes (AP) can do a whole host of functions.  But one of the coolest things they can do is attach another Automated Process (Track). 

This allows a marketing or sales department to design an AP that can determined, based on a wide variety of “triggers,” such as field entries (dbase conditions), completed or pending activity, elapsed days or other criteria, which AP(s) need to be assigned in order to perform other functions.  The possibilities are so vast, that one can always find new ways to take advantage of this capability.  Here are but few examples to illustrate the idea:

Example #1:  If a new prospect record is added to the database with important information missing, the AP could attach a different “missing information” AP that is specifically designed to identify which fields are missing and send an email to the contact requesting that information, or schedule a follow-up action for someone inside the organization to get that information.

Example #2:  In the event of a sale, the same AP that decided to attach the “missing information” AP, could also have attached a “new customer”AP.  This AP might automatically send out a thank you note to the customer and alert customer service of a new account.

Example #3:  Leads entered into GoldMine using the Web-import capabilities can automatically have a “web import” process attached.  This process can look at the information your customer requested, based on a field they checked off, and automatically attach the appropriate “product or service AP,” specifically designed to send the prospect suitable information and schedule a follow-up activity for that assigned sales representative.

The hardest part about Automated Processes is thinking them through and designing them to be constructive, rather than counterproductive.  Anticipating and accounting for all potential scenarios requires a lot of thought.  By the same token, given all the time AP’s can save an organization, as well as how they can improve sales and service for prospects and customers, Automated Processes are well worth the effort.

What we sometimes take for granted as salespeople can dampen marketing effectiveness. A lack of record details can mean the difference between one prospect being sent a campaign and another being overlooked.

Marketing and sales should be a symbiotic relationship. An action in one area supports and compliments an action in another area. Mutual understanding and respect is vital.

Marketing professionals don't look at data in the same way as salespeople. Salespeople can look at a poorly completed/updated record in GoldMine, with cryptic sales notes, which trigger recent memories, and then know how to act and/or respond appropriately. Marketing works with aggregate data - segmenting and reporting on it based on the details in the record.

For example, if a campaign is being targeted based on contact titles, and sales reps don't gather or properly format the titles faithfully, a large percentage of targets may be overlooked by the campaign. Thereby killing opportunities before they even had a chance!

A marketing rule of thumb is that the quality of the list accounts for 40% of a campaigns success (the "offer" 40% and the "creative" 20%). It is also a marketing axiom that your in-house database of contacts is your most valuable list, and one of a business's most valuable assets! Enhancing and getting the value of that list is what sales and marketing strategies strive to do.

Begin by defining the "must get" fields and reinforce accuracy. Salespeople must be accountable for missing information that is critical marketing. Your Solution Partner can show you many ways to improve list quality with GoldMine, including but not limited to:

· AutoUpdate Expressions
· Field Set-up Properties
· Automated Processes that Trigger based on dbase conditions

Your list is valuable, and so are the potential business opportunities that it represents. Focusing attention on improving the quality and usage of your GoldMine database can be a profitable resolution for 2003!

When building and managing Groups in GoldMine, you can opt to have any Contact1 or Contact2 field displayed in the "Reference" column of the Group. Often this data can be helpful to view data from the record when viewing and working with Group Membership.

To populate the Reference column with field data, you use an expression when building or sorting the Group. For example, if you want to see the record's city, use the expression {contact1->city}. To display a different Primary field (top half of the screen) just substitute that field name. To use fields from the Summary or Fields tab, change the expression to {contact2->db field} and enter the exact database field name, not the label.

Another point about Groups, Sorting members can be very useful when working with Groups. You can sort the list by any Contact1 or Contact2 field. Keep in mind that the Sort field is limited to the first eight characters. Once you sort the membership, the "Find" box corresponds to the values in the "Sort" column.