Issues 21: Catch 22

CATCH 22

A WINDOWBASE CUSTOMER recently complained that his data wasn’t accurate. It turned out he’d mailshotted 6,300 companies and had 66 of his letters returned. This, he said, wasn’t good enough. Oh really?

So 99%+ isn’t a high enough success rate for everyone! Start with something like the Yellow Pages and, even if you got additional contact names and postcodes, you’d be doing well to get over 60%.

Everyone knows data has a half-life because things happen between each batch of research calls. It’s known as decay, and it’s unavoidable. Firms move, change names, or disappear. Even so, 99% is quite an achievement. It didn’t take too much time to persuade our customer that, instead of complaining, he should be offering thanks. Well, maybe that’s asking too much, as long as he keeps paying..

And keep paying he will, having discovered that it’s Windowbase’s updating service that ensures the next mailshots will be just as successful.

It’s not about the accuracy of this month’s data. It’s about the overall performance of this year’s data, and next years, etc. Because the costs of generating new business keep going up, and the last thing you need is to find, after three or four years, is that you’ve been chucking thousands of pounds down the drain, mailing to companies that disappeared ages ago.

It’s the old Catch 22 situation again: to save thousands of pounds in wasted mailings, you think you’re stuck with having to spend thousands of pounds on checking the accuracy of the data. How old fashioned can you get?

ECONOMY of SCALE

IT STANDS TO REASON that buying off the peg is cheaper than made to measure. One Big Name company was dismayed to find they’d shelled out over £44,000 on their own database, only to find out they could have bought it in from Windowbase for not much more than a tenth of the cost. What’s more, the Windowbase version offered far more detail for far less money.

There’s not a lot of point in telling a company like that about what’s going to happen over the next year. They could work out for themselves that their extremely expensive databank was, from the day it was booted into the Sales Department’s computers, getting out of date day-by-day, and they’d have to invest (waste, more likely) something like the same money in next year’s budget. Yes, it can cost a lot of money, keeping this sort of thing accurate. And if you think that’s bad news, remember that, if it isn’t accurate, there’s not much point in having the data at all.

IRELAND

THE NICE THING ABOUT IRELAND, apart from the scenery etc, is that it’s an export market that shares (well, almost) the same language. That’s how we see it in Britain, but there’s no shortage of Irish companies looking, just as greedily, over the water and thinking they can sell into Britain.

Either way, Windowbase offer the opportunity to lay hands on Top Quality data of the sort that can sit on the passenger seat of the hired Mondeo, while someone makes phone calls from a lay-by, sets up appointments, and starts selling. In fact, about the only thing you need to start selling on the other side of the Irish Sea (whichever way you look across it) is a car, Windowbase data, and a boot-ful of literature to hand out.

Whether you want hard information about the Irish Republic or what we call All-Ireland (because it contains details about Northern Ireland too), Windowbase offer the essentials to kick start a serious campaign.

Fabricators and installers, and some of them can be a very long way out in the sticks, the sort of people that sound like sales leads to a rep, only to find out that the one man of this one man band has gone somewhere else for the day. Probably to buy a horse, as one or two naive people might think when, these days, it’s more likely he’s in Dusseldorf, getting his hands on £1m worth of state of the art kit. There’s business being done in Ireland, and there’s more business to be done there. Windowbase is the key that unlocks the door to finding out who’s doing it.

LIMITED OR NOT

ONE OF THE PROBLEMS with getting someone in the sales office to collect your data is that they don’t always know exactly what they should be looking for. Usually, it’s not their fault. They do what they’re told to and, as often as not, they’re not told the importance of what they’re setting out to achieve.

Okay, so try this one out for size . . . if you’re looking to cold call installers, you’ve got to be pretty damned sure they’re EXACTLY who they say they are because, if you get it wrong, it could cost you FIVE GRAND for each mistake.

If you assume they’re a limited company, they’re fair game for telesales. If they’re only Trading As, it’s more likely they’re quite a small set-up, and getting a bit tired of unsolicited phone calls. As long as they’re not limited companies, they can ring a number that British Telecom don’t exactly go out of their way to publicise - and register with TPS - the Telephone Preference Service. Ring them once they’re registered and you get fined. Ring more than once and bang goes the year’s profit, because it takes time to claim.

Windowbase customers don’t have that problem, of course. Because they take their data from professionals, we tell you who you can and can’t call. All part of the service.

As one new customer said: if the odds are I’m going to be five grand down anyway, I might as well get something for my money. Makes sense, though, doesn’t it? If you’re not sure yet, you probably will be, in due course. FPS includes everyone.

And of course the same goes for that clever faxing software package you can use, to contact prospects in the middle of the night. It turns out that one of those fax numbers is also his private line, with a phone next to the bed so, at 1:30 in the middle of the night, just when he and the missus have got off to sleep, they get a call.

She (it’s always on her side of the bed, isn’t it, just in case her sister needs to call from Canada or New Zealand) picks the phone up, only to hear beeping. She mutters something a bit rude, and puts the phone down. Your clever little software package takes care of failures and, of course, it has another couple of goes for you. By now the missus has just about had enough. She gives him grief, and he dials another special BT number, and registers with the FPS. Try that again to whatever prospect you think it is, and you’re coughing up.

It really does pay to know what’s what, these days. Or, to put it another way, it’s getting to be an expensive business knowing who you can get in touch with. Alternatively, you can do what others are doing - take your data from Windowbase and get all these little essentials thrown in as part of the service.

Good, aren’t we? We’re not claiming we think of everything or that we can do things you can’t. We most definitely are suggesting that keeping tabs on everything you need to know gets more and more tiresome every day. Sooner or later, someone takes a look at the actual cost over the year, scratches his chin, and grumbles down the internal phone that we can’t afford this. And some of the people click onto our website - www.winbase.co.uk - only window-shopping, you understand, to discover they’re chucking money down the drain. There is a better way.

We can’t make it much easier for you. Whatever it is you fancy - labels, follow-up lists, fabricators, installers, PVC only, only this part of the country or that - we do it. Click on the boxes to see what you get and how much it costs. Print it out and present it at the next meeting. Somebody’s going to take the credit for coming up with such a good idea, so it might as well be you! Or ring Mike Davis on 01706 644308.