Turn Sales Networking into Market Prospecting

                                                                   The better you understand your contact and his organization, the

                                                                         more likely you are to turn him into a delighted customer

                                                                                   David P. Davidson CEng. Chairman, ContacTree Ltd.

Summary

Anyone who wants to succeed in business depends of successful networking. But how often do we regret not jotting down the name of the person we met yesterday and now can’t remember his name? Or having written it down, can’t find it? The trouble is, you often never know when you are going to need that vital piece of information. Mostly it’s too much trouble to enter everyone in your contact list.

Something is needed that sits between the Rolodex (or the Outlook Address Book) and full CRM; a system that is cheap, simple, flexible – and above all – quick, and ideally closely integrated with your email manager(such as Outlook) so that its open on your desk all the time. With a really good input process you should be able to start with minimal information and build it up as you learn more as you go along; leaving  the computer draw what inferences and connections it can.

Many contact management and CRM systems require every box on the input screen to be complete before you can started generating value. This is obviously necessary once a contact has been converted into a customer so that no-one is presented with incomplete or inaccurate data. But in many situations where you are still prospecting for business this acts as a strong discouragement from collecting information that someone might be able to use at a later date.

In many instances, provided it is easy to go back and amend records later, you do not need (and probably do not have) complete information about someone the first time you meet them. What you really need to be able to do is to answer the questions: Who is this person? What does he/she do? How do I get back to him/her? If he/she isn’t the right person, who is?

Generally speaking, our most important business contacts are organised in hierarchic groups or companies, and the better we understand those hierarchies the more successful our relationships with them will be. Most of the people we meet in our daily business lives we will never ever come into contact with again, but some of them can hold connections and information that at some point can prove crucial in building some successful relationship with their organisation, even if is not direct with them. Even better if you can navigate around the chart and open records that look promising!

Armed with the Org Charts – albeit usually incomplete – you have a better chance to find that half-remembered individual that otherwise can take so long to track down. Where did you meet? When did you meet? Who made the introduction? Was it Herbert or Bert? Was it Sales Director, Marketing Director, or Director of Sales & Marketing? All these little annoyances and uncertainties are resolved by a glance at the Org Chart. And of course, if you have to send someone to the meeting in your stead, you can give him/her the instant picture of who is who – the ‘picture worth a thousand words’.

Rationale

Anyone who wants to succeed in business depends of successful networking. But how often do we regret not jotting down the name of the person we met yesterday and now can’t remember his name? Or having written it down, can’t find it? The trouble is, you often never know when you are going to need that vital piece of information. Our business contacts are among our most valuable assets, which is why everyone in business still collects and hoards business cards the way we always have done; perhaps we even still use a Rolodex of some sort?

All this is because we are lazy animals and hate to expend more than the minimum of effort on activities that are of marginal value. We also guard jealously information that might give us an advantage! And yet, with the power of computers we ought to be able to both capture more data faster; as well as do more with it.

The problem is that the processes of both entering and displaying data are rarely thought out carefully enough. Seemingly trivial issues, such as whether you have to use both mouse and keyboard on each record, can multiply the time and effort of getting the job done.

Need to capture fragmentary data

Electronic card readers and address-grabbers can help significantly when the data are in a good state, although all too often you still end up spending as much time manually correcting the information. But in many instances the data are often fragmentary, and perhaps no more than a jotted note in a PDA or a Filofax, or a fading memory. In this case it is essential that the physical process of creating the record should take up minimal time and effort - ideally no more time than it takes to put a card in a box behind the correct letter tab! However good the subsequent processing is, if the input is a pain, it won’t get done.

ContacTree™ input Axelerator™ form

Must be easy to keep up to date

Having got the information into the computer it then must be easy to update, otherwise it will soon become devalued and you will not know which data to trust, and which not. In fact, unless it is easy to update and to correct, there will be a total reluctance to enter your partial information in the first place. This is one area where Outlook® is particularly unsatisfactory since one imperfection in a company record can mean changing individually every record within that company. There are add-in utilities that help with this, but it would be more satisfactory if the company details and the location details only needed to be changed the one time.

Let the computer do the work

With a really good input process you should be able to start with minimal information and build it up as you learn more as you go along; you can let the computer draw what inferences and connections it can. For example, if you met John yesterday and he had some interesting information you might want to capture that thought and go back later when you have found out more about him. Or if it was Maxine, it should offer you the details about any Maxine you have already met.

In other words, the power of the computer should be left to do most of the work, and to add as much value as possible to the information. The computer, for example, knows the date you enter the information, when you last modified, and even when you last visited the record. Linking that information to calendar events that are likely recorded in the same place may provide a short-cut to identifying where you met.

In many instances, provided it is easy to go back and amend records later, you do not need complete information about someone the first time you meet them. What you really need to be able to do is to answer the questions: Who is this person? What does he/she do? How do I get back to him/her? If he/she isn’t the right person, who is?

How close does Microsoft Outlook® get to these requirements?

Outlook is actually a very powerful contact manager, but it suffers from having to be ‘all things to all men’. As a consequence much of the power is concealed beneath extensive configuration menus to set it up as you want it. But its main weakness is that it is more communication-focused than contact-centric. In other words it is more concerned with looking up information to use to send an email, to write a letter or to make a phone call. It is much less effective at capturing information that might be needed to build up an informative picture about your contacts, especially those that belong to groups or companies. Microsoft’s half-hearted effort to improve the contact management with its recent launch of BCM does nothing to address these issues at all, and is in reality a blind-alley that does not even share any compatibility with its own perfectly effective, but expensive CRM package.

There are a number of software packages such as Prophet and Outlook CRM, that successfully use Outlook as a basic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. None of them however, apart from ContacTree™, really addresses the question of what to do with all the contacts you make that don’t need to be set up in a CRM system. Most of the people we meet in our daily business lives we will never ever come into contact with again, but some of them can hold connections and information that at some point can prove crucial in building some successful relationship, even if is not direct with them.

Understanding hierarchies

Often all we need to capture a contact is a very simple input form that requires the name, company or any other affiliation and key contact information such as phone number and email address. If you already have a record of the affiliation details this should be picked up immediately by the computer, together with any useful information about the email template and phone numbers. If you actually know where the contact fits in his hierarchy, then you may want to organise this information in a structured and graphical way to be able to see at a glance who fits-in where.

Generally speaking, our most important business contacts are organised in hierarchic groups or companies, and the better we understand those hierarchies the more successful our relationships with them will be. There is no reason why with the right software the computer should not be able to process all your snippets of information to produce for you this map, or Org Chart of these relationships. You will be surprised how often you can show your client his/her own company chart and get the response that he sometimes wished that his own organisation had such a chart – then you can get him talking about who are the other people you might need to get to know.

You can use the simple manual charting routines in MS Office, or a professional Org Charting package like OrgPlus (the market leader) or try the new utility from ContacTree Ltd. that will actually generate these charts automatically from Outlook®.

Navigating with Org Charts

Armed with the Org Charts – albeit usually incomplete – you have a better chance to find that half-remembered individual that otherwise can take so long to track down. Where did you meet? When did you meet? Who made the introduction? Was it Herbert or Bert? Was it Sales Director, Marketing Director, or Director of Sales & Marketing? All these little annoyances and uncertainties are resolved by a glance at the Org Chart. And of course, if you have to send someone to the meeting in your stead, you can give him/her the instant picture of who is who – the ‘picture worth a thousand words’.

Imagine how  much time you can save if, by simply clicking on the obvious box in the chart, you can go straight to the record of the person you need. These unique navigation features are built-in to ContacTree™. In ContacTree™ you can also create families of organisations, allowing navigation around company conglomerations, or more subjective groupings, such as a market sector, a technology cluster or a complete map of a sector of local Government or business support network.

The adjacent chart shows how much information you can get into a chart, and how intuitively easy it is to interpret, even for someone with no prior knowledge. Anyone could see from the chart who is important to them at any one time, whether they had previous knowledge of the opportunity or not. Imagine how useful this could be if you have to send someone to a meeting in your stead?

This information is shown for a single user data-set produced by the current single-user ContacTree™. Versions are in the pipeline that treat contact knowledge in a team environment in a completely new way, using patented fuzzy logic processes to combine highly subjective information in a way that retains and enhances all of the value inherent in it. The end result will be a unique top-level colour-coded chart that shows who is most important and allowing you to drill-down to the underlying data to determine your best network connection for any particular occasion.

Fig 2  The ContacTree™ customer Org Chart paradigm

The niche between the Address Book and CRM

Many contact management and CRM systems require every box on the input screen to be complete before you can started generating value. This is obviously necessary once a contact has been converted into a customer so that no-one is presented with incomplete or inaccurate data. But in many situations where you are still prospecting for business this acts as a strong discouragement from collecting information that someone might be able to use at a later date. In fact, CRM should be viewed as a system control process, rather than the ‘enabling’ tool that is required for business prospecting. What we are talking about here is something that fits in the niche between the desktop address book and a full-blown CRM contact database. The ideal place for this to sit is on top of the email manager, because that is where most communications take place these days and its probably open on your desk all the time.

Fig 3 The Market Prospecting Niche

Market Prospecting – the new Networking

With all the extra functionality, the speed of data entry and power of sorting and searching you can take Market Prospecting to new levels of effectiveness. It now becomes possible to combine your own personal contact intelligence with information contributed by your colleagues and that culled from public sources such as the Internet; to give you insight into who is the most important contact for any opportunity, or perhaps even identify the person that you need to get to know, and how to do it.

ContacTree is working on a whole range of new products that overcomes many of the weaknesses, and helps to exploit the power of Outlook, while making it easy for anyone to pick up and use without having a degree in Virtual Basic. The added power of the Org Chart viewer, that is fully compatible with Market-leading OrgPlus, provides a unique embodiment of the networking process in a highly usable product. Prices start at £149 for a single-user version, and a free trial download is available from www.contactree.com.

David P. Davidson

November 2004

Business Prospecting as a Marketing Process
David P. Davidson CEng. Chairman, ContacTree Ltd.

Paper prepared for Business Start-up Exhibition & Conference, London 2003

So how did a small British company win a multi-million dollar engineering contract on the NASA Space Shuttle?

How did another British start-up sell a $100M technology license to a major US corporation?

Market Prospecting, that's how!

Successful marketing in all spheres depends on an in-depth understanding of your customer, and tailoring your product to meet his needs.

Then all you have to do is to persuade him to buy it!

Often the customer is a generic member of a broad group of individuals or organizations that share common characteristics. But here are extreme examples of how customers can possess individual characteristics that are highly specific to your own product. In these situations you had better learn all you can about their organization; about the people within it and around it.

In order to do this you have to know your customer's organization better than he may know it himself, in particular you have to look beyond the formal structure to pinpoint who the key opinion leaders, the KOL's, are. The methodology of Prospecting, together with a few simple tools like MS Outlook and OrgPlus, can provide you with a process for sifting through the mound of dross you get from 'networking' and enable you to pick out the nuggets.

You might think that these opportunities are confined to the high-value capital goods markets, or to complex engineering projects; but whatever your product, the process of Prospecting, and of understanding who works for who, can often open up unexpected riches.

The 'conventional' approach to marketing

Everyone knows that your Customer will not come looking for you

However good your mousetrap, it is MOST unlikely

You can hang out a sign or shout it from the rooftops

You're unlikely to connect with the right people
If you do, they probably won't get your message

No! You have to go out and find your Customer

First you have to decide what it is they want to buy
Then you have to offer what they want
Then you have to hang out your sign in the right place

This is all very well with a mass market product that everyone wants

Like a mouse-trap, or like ContacTree!

But what if it is a more complex product - to a more complex market?

For a more specialized product you need the 'Prospecting' approach to Marketing

You have to go and seek out your Customer
You still have to understand exactly what he wants

And it can get quite involved!

Have you got the real truth about what your Customer actually wants (needs)?

Are they really going to buy something?
You might not have the right person

He himself might not know exactly what he wants

Who is the technical authority?
Who can tell you what the real problem is?

Sometimes, perhaps, you know more about his needs that he does

You need to turn his needs into his wants
Can you help him convince his colleagues?

Do they have a budget for this purchase?

Who controls the budget? When will they buy?
How much might they plan to spend on your Product?

Who makes the procurement decisions in the Customer's organization?

Who writes the requirements?
Who controls the list of bidders?

Who makes the buying decisions?

What are the competition evaluation criteria?
How much spend can he authorize?

Who has authority to make purchase decisions?

What is his level of authority?
Does it make a difference if it is a Capital spend?

Does his Boss have to approve it?

Has his Boss heard of your product?
How can you educate him before he has to decide?

Do you need to be pre-approved by QA?

What is the level of QA required - ISO9000?
Who decides on Supplier certifications?

There are a hundred reasons why you need to understand his Organization

If you know the right person you can get a real jump on your competitor
Ideally you convince you Customer to use you as his sole supplier

In fact, if you can find the Unique Selling Point, the USP, you will:

Reduce the cost of competing for the procurement
Dramatically increase the chance of success
Improve the price/margin at which you can sell
Delight your Customer by your knowledge and understanding
Enhance your chance of repeat business

This all sounds terribly time-consuming for my simple product

The more complex your product, the more this pays-off
Even with simple products, it a great way to do Market Research

Ideally: -

You can get to know about the procurement before it is official
You may convince them to write the spec around your product
You know how much they want to pay
You know that you are already approved as a supplier
You will CERTAINLY receive the request for quotation
You might even know who your competition is
You know what they want to see in the proposal
You know the selection evaluation criteria (you wrote them!)
You will have a USP, and you get selected
When the Buyer's boss sees the recommendation, he knows who you are
In fact, everyone will already see you as the ideal choice

Any examples?

Well, yes!

I once owned a UK engineering company that helped people test jet engines
By getting to know all the right people, we won a massive contract from NASA
In fact we were sole-sourced, and they came back five times for bigger versions
We got to know them so well that they would create avenues to procure from us

Later, we patented a prototype compressor that was very efficient
I had a friend, who had a friend, who knew the boss of the Market-leader
We ended up with a multi-million dollar license agreement!

But usually it isn't quite as glamorous as that, but it's still fascinating

ContacTree Prospecting Process

So how does the Market Prospecting process work?

It's just like panning for gold

The more dross you can process, the more gold you will harvest
- Obviously you only want to start looking in the best places
The more efficient your sifting process, the greater your yield will be

So what do we have to do?

First, select your target area, (whatever type of Market you are in)

By doing a lot of research. The more you do, the less mistakes you will make
You need to meet a lot of people, and understand how they work together

You are going to use these people to help you do your selling

Find a WIFM - What's In it For Me - for everyone
No WIFM, no sale, and probably indifferent feedback information

Keep records of everyone you meet and talk to

You never know when they might not lead you to a sale
Find out who they know, and who they work with/for

You will soon know when you get near that lode

If there is a good enough WIFM, they'll take you there
- of course, a WIFM isn't anything so crude as a bribe!

You must be efficient on collecting your information

You don't want to look like a busybody
They probably won't tell you more than once

So what tools are there?

Glad you asked that - in the Good Old Days they were a Filofax and a Rolodex

Today's tools are much more sophisticated
We can process unlimited amounts of data
So collect all you can, - be inquisitive
But in order to understand it, you have to process intelligently

But it's such a chore putting all the information into the database

That's why ContacTree places so much emphasis on speed of data entry

You often only need a name, contact point and a memory-jogger
Most of them, you will never contact again, but some could be crucial
Find out who they know, who they work for, what they do - who's his boss?

Do I have to do this one at a time?

ContacTree's input Axelerator™ does just what it says
You only have to enter one line of data, and you've made a start
We also provide effert-saving input forms

Input forms?

Like meeting minutes

If you go to a meeting, there can be a lot of people there
Write the report, list the people, while ContacTree creates the records

And e-mails

The circulation lists can be a goldmine
Collect all the names of the people involved on your project
ContacTree automatically harvests the addresses and strips the names out for you

Then what?

Once ContacTree has collected a few related individuals, patterns emerge
Unlike most business contact managers, ContacTree groups people by Company
Plus you can separately record a site location and an office address
The most powerful thing is to find out who their boss is and plot an Org chart

An Org Chart?

Your HR Department probably uses the same OrgPlus tools
Now you can do the same thing for all your important customers
This is truly the picture worth a thousand words

So?

The Organisation chart tells you who fits where in the hierarchy
ContacTree also allows you to highlight the KOL's
You can also spot gaps, where you need to know someone

Such as?

I want to know who is the engineer on the job at Aco
I don't know the engineer, but I know Fred who works at Aco
Fred knows the Engineering Manager, he'll find out for me
Now I can fix a meeting to go and talk about what they are doing

And if people move?

That's even more powerful

ContacTree's 'ghost' records show you who used to work there
A friend who USED to work at Aco may give you great info

Isn't this just a sophisticated sort of 'Networking'?

Yes it is, but with ContacTree you get a record of the entire process
Other members of the Team can pick up from where you leave off
In the future we'll have a version that allows you to use everyone else's leads too!

Easy isn't it?

It can be if you go about it the right way
There's nothing more satisfying than knowing all the people
- apart from winning the job!

Never give in!

My motto is:

"I have never lost a contract until my competitor has delivered his product, had it accepted, and the customer went back for a repeat order"

What is ContacTree?