I read an interesting article in Marketing Week on 3^rd December referring to the latest Marketing Trends Survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Specifically this feature concerns the investment that brand owners need to make (both in terms of their time when it comes to training and their money relating to technology) in order to meet their customer relationship management goals.

Keeping on top of CRM is no picnic: you might be a huge multinational with an entire department dedicated to tracking the ever-changing habits and needs of your customer base or a small agency relying on a package like ACT, but the quality of the data you get out will only ever be as good as the quality of data that gets captured in the first place – and this takes a lot of time and effort. It’s a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, although even that has an ending in sight now.

Let’s relate this issue to small to medium size agencies: you’ve got finite resources so it’s not always practical to have a data research team. Sure, you can buy data from numerous providers; but how often have you opened your data package expectantly, only to feel somewhat underwhelmed when you start using it? It’s a bit like an excitable child opening a present at Christmas only to find that the box contains an old Sega Master System rather than the latest Playstation 3.

Then there’s the whole issue of how to get your data working for you, as opposed to you working for it. There are plenty of contact management systems out there but if you don’t have the expertise to fully utilise them it’s fairly likely that you’ll be missing opportunities and therefore potentially losing money.

One of the key contributions to our own success as a company (and obviously this has come off the back of delivering results for our clients) has been the continued investment, maintenance and development of our CRM database. As a tool it is invaluable in helping to identify genuine opportunities for our clients and helping to win new business for ourselves.

Let’s be realistic – on any sizeable database you will never achieve 100% accuracy. There will always be a certain proportion of the information that has changed and not yet been recaptured. But if you have a whole group of business development professionals collectively updating the system from the information they are gathering with each call they make (somewhere in the region of 1000 calls each day between them) and this information is specifically focussed on gleaning new business opportunities above anything else, you soon start to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, it helps to have a tip-top system built specifically for your requirements – but if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it?

What are your views on the opportunity cost of CRM?

When helping our marketing communications clients develop their new business strategy they often ask me whether they should offer an integrated service or develop a specialism. The simple answer is probably both!

There are clear advantages and disadvantage to both. With an integrated offer we have the opportunity to probe and get to the root of the prospect’s pain and consequently match the most appropriate part of our client’s offer to that pain. On the down side, you can be seen as a generalist jack of all trades rather than a specialist capable of solving a specific problem.

With the ‘single/specialist’ offer, there is more cut-through and you can make more specific statements focusing on your capabilities to solve specific problems/issues or meet a particular requirement/brief. However, you can box yourself into a corner using this approach and can sometimes find yourself having to backtrack if the problem/need identified turns out to be one that you could solve, but which you hadn’t referred to in your specific proposition.

As consultative salespeople here at Alchemis, our inclination is to start the telephone call with a broad offer and identify the specific need through intelligent questioning and probing so we can ‘match’ our clients’ creative and/or strategic skills with the prospect’s needs.

The exceptions to this approach are when our clients have developed a bespoke solution to a specific problem that a market is facing. The most successful campaigns tend to be those where we have used a combination approach.

Maximise your new business appointments with our top 10 new business presentation tips to ensure you make the most of any opportunities

1. Prepare, practise and perfect!
2. Start by considering the following:
   • What are your objectives?
   • What conclusions do you want the presentation to draw/come to?
   • What recommendations do you want your client/prospect to take on board?
   • What are the next steps?
   • What does your client/prospect want from the presentation?
   • What is the desired outcome?
   • If you don’t know any or all of these, then ask!
3. Once you have established all of the above, develop a clear structure that will help you answer the questions, possibly in order of priority. Your structure must follow the core principles of beginning, middle and end! Sounds obvious I know, but you’d be amazed at how many presentations I’ve seen during my 30 plus years in business that don’t adhere to these basic principles! What tends to be missing in my experience is a clear opening, including scene setting and signposting and a clear summary and conclusion (which, by the way, are two different things!!).
4. Research and develop your content to ensure that it delivers against the objectives and fits into your structure. Brain dump all your content before applying the MUST, SHOULD, COULD rule to determine what to include in the physical presentation and what to include in the leave behind.
5. You’re now ready to prepare both documents, bearing in mind they need to fulfil different objectives (for example, the actual presentation must be short and sweet and contain lots of white space, whereas your leave behind can contain all manner of company information, back up data, additional case studies etc). It is also important at this stage to decide how you’re going to present – slides, boards, props etc.
6. Always find out what the physical environment is going to be like a few days prior to the presentation: How big is the room? What’s the layout like? What technical facilities do they have?
7. Research your audience: Who’s going to be there and why? What’s the pecking order? Who are the key influencers? A top tip is to speak to the main decision maker prior to the presentation and either pick their brains on a topic or ask their advice and check out that your proposed solution is going in the right direction.
8. Select the right team based on your content and not on their availability – if the presentation is important enough to do then it’s important enough for the right people to be there. Ensure that everyone plays an equal role and that everyone knows the roles they’re supposed to play.
9. Practice, rehearse and practice again – I recommend you ask an independent observer to sit in on the early practice runs as they can point out the obvious (wood for trees!).
10. Get an independent specialist to get post presentation feedback, both positive and negative, whether you’ve won or lost.

Anyone with any other tips?

Also have a look at our Top 10 Tips for Generating New Business.