by Barb Cullen, VP Client Delivery

Maintaining an accurate and current database of target customers and prospects is essential for sales and marketing success. Too often I see the state of a company’s database or CRM and understand why they may be having difficulty filling their sales pipeline. Sometimes the database is focused on capturing individual respondents to a marketing campaign rather than capturing corporate attributes about whether the target company fits the “ideal customer profile.” Other times the database is outdated with old contact names, missing email addresses, and incomplete information about the company.

The first scenario is problematic in that it profiles specific individuals and progress with one specific individual. This focus is too narrow. Individuals come and go at a company. Individuals respond to marketing campaigns for different reasons: the Amazon gift cards, the free book, tickets to a sports event, or the raffle prize, or maybe even, if you're lucky, because they have interest in the end product. Salesforce.com CRM users can work out of the “Leads” section of the database or the "Accounts" section. Leads focuses too much on individuals and not enough on Strategic Account Development. However, Accounts allows Salesforce.com users the ability to continually collect more defining information about an account as a strategic target. Creating lists through Accounts rather than Leads builds up a list of individuals who work at the target account and groups them together in the “Contact” section of the database, visible under the Account name.

The second scenario I often see is a database with outdated and/or incomplete information. This situation is problematic even if a company wants to target its existing customers. Whether being faced with competitive threats in the marketplace or employee turnover at your customer sites, you want to have a means to communicate your services and to be able to do some “maintenance marketing” to keep your message in front of your customer. Maintaining accurate contact information is essential. When your internal champion leaves a company, and your contract is nearing the end date, you don’t want to be shown to the door. To extend your customer relationship, it is important to be able to communicate to the right people – having their correct names and email addresses can help you to do that.

Lastly, it is important to be conducting some kind of marketing campaigns or activities in addition to the work that your sales people are doing. Tracking your target prospect companies and marketing to them via email or regular mail is extremely important.  Taking a multi-pronged marketing approach will help your sales team to generate more sales leads and lend more support for their direct sales efforts. Mike Gospe’s book, Marketing Campaign Development: What Marketing Executives Need to Know About Architecting Global Integrated Marketing Campaigns is a practical “how-to” resource for planning marketing campaigns. Look for a review on our blog soon.