The unity*dc B2B marketing blog: Modern marketing

The life of a marketer in the run-up to Christmas

Wed, 17th Nov 2010

You're an experienced, skilled marketer. You studied for it - a marketing degree or perhaps a diploma. Years of experience - first as an Exec and later as a middleweight, hundreds of campaigns have brought you to the senior role you now hold. You're adept at managing budgets, creative egos and ludicrous timescales. You're at the top of your marketing game. Yet why is it that the three simple words "corporate Christmas card" still send senior marketers into a sweat?

Perhaps it's the selection of the card that you know several members of the board are going to have a fervent opinion on. Maybe it's the fact that it's the marketing project with the lowest ROI but eats up time when you and your team are busy doing lots of other, higher ROI projects. But for most marketers the biggest headache is the data. Perhaps one of these will sound familiar? The sales team aren't quite up-to-date with entering info in the CRM system. The CRM system hasn't been synced with the marketing database lately. There are duplicates in the database. The marketing database doesn't have a "current customer" segment marked out.

If this is ringing true for you over the coming days, speak to me, Jeremy Mai, at unity*dc. If you speak to us soon, we can help with your data: consolidation from different sources (yes, we accept Excel, Outlook and even boxes of business cards), plus cleansing and duplicates removal. Send us your stock of Christmas cards and our mailing house can take care of the enclosing too - freeing-up a busy Marketing Exec on your team. If it all gets a bit messy and runs too late for the post, we can design and distribute an email Christmas card for you instead.

This year, make your run up to Christmas about the good things - successful campaigns and perhaps some nice supplier lunches, not about the bad things - data headaches and paper cuts. Call me now on 01628 200200 and put your corporate Christmas cards on automatic.

Strategies for Re-invigorating your Business Development pipeline

Tue, 4th Aug 2009

Jeremy Mai & Jacqueline Harris gave a speech at the J6 Chamber Breakfast on strategies for re-invigorating your business development pipeline. It was of particular interest to professional services and business services firms. In case you couldn't be there here's a quick summary of the main points:

The market is changing

• The market has changed and it's important to look again at how you develop new business.
• Recovery, when it comes, won't be all good news. Some clients may be sticking with you for now, but may look to move on when it's safe, unless you work now to keep them.
• Some of your clients may have gone away during the downturn, but you might not have lost them forever. Why not try to win them back?

Re-visit your client contact strategy

• "I only ever hear from them when they want something" - avoid this common perception by making contact more regularly with current clients, even if it's only for a catch-up.
• "What you do with your billable time determines your current income. What you do with your non-billable time determines your future." David Maister's quote still rings true today, and you don't need to invest as much time as you might think.
• "I don't care what you know until I know you care about me." An investment of a little time in getting to know more about your clients' businesses will help keep them loyal.

Use modern marketing to support client contact by your fee earners

• Dunbar's number - our brains are only wired to maintain 150 quality relationships - and that has to include family, friends, colleagues as well as clients and prospects.
• Use email and other targeted marketing techniques to establish a dialogue with smaller and more peripheral clients and prospects.
• Make sure your marketing is a dialogue and not a monologue - engineer your communications to encourage response and make it easy for clients to switch to personal contact.

Take action now

If you'd like to re-invigorate your firm's business development pipeline, contact us now. We run a 2-hour introductory workshop for your directors or senior partners that looks into these strategies in more detail and gives practical ideas that make a real difference.

We are offering this valuable £1000 workshop without charge for a limited period to firms in the Thames Valley. Call Jeremy Mai now on 01628 200200 to book.

The Dunbar Number and its importance for sales & marketing

Tue, 4th Aug 2009

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied social groups and the human brain. He looked in detail at the part of the brain that we use to maintain relationships with other people, called the neocortex. He found that this part of the brain was sufficiently large and complex to maintain about 150 good quality, ongoing relationships.

He looked at the size of groups over history and found that from neolithic times onwards settlements, villages, military units and other human groups naturally numbered around 150. Other scientists have recently looked at Facebook too, and whilst they found that many people had more than 150 friends they only regularly contact around 150 of them.

What does this mean for sales and marketing?
No matter how good your sales people are, they're only human. Like the rest of us, their brains are wired up to support 150 relationships.

That 150 has to include family and friends, leaving well under 100 for business - and that needs to cover the office colleagues and current clients as well as prospects and contacts.

Modern relationship marketing can help extend your reach
Thankfully we have modern marketing to support the sales effort. By using carefully-planned email and other direct communications, you can maintain an ongoing relationship with more than 150 people. However, this only works if the communications channels run in both directions. It's important to engineer ways for people to respond and interact, or people will soon lose interest and unsubscribe.

If you would like to find out more about how modern relationship marketing techniques can help extend the reach of your sales people, please contact Jeremy Mai on 01628 200200 for a no-obligation chat.