News
 Database
Marketing Reaches Business Influencers
By M. H. "Mac" McIntosh, CBC
Your business-to-business sales and marketing
database should be “deep,” so says Mac McIntosh, a
B2B marketing consultant. But how deep should you
go?
You should mail to all the influencers in the
customer company – from the CEO, to the clerk who
uses the product, if possible – to hit every level
of influence. Be sure not to forget the financial
and technology people who are also impacted by the
decision to buy.
At a finer level of detail, publishers of leading
trade publications can provide, for a fee, a list of
every subscriber with a certain title or higher. The
marketer can then append its own database with the
new names from the publisher’s list. Or the
publisher could provide a list of all subscribers
who reported on the subscriber-qualification card
that they recommend, influence or make final
decisions on purchases in the marketer’s equipment
category. Again, the marketer could use the data to
expand and enhance its database.
Closer to home, the marketer can identify
influencers by interviewing the sales force. The
company’s salespeople know how the sales process
works and what customer representatives play a role
in the buying process. When interviewing the sales
force, ask:
• Why do customers buy our products?
• Is it to solve business problems or technical
problems?
• Does a technician drive the purchase, or is it the
manager of a department?
• How high in the customer organization does buying
authority rise, or how much budget authority is
needed to approve the sale?
• Is it at the executive level or the manager level?
--- M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is president of Mac
McIntosh Inc., a sales and marketing consulting firm
specializing in helping companies get more
high-quality sales leads and turning them into
sales.
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