Issues 35: The times they are a changin'

Housing associations

Housing associations, you might imagine, aren't the most dynamic of organisations. After all, they're only landlords, whose job it is to look after their tenants and the stock of dwellings. Given that, these days, lots of them are merely ex-local authority officers, holding down their jobs - the only difference being the senior ones get a company Merc and a fancier job title.

Not so. Far from it, in fact. Mergers and acquisitions are very much the name of the game, with small associations clubbing together as Housing Groups, so as to avoid the risk of being swallowed up by some of their more aggressive colleagues.

Housing stock is housing stock. Modern communications mean that geography isn't a problem any more, so amalgamations in Warrington and Widnes are no more difficult than in Wakefield and Watford. A three-bed terrace is a three-bed terrace.

When technical reps ring round their contacts, they need to listen very carefully to the first words they hear on the phone because, as often as not, the name's been changed. And it's not just a name because, once the rationalisations are done, and the staffing levels revised (downwards), offices disappear and the Response Repairs Manager has become the Asset Director.

It's the senior people who make the big decisions, and the big decisions are all about getting on in the world. Twenty grand more for doing the same job is an attractive proposition to most of us. Doing the same job from home, instead of commuting thirty miles every morning, doesn't go amiss, either.

Nothing is static any more. Nothing. If we're not moving forward, we are moving backwards. You need decision-makers to know about your latest news but you also need to know where they all are this week. And next. It's a full-time job, making sure you're up to date. Of course you might need to advertise, to ensure your brand name is still to the fore but, when Desi Dewars has been replaced by Connie Ferris, and is ringing round employment agencies, your advert might be in a mag that goes straight into the bin.

So reps can spend as much time ensuring their list of contacts is accurate as they do selling your product, and that's very expensive Down Time. Easier, and cheaper, then to get your information about who's working for whom from someone who knows what's happening, day in, day out. That way, your reps aren't also looking for an easier life, a nicer car and better money.

North Country Blues

Using up-to-date information

Word on the streets might be that Gordon Brown's economic forecasts are hopelessly optimistic. Spend your working life on the road, up north, and you discover that huge numbers of companies have disappeared without trace.

“Whoa there a minute, Mary! What companies might these be?”

“The ones that we sent a couple of mailing to.”

“And when did you send these mailings?”

“Off and on,” she says. “Well..." (grudgingly), “three mailings, over the last couple of years, probably.”

Mary's mailing list turned out to be the original, dated March 2002, so maybe things aren't quite as black, up north, as they're painted. Mary's boss hired a good rep called Wayne, handed him a soft copy of the mailing list, and told him to get out there and bring in some orders. Strange to say, his first week was spent driving from one industrial estate to the next, from one end of the M62 to the other, only to find a depressing amount of empty premises. Being new to his job, he asked the neighbours in the next-door units. "No, mate, they went down ages ago." and, of course, it was the same old story, again and again. If that wasn't enough, even the Little Chefs were closing.

A grim story to take back to the office. It's like a ghost town out there. No wonder we aren't doing the figures. Mary's list didn't have phone numbers, or even contact names, because she just used to send stuff addressed to the company. Someone's bound to read it, and all that. One in a hundred, they say.

Yes, well it has to be one in a hundred of companies that still exist today. Wayne couldn't save himself a few thousand miles by ringing, because there were no phone numbers. What Wayne couldn't know is that a good proportion of the companies were, in fact, so successful that they'd moved out of their little starter unit, onto a sparkling new technology park, and might have been glad to hear from someone.

But not Mary's company. Nobody's desperate to hear from a new supplier that's incapable of coping with today's market, whose products might well be as ordinary (to be kind) as their approach to selling them.

So, if someone tells you it's slow out there, do be certain where they got their information.

With God On Our Side

Good news: Leon's got an E-Class Merc now. Silver. Sat nav, leather and all the toys. Leon's a Windowbase customer, incidentally (surprise, surprise!). What, we asked him, was the secret of his success, to which he replied he just did his job. Sales are up, well up, and he got the credit.

The secret of his success is knowing what the company's best at and targeting the most likely prospects, again and again. Instead of writing Dear Buyer, he runs two databases, so that they can be Dear Mr Soap or Dear Joe. He sends one letter to one size of company and an entirely different one to smaller operations. Leon values his time - plus that of his sales team - and he doesn't want to fall foul of Corporate Telephone Preference Service legislation when he follows up letters with a call, to achieve a better response rate. Others, Leon reckons, can risk a fine for every infringement, but not him. His database identifies contacts who are registered - it's not rocket science. He's an old hand at direct mail - that's what made him successful at his last company - he keeps records of what gets sent to whom, what the costs are and what the returns are. Leon can actually prove that his databases have always quickly paid for themselves in saved postage, print and effort, and that's before adding the extra business they bring in. His company is moving upwards, in a weak market, so he's the flavour of the month. Being able to mail prospects who use rival products is one thing, but Leon keeps his finger on the pulse: someone's dropping out of the market; another competitor is giving poor service (and their customers are therefore receiving poor service); anything that might make a personal letter welcome to a receptive prospect. His success rate isn't brilliant, when you think about it. Leon's competitors think he must have God on his side. Although Leon might spend more, now, on his data, he started off with an order to Windowbase that cost about £200 for a couple of regional mailshots. He keeps his information up-to-date and relies on Windowbase to keep everything else spot-on. He doesn't waste time or money on companies that have gone down, or writing to people who've moved on so, though his data costs grew, he recouped the cost, many times over, in the long run. Builders and specifiers, as Leon confirms, are two of the more fluid sectors to be hitting and he reckons you only get one shot sometimes, so it had better be accurate. Scatter-guns are great, when you want to make a lot of noise but, if you're a serious hit man (and Leon is certainly a hit man), you need a high velocity rifle and a telescopic sight. It's a hit man's job to take someone out, from time to time. Leon takes them out, all right - to dinner - to celebrate another customer on board.

When The Ship Comes In

Regular updating

One of our biggest databases is updated quarterly. We make it as easy as possible to build new records into a Microsoft Access database but we can't stop it being a bit tedious.

It's your data, you're paying for it. Our job is to keep it as accurate as possible. What we can't do is ensure that you develop your own system for updating it.

If you're the boss of your department, you clearly need results but, sad to say, you can't take short-cuts. It's no good complaining to us that some of our records are out-of-date if you haven't ensured you're using the right ones (as someone obviously did). He picked the phone up, irate and determined to tell us what was what, then discovered that it was someone in his own department who was letting him down. Well, that's how we tried to tell him -easier than saying how he should have been taking charge of his own organisation.

If you're the boss, all we can ask is that you do set up a reliable system - that gets quicker as the quarters come and go.

If you're not the boss, and only doing as you're told (doubtless with 101 other more pressing things to deal with), how about making a note that your database gets updated on something like a particular Friday afternoon, every quarter. Come on, it's only four times a year, but what you get in return is the country's most accurate data. Take a look through the separate databanks of who's come and gone because in there will be names that ring a bell... or don't.

Try to remember that your quarterly update is a Hot, Hot, Hot News update, reminding you that you needed to call someone and see what's happening. After all, in what looks like a boring little database could be the name of someone who's going to be a new customer at the end of the week.

If you think you could sharpen up a bit, ask Mike Davis for a Fact Sheet on the subject. Of course, you could read the notes that come with your data, but nobody does that!

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right House-builders Someone wanted a list of contacts in the house-building business, so he got one of his team to shop around. The end result wasn't what was wanted. They chose what sounded like a reputable name and got, in exchange for their money, rather less than they hoped for. Less money, certainly, but... less names, less information, less accurate. “This is no good,” said the boss. “This isn't going to sell anything.” In the end, he contacted Windowbase and asked what he could have had. Money, he said, wasn't a major consideration. He wanted a proper job, done right, so he could show some results. Who'd have thought, he mused, that Windowbase offered something streets better. (A bit late, now, chum!) Mailings cost money, and we're not just talking about a Second Class stamp. There's the generation and printing of the mailer, the printing off of all those letters, stuffing the whole lot into envelopes and getting it all posted. Wouldn't it be nice, before it goes out, to have some confidence in what you're doing? If you start out with a thousand names, and three hundred of them are dead leads, your costs have gone up and your success rate is down before you start. Easy to imagine, then, that direct mail doesn't work. Start out with the wrong information, from an organisation that offers a list as some sort of by-product, and you'd be hard-pressed to find out why it didn't succeed. Start out with a proper database, keep tabs on - and record - the responses, stay on top of the follow-up calls, and it's a different ball game. Get into the habit of sending out something worth reading, on a regular basis, and the sales chart starts to take on a new life. “I want you to convince me,” said a caller out of the blue, “that direct mail works.” And who was asking, we wanted to know. His name - and even his address - wasn't on our list. “No,” he said. “It won't be. You sent this letter to my boss in the Darlington office, he passed it on to me and told me to get in touch with you - so I am doing.” “Doesn't that,” we asked, “tell you something?” “What?” he asked. (Dear oh dear!) His job was to keep a tight rein on expenditure and, as he saw it, 'lists' were the sort of thing that came for free. By adding his list of customers and enquiries to another list, handed over by one of his suppliers' reps, he already had plenty of names and addresses. He authorised mailings from time to time, but it didn't pay its way so he was having second thoughts. What do you tell someone like that? That lots of Windowbase customers are market leaders because they make good stuff? That they send out regular mailings, so that their prospects know what's available? That they keep in touch, by phone, with their contacts? Second thoughts aren't much good, if your first ones aren't up to scratch.

Down The Highway

Ireland, as we said a couple of Issues ago, isn't like the UK with detail differences. It's a whole new world, with a whole new way of doing things. Send a rep over the water, with some smart targets and an expense account, and you might not get much - if anything - in return. There are over 1100 window companies in the Republic of Ireland. 700 of them say they fabricate windows and 920 install them. Predictably, most of them handle PVC-U (720 actually), with 500 making timber frames and 360 dealing in aluminium. Don't try and do the arithmetic, because some of them handle more than one material. If you want to take a crack (or another look) at Ireland, then surely 1100 brand new records has to be one pretty cost-effective way of starting that ball rolling. It's one thing, getting someone to potter around Dublin for a few days but, if you're serious, a meeting to plan strategy beforehand is needed: sit down together, see what's what and what's where, then you have more chance of someone driving along the road to success. For more facts and figures about the new Irish database, just visit www.winbase.co.uk Issues, this time round, has Bob Dylan song titles from his early acoustic days, and it would be awful, in this context, to imagine your rep driving round Ireland, humming Olivia Newton-John to himself... take me home, country roads.

Only A Pawn In Their Game

When Issues is written, the target reader is probably someone with a decent job title and everything that goes with it. We don't mail people like Sophie, in somebody or other's Accounts Department. Maybe we should.

Sophie isn't always busy-busy, so she has some spare time, occasionally, to do one or two jobs for Sales. (Small company, we have to be flexible.) The Sales Manager - who does receive Issues, but doesn't read it - already knows all he needs to know about keeping in touch with his prospects. He even hands Sophie a disk, now and again, and asks her to mail a letter to the people on it.

It isn't really what Sophie does, so she quickly finds other work and, somehow, the mailings never quite happen. She can even chalk up a little victory for her own department because that's another £600 saved this month. What's the point, as Sophie sees it. The last time she actually did do a mailshot, nobody kept a record of when it went out, who it went out to, whether there was any follow-up, or who replied. A complete waste of time, she reckons, and so does the Financial Director.

The Sales Manager is also starting to lose faith in mailshots, because they just don't seem to work. He deals with more or less the same number of enquiries a month and there's never any discernible peak, two or three days after he asked for a mailing. Sophie doesn't reckon much to the Sales Manager. Nobody does in her department. Her boss is good at his job, keeps the company's overheads down, and pays for a nice little Christmas shindig out of his own pocket.

That's rather a lot of power for Sophie, if only she knew it, for it's she who decides whether or not things are actually going to get done. It's she who, if she cared, could look at an occasional request for a mailing and ask, if she cared, if it might not be better to do this or that. Why should she bother? She has a nice, easy, safe job, in a nice, easy, safe department and it's not her job to suggest improvements. That, Sophie reckons, is what the bosses get paid to do, only they'd do a damn sight better if they spent less time with their feet on the desk, reading another copy of Issues!