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In this issue:
Marketing Article: Mailing deep
Marketing Article: Find the Prospects You Want: Targeting Your Customers

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To be successful, the business-to-business marketer must include a rich matrix of influencers. There may be as many as 15 or 20 individuals in a company who influence a business-to-business sale. Because most business decisions are made by more than one individual, it is usually more desirable to include many influencers at a few companies than to include a few influencers at many companies. In other words, it is much better to have in the database 10 individuals at each of 1,000 companies than to have one individual at 10,000 firms.

Mail to all the influencers in the customer company—from the CEO to the clerk who uses the product, if possible, to hit every level of influence. Be sure not to forget the finance and technology people who are also impacted by the decision to buy.

Various third-party resources can be helpful in database marketing to influencers. Resources that can explain, in general terms, who influences the buying decision include: trade associations, industry analysts, and trade-press editors and reporters. Information companies such as Dun & Bradstreet and business-press publishers can be helpful in identifying the correct titles for individuals who influence sales.

At a finer level of detail, publishers of leading trade publications can provide, for a fee, a list of every subscriber with a certain title or higher. The marketer can then append its own database with the new names from the publisher's list. Or the publisher could provide a list of all subscribers who reported on the subscriber qualification card that they recommend, influence or make final decisions on purchases in the marketer's equipment category. Again, the marketer could use the data to expand and enhance its database.

Closer to home, the marketer can identify influencers by interviewing the sales force. The company's salespeople know how the sales process works and which customer representatives play a role in the buying process. When interviewing the sales force, ask:

• Why do customers buy our products? Is it to solve business problems or technical problems?
• Does a technician drive the purchase, or is it the manager of a department?
• How high in the customer organization does buying authority rise, or how much budget authority is needed to approve the sale? Is it at the executive level or the manager level?
• Who in the customer company may be affected by the purchase but doesn’t make the buying decision?
• Who are the ones who say, “Well, they never asked me?” Those individuals may be the most important influencers to build a relationship with.

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M. H. "Mac" McIntosh, an authority on inquiry handling and sales lead management, is president of Mac McIntosh Incorporated, a sales and marketing consulting firm specializing in generating high-quality sales leads and turning them into sales. He can be reached at mcintosh@salesleadexperts.com.

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Who are your ideal customers - and how can you position your business so they'll choose you first? Marketing expert Patricia Fripp shares the 4 basic questions to ask yourself before your next campaign.

Successful marketing means that you identify prospective clients and position yourself in the market so they choose you over your competition. When I sit down with clients who want to position their marketing, I seek the answers to four basic questions:

1. Who is your potential client? Who wants to buy or could be stimulated to want to buy? Who is in a position to buy what you sell? What geographical and financial factors affect this ability?

A good way to identify future clients is to listen-really listen-to those you have now. Their comments, especially negative ones, will help you tailor both your product and your approach to other prospects.

2. Why will they want to buy? What emotional and physical factors will influence them? I just worked with an East coast psychiatrist who ran a practice with ten other psychiatrists and wanted to position herself. Our conversations quickly disclosed that her community was predominantly upwardly mobile professionals. Many of the women had delayed having children. Due to fertility drugs, a high percentage of families had twins, triplets, or more. We decided to focus her practice on these families, the first practice in the area to do that.

How did we do this? First, we realized her potential audience was geographical, that is, in her community rather than regional, national or international. These prospects had distinctive demographics. By appealing to a unique aspect, we hit on her core group. She's now hugely successful in her practice.

3. What angle should you take? How is your product or service unique? Why is it perfect for your target audience? How is it different from everyone else's? How will it fulfill your core group's needs in a way that no one else can?

This is called "positioning yourself in the market." (Remember how Avis advertised: "We try harder.") As an example, when other advertising consultants do presentations, they talk about budgets, print versus TV, soft versus hard sell. I position myself by emphasizing that you start by targeting your audience, positioning your product, and creating distinctive selling propositions. Lots of mom-and-pop businesses, confronted by super stores, can't compete or even survive unless they find a unique niche to fill.

4. How are you going to sell? We all know people with great ideas, products, and inventions. They spend a fortune developing this product, but it sits there because they have no idea what to do with it. Is there a system in place to put your product in the customers' hands and return their money to you? Or do you need to create one? Market to your core group, and position yourself among the competition. That's million-dollar marketing!

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Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE is a San Francisco-based executive speech coach, sales trainer, and award-winning professional speaker on Change, Customer Service, Promoting Business, and Communication Skills. She is the author of Get What You Want!, Make It, So You Don't Have to Fake It!, and Past-President of the National Speakers Association. She can be reached at: PFripp@Fripp.com, 1-800 634-3035, http://www.fripp.com