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Do-It-Yourself Database Marketing

The best place to look for clients is in your own database.
September 01, 2003
By Rosalind Resnick

Q: After posting strong sales in the first three months of the year, my homebased consulting firm has hit a wall and I don't know why. One longtime client has canceled his monthly retainer, and a major referral source is no longer sending me business. I'm so discouraged that I feel like closing up shop and looking for jobs. What should I do?

A: Don't throw in the towel just yet! Like many small B2B businesses, you're going through a very normal -- though painful -- cycle of feast or famine. While most businesses focus time, money and effort on acquiring new customers, they rarely put much effort into cultivating the existing clients who represent their bread and butter. The reality is that the best place to search for new business is in your own database. Assuming that your clients have been satisfied with your products or services in the past, they are the people most likely to buy from you in the future.

Follow these five simple database marketing techniques and break that feast-or-famine cycle for good:

• Practice good database hygiene. No matter how busy you are, be sure to enter every new customer and prospect name into your database, along with their title, company name, phone number, fax number, cell number, postal address and e-mail address. Then, every time you touch base with a customer or prospect, make a note in your contact management software program so that you'll have a running log of your e-mails
  
  
• Create a prospecting pyramid. To get the most out of your database marketing efforts, organize your prospecting list into a pyramid, with the hottest prospects at the top and the coldest prospects at the bottom. This way, you can devote the most time to the prospects that are most likely to buy from you and not waste your time on people who are likely to say no.
  
  
• Create a sales forecasting pipeline. Once you've started mining your database, you can start to get a better handle on which customers are going to buy from you and when. To keep track of pending sales, simply take an Excel spreadsheet, label it with the current month and divide the page into 28, 30 or 31 squares. As potential projects come in the door, type the client's name, type of project and expected dollar value in the square representing the day that you think the job will come in.
  
  
• Send out a weekly newsletter. One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to keep in touch with your clients is by sending out a weekly e-mail newsletter. This newsletter should go not only to your existing customers, but also to prospects, previous customers and people you meet at trade shows or networking events.
  
  
• Make prospecting a priority. No matter what else comes up, be sure to set aside at least an hour each day for prospecting. For some people, it's the first thing they do after they finish their morning coffee. For others, it's right after lunch or before they leave for the day. The important thing is to pick a time and stick to it.