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Customer Manufacturing Update |  |
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Dear Mitchell, Here is your May Customer Manufacturing Update. This month we're re-looking at marketing/sales automation.
If you have friends or colleagues who would
appreciate receiving this Update, feel free to
forward a copy to them using the "Forward e-mail" link
at the bottom of the page.
A key element in most companies marketing/sales automation effort is their contact/account management system, often called CRM. These systems have evolved from simple programs designed to help sales people improve their efforts with customers and prospects to today's high-powered automation tools. Like any tool, used correctly it can improve performance. Misapplied it can be a waste of money at best and performance destroyer at worst. This month's white paper is an updated version of a paper we originally published in 1992 (yes we have been at this a while). Each time we update this paper we are surprised at what does not change.
We have mentioned in previous articles that companies which focus tend to do better. This month's case in point is Allegiant Air. What do they do? They fly from out-of-the-way cities to desirable destinations ... dirt cheap. Based in Las Vegas they fly from places like Bangor ME, Fargo, ND, Great Falls, MT and Monterey, CA to Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, etc. One way from Monterey to Las Vegas is $30!! How do they make money? Simple. They don't fly a lot so their planes are full. They have no competition to speak of from the airports they serve. (They have competition on about 5 routes). And they make money by also selling you hotel rooms and car rentals when you arrive. Some of you pricing experts might suggest they are "leaving money on the table" if they have no competition and price low anyway. You might be right, but they are profitable, which is more than most other airlines can say. In truth their actual name tells you what you need to know about the company: Allegiant Travel Co. They are about travel, of which air is just one part. Focus on what YOUR customers are buying and win.
We've all heard the story about how if the railroads
had understood they were in the transportation
business rather than in the railroad business, they
would have owned the airlines and the trucking
companies. (Not necessarily great businesses to
own, but you get our point.) How many times have you
sat in a meeting discussing new products or services
and had somebody seriously say, "we can't do that, it
will kill off our most profitable product/service"?
Wil Durant is the only horse drawn buggy maker that
transitioned to cars (General Motors). (And it's not his
fault idiots spent the last 60 years killing that once
great company.) Too often the market moves and we
refuse to see it.
They not only created a capability for sending free e-cards a while back as part of their main website, they also now have a mobile greeting service to allow you to send greetings from your mobile device. Considering that most people are glued to those things 24/7, what better way to get a greeting in front of someone. Unlike Kodak which almost completely missed the digital revolution trying to protect silver halide profits, Hallmark seems to be "with it" and moving with their market. As we come out of the great recession, what are you protecting that you need to rethink?
Theme restaurants, shoppertainment and other marketing ideas have been around for a while and some deployments have done well consistently. Others, sometimes not. The question is ... if you make it fun will they come? We intuitively have thought so. Now, perhaps we have some proof. With funding from Volkswagen, TheFunTheory.com has been "testing" some novel ideas about making things people normally won't do fun. They want to see if you can modify people's behavior. Things like taking the stairs instead of the escalator, recycling plastic bottles, and throwing trash in a bin rather than on the ground.
We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.
Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide
any
additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or
innovation to help you increase your sales,
let us know.
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