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Keeping tabs on the evolving needs of customers, and demonstrating your commitment to them, are essential aspects of good marketing. Likewise, keeping in touch with prospects – and knowing whom to contact, when and how – is essential to business development. For example, you need to be sure you're reaching the right people within a company, including both decision-makers and influencers. You should understand the form in which these people prefer to be contacted (e.g., phone, mail, e-mail), and with what type of information; then, you need to follow through accordingly. This approach positions your company as sharp, organized, and on the ball.

Fortunately, there are plenty of software tools that make it easy to store and keep track of this information. ACT! and Goldmine are among the most popular contact management programs, and have proven to be very effective organizational tools. But a couple of companies have taken a new look at contact management, and designed software with a different twist.

Bill Ladas of Miller Heiman, a leading sales training and consulting firm, notes that these new products go beyond contact management functions to help users to follow best-practice sales processes. “If you want to do X, you have to do Y and Z first,” he explains. “For example, a sales executive is trying to sell a complex piece of medical equipment to a large hospital. He has shown prospective users the financial and therapeutic benefits, and has forecasted receiving the order this month. But he has not yet met with the hospital's CFO, who first must sign off to release the funds for purchase. The software will not allow the forecast until the required step has been completed.”

He cites Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com) and Salesplus.net (www.salesplus.net) as the best examples. Instead of purchasing these products off the shelf, you can subscribe to them on the Web. Salesplus.net, based on Microsoft Outlook, is especially straightforward and easy to use, he says; Outlook users can build the new capabilities into a product with which they are already familiar.

Whatever contact management tool you decide to implement as part of your marketing program, consider it a vital tool for uncovering new opportunities with existing clients, and for dramatically improving the chances that when a need arises, prospects will think of you first.

What do you think? Email Robin Lawson, rlawson@marketalk.com.

Think Again is a monthly e-column intended to inspire a fresh look at marketing-related business issues. Marketing is what the enterprise does to motivate buyers – not just what the enterprise says. Think Again is published by Marketalk, a marketing advisory firm in Newburyport, Mass. that helps business clients achieve the highest return on their marketing investment. For more information, please visit http://www.marketalk.com/.

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