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Field Sales relationship to the
database.
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A typical salesperson has about 40 weeks/year for
visiting clients and prospects.
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Reasonable activity would be 4 visits/day seeing 2
people/visit for 4 days of each week.
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The numbers work out to… 40 weeks x 4 days x 4
visits x 2 people = 1280 meetings/year (640 sites or companies
visited).
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To secure each visit probably needed 1-3 telephone
calls or 1280 x 1 or 3 = 1280 to 3840.
Incidentally 1280 phone calls equates to 32/day for the
40 “at base” days and this is 4 calls/hour/day.
It’s clear that poor database information means less
visits or more time on the phone “at base”.
If your business depends on
regular contact with prospects and clients such as an average 4
visits/year for 640 companies/sites mentioned earlier represents
160 companies/sites seen 4 times.
In practice key clients will require
more than 4 visits/year, inevitably others receive less.
What happens to those you don’t
contact?
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They forget you and buy from others – your loss.
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They don’t have a need at the moment – luckily
for you!
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They are unlikely to ever have a need
- you might be deluding yourself.
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They have “gone away” or are substantially
changed – you don’t know.
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They are committed to a competitor – do you
know?
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They have a need but your contacts have gone.
What does this cost you?
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Lost/missed business.
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A misleading view of your potential client base.
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Loss of focus for field sales people.
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The price of each “lost” mailing, (postage
costs & lost admin time).
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Lost credibility for all mail that arrives with
data recognised as old/incorrect (associations with junk mail).
Can you fix it?
If you use your database for any contact
activity spending resources on cleaning and renewing the data
will pay for itself within a budgeting year. The cost of fixing
it is more than offset by avoiding erroneous contact activity.
The biggest gains (often hidden) come from winning NEW and
retaining established customers.
If you are not taking positive steps
to refresh your data it WILL be out of date.
In our work with databases the following is typical.
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Up to 90% need updating.
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Up to 30% are substantially incorrect
(delete/rebuild).
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12 months following a major cleanup (with only
active record maintenance) 20 % will need updating, 10% will be
substantially wrong.
In a stable market record deletions
should at least be matched by new additions.
What can you do?
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Nothing – a poor option.
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Get field and inside admin people to update
records – probably already part of their role - this may NOT
be a complete solution.
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Task internal resources (an occasional project or
a background task) – more difficult and less successful than
it appears.
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Outsource – either as a “one hit” project or
regular activity – a practical option.
Consider for a moment…field sales
people clean, wash, top up and drive their cars – BUT still
send them to specialists for service to ensure they remain an
efficient and reliable tool for your business! Is your database
the same?
Database cleanup and refreshment
benefits.
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Clarity for management and admin. – remove
distracting and confusing data from your systems.
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Better economics –avoid failed contact activity,
save time and money on contact activity spending.
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Renew YOUR name with valid contacts and prospects.
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Avoid masking growth or diminishment of your known
client and prospect pool.
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Focus on real opportunities and results rather
than get mislead by lots of activity (particularly low grade
activity).
So fix your data, it’s worth it, it‘s
affordable and it doesn’t even distract you much from normal
management tasks.
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