Target Marketing

I got an email today at work that was offering to re-enamel my bath! A bit strange as, unsurprisingly, the office doesn't have a bath. Worse than that, it was sent to info@centurion-ms.co.uk so it lacked any kind of targeting. If I was being generous I could give them credit as at least they are in the south of England like me.

Why is it that so many companies don't understand that marketing, and particularly email marketing, must be focused, specific and relevant. This is so easy to do - marketing lists are easily purchased, and software to manage campaigns is not expensive. They have obviously put a lot of effort into this but the results have to end up disappointing.

Sadly for them, their good looking and well formatted email got filed in the bin.

Global warming and the generations

I pick my daughter up from school 2 or three times per week and on one journey home this week we got talking about global warming. The conversation was sparked by a radio article covering a recent announcement that the situation was worse then previously thought.

She told me that all the talk of global warming frightened her and that if you listened to the news there was little to do to stop it. We, as a family, try to minimise our carbon footprint by reducing use, buying local, recycling etc etc - not the best, but certainly far from the worst. However, she hadn't put it together that this was our way of helping reduce global warming. We talked about what we are doing and agreed that if everyone did their bit it was a good step in the right direction.

When it comes to the generations, I found it an interesting thought that the 'Traditionals' created the problem, the 'boomers' continued the process but feel guilty and realise something needs doing, 'Xers' know the solution must start NOW but love all the stuff, so it seems left to the 'Ys' to turn it around. Here was my 'Y' frightened and a bit confused!

Persuasion

I was told of an interesting system for measuring how much influence you have when trying to persuade someone to do what you want. My first thought was that persuasion is not the way to be working today, however almost everything we do in business involves it. For example, getting a meeting with a prospect means persuading them that you are worth seeing.

The technique revolves around two criteria - relationship and expertise. How is your relationship with the person to be persuaded and how much of an expert do they regard you as, for the subject being discussed. For example, I met a person earlier this week who is HR Director of a mid sized company. I had not met them before but the company use our HR software. At the start we had little relationship but she regarded me as enough of an expert in the system to have a meeting. My aim during the meeting was to strengthen the relationship.

New use for an old way of working

I have been at a user conference run by a company we are looking to partner with. Amongst other presentations was one from BigHand (http://www.bighand.com/) who sell digital dictation systems. When I heard they were presenting, my first thought was that the age of the typing pool was long gone. However, they gave it a new twist - their sales team use the system to dictate messages, letters, proposals etc when out on the road. These are picked up by an admin person back at the office who processes them either into their CRM system or as letters etc.

The result of this is a more efficient sales team with happy clients and prospects who receive documents much quicker. An added bonus is that their admin person gets to know the business much faster being more involved.

Another speaker was a futurologist who was encouraging us all to watch 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Must get a copy soon!

My first blog post

This is it - I have finally got a blog up and running!

I have had a number of people telling me that I should have a blog and post my thoughts about business and more particularly about implementing business systems. The final straw was a really interesting meeting with John Mell from Trovus. I finally realised that it was time to find out more.

My company, Centurion, has been implementing sales, marketing and HR systems for over 10 years. During this time we have worked for companies of all sizes throughout the UK. We have contact with many great people and the scope for learning is enormous. Hopefully I can share som eof that through thsi blog.

When I am not working I spend time with my family sailing, hiking or renovating our house. I took up running a couple of years ago and have run several 10k races and a 1/2 marathon last month.