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Case Studies
Lead Generation for Field Sales Representatives of Satisfaction Measurement Company
The PROBLEM
The Company is a privately held service organization whose sole focus is measuring and linking customer satisfaction and loyalty data to its clients' financial performance. The Company's specific niche is with multi-unit organizations in the retail, hospitality and service industries. The Company had a strong desire to grow their business, but at the same time reduce their cost of sales.
The Company's sales are large ticket items necessitating a field sales presentation by highly knowledgeable staff. The sales system must profitably generate prospect field presentations that each generate $150,000-$350,000 and close 60% of the time. At the beginning of this initiative the Company was closing 30-40% of its sales presentations.
The field sales presentation is the gating issue in the sales system—it uses the Company's most critically constrained resource because the President of the Company is usually required. In addition to this issue, the cost of sales was high because of the time spent away from the office and travel costs for the field sales presentations.
The Company needed to design and implement a new customer acquisition strategy that would produce the desired revenue goals and growth within their cost parameters.
The SOLUTION
Determining Solutions
The Company hosts an annual Forum, inviting their current client base to attend a complimentary two-day conference with leading experts in the area of customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement. In past years the Company had offered the Forum to attendees at no charge, but this year they wanted to determine a way to charge attendees, in hopes of recovering a portion of the Forum's cost. The majority of previous Forum attendees were existing clients.
It was determined that the Company could better maximize the Forum's potential by using it as a venue to grow their business, rather than just a value-added benefit for their current clients. The Forum was the ideal setting to help the Company establish relationships and build credibility with suspects and prospects. It was decided that the Company would send a direct marketing piece to approximately 1,500 contacts from a previously purchased prospect database. The Company wanted to focus their new client acquisition efforts across four specific industry segments—apparel, supermarket chains, auto-aftermarket and restaurants, so the database was divided into these industries. Contacts in the database that did not fit into the industry criteria were suppressed from the mailing list. The objectives of the direct marketing piece were two-fold:
- It requested a positive response—"I'm interested, tell me more about the Company."
- It notified the recipient that they have been selected to attend the upcoming annual Forum, but because attendance is limited to ensure an intimate environment, they needed to reply to the Company to indicate their interest and request their invitation.
Marketing Solutions
A three-stage direct marketing campaign was planned, developed and executed targeting the four industries.
STAGE ONE:
A letter was written for each of the four industries, addressing the particular customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement issues of each industry. The letters all asked the recipients to respond to the Company for a free, on-line preview of their proprietary reporting system. This was the suspects' way of saying "I'm interested, tell me more." The P.S. line of the letters notified the recipient that they had been selected to receive an invitation to the upcoming Forum, but that they needed to respond by a deadline in order to receive their Forum invitation. Suspects could respond to the direct marketing piece by calling, emailing or faxing the Company or by returning a postage-paid business reply card to the Company.
In the months prior to this implementation the Company had hired a Director of Marketing and funded a public relations and marketing collateral effort. A high-end "image" brochure describing the benefits of the Company's service had been printed, but they had not yet determined exactly how they would use the piece. The image brochure was mailed with the industry-specific letters and business reply cards in a 9" X 12" flat envelope. The outer envelope was printed with teaser copy to encourage participants to open and read the contents of the package.
Business Performance Group developed this entire direct marketing campaign, taking it from concept to completion, including the writing, design and mailing of the letters, reply cards and envelopes. Business Performance Group also coordinated the printing and ink jet personalization of the piece, as well as establishing the business reply account with the post office. The package was mailed via first-class mail four months prior to the Forum date.
STAGE TWO:
(Three weeks after stage one.) The Company contracted Business Performance Group to make telephone calls into the mailing list three weeks following the mailing of the direct marketing packages for two purposes:
- To remind recipients of the Forum and it's limited capacity;
- To clean the list of any incorrect contact information.
STAGE THREE:
(Four weeks after stage one.) The actual Forum invitation was mailed along with a personalized letter to all contacts from the database who had not already responded off the first mailing (Stage One). The Company's internal marketing staff handled this stage.
The strategy for following up with responses from the direct mail package was as follows:
(Responses came into the Company via telephone, email or the returned reply card.)
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RESPONSE:
"I'm interested, tell me more." 
Company president or vice president calls contact to discuss their needs and walks them through an online demo of their reporting system.
An invitation to the Forum is also mailed to the prospect.
Based on prospect's interest, the Company president or v.p. proposes a face-to-face meeting with the client.
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RESPONSE:
"Please send me an invitation to the Forum."
The Company mails a Forum invitation and follow-up letter to prospect.
The Company president or v.p. calls the prospect to extend their verbal invitation to the Forum and discuss the prospect's current satisfaction measurement methods.
Depending on outcome of phone call, Company may schedule a face-to-face meeting or send the prospect more information about the Company's service.
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CONCLUSION
The timeline for the entire initiative was about two and one-half months from the initial planning stages of the direct marketing campaign to the mailing of the Forum invitations (the third stage). The combination of the mailing and telephone campaign generated a 110% increase in registered attendees over the previous year's Forum, half of which were prospects. (Only 14% of the previous year's Forum were prospects.) The majority (62.5%) of the inquiries from the Stage One mailing came in the form of a reply card, while 25% replied with a telephone call to the Company and 12.5% replied using email.
One of the Company's early objectives was to begin charging a registration fee for the Forum. A Forum registration price of $900 was established at the onset of the direct marketing initiative. The registration fee was not printed in any of the personalized letters that were mailed, but it was printed in the Forum invitation. The Company found that the $900 registration fee increased the perceived value of the Forum and collected the full registration fee from 25% of the attendees.
Within one and one-half months of the Stage One mailing, the Company had made three on-site presentations, after qualifying the inquirers over the phone and demonstrating the capabilities of the Company's online reporting system. At the time of printing this Case Study (2 months after the mailing of Stage One), the Company had submitted two formal pilot program proposals and both proposals were still pending. The integrated direct mail and telephone campaign helped the company achieve their goal of finding a way to get suspects and prospects to call them. The direct marketing campaign proved to the Company that taking less expensive steps in acquiring and qualifying customers was a viable piece of the puzzle to building their business. They now plan to execute a quarterly direct marketing campaign to continue growing their business and promoting their annual Forum
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