A Day at Works

As the essence of lead generation is an understanding the right person to be targeted, the tactic is also important – just the same as STP is nothing without differentiation and 4P. The tactical level of lead generation, at least consist of:

First, valid and ‘enough’ database. For contact data, you must have at least 3 deep and 3 wide. This means you must have 3 level contacts and 3 peers for each contact, for instance to reach executive corporate Director, you must familiar by GM and his/ her secretary; while to contact a retail end customer, you need to familiar with the spouse and friend. If those deep and wide are not available, then contacting customer is risking money and time. So how to enrich our database? Buy it, or populate it through social networking and social event; both now even available on-line.

Second you need permission and an offer, generally by mail or e-mail. This permission open-up communication and create awareness and need of targeted customer. Common practice is using combination of media to bring customer deeper into relationship, for instance a mail as i) permission, and ii) information or survey to reveal his/ her need then enclosed with iii) a statement of an offering relevant to the need then a statement that the firm will contact customer a week after to follow-up. Without a permission, for instance the firm contact customer by phone directly, customer usually will feel invaded or/ and unprepared thus will result in negativity. Without a ‘bridge’ to reveal need, any offering will useless. Without offering, a contact will loose its essence, what’s in it for me (customer).

As the first is a fertile soil, the second is food for the seed (fertilizer, water, etc), then the third is irrigation; not irritation. At this level the firm need to contact customer with rich media/ channel to develop a positive experience. The media is considered rich if able to deliver and capture verbal and non-verbal message, for instance face-to-face meeting conducted by Sales person. If the firm needs an indirect media, then a phone call is the most appropriate – once again if direct contact is not available. To develop a positive experience, the firm need to communicate at head and heart level; not only communicate the competitive benefit to solve customer need but also to communicate that the firm understand and a partner for customer. The aim of head communication is positioning, the aim of heart communication is acceptance. Positioning says that our product is different and better than competitors, while acceptance grows from feeling that we are in the same side with customer.

According to a survey of sales managers conducted by CSI Insight, 70% of Sales Leaders are not satisfied with their lead generation process.

Since Sales Dept believes that the best way to get higher sales volume is to have sales team call on as many prospects as possible then Marketing Dept tends to generate as many leads as possible. When the target is quantity then Marketing Dept tend to forget the quality. To do this, Marketing need to:

1. Segment & targeting to natural buyers first, for instance the natural buyer of statistical software is Faculty of Statistics, Underwriter, Claim & Risk Management. The natural buyer of a can of beer is a blue-collar worker – as you see it is depends on the position of the product in the culture and social settings.
2. When there is no natural customer, try deeper segmentation & targeting both using a-priori and post-hoc approach. For instance to sell a SUV Blazer, do preliminary segmentation study to understand who naturally buy this product. See, Blazer generally bough or popular among macho executive who has American education background. Other example is segmenting a ‘common’ product such as a tire, which more difficult to segment using a-priori approach, in this case we can use segmentation based on loyalty, usage or other behavior variables (post-hoc approach). Sometimes segmentation variables is very subtle, just like a case above, so ask your Sales Reps.
3. Remember when doing post-hoc approach, sometimes customers or prospects’ behavior depends on the situation and product offered. For instance for a rally, customer buy special tire, but for off-road hobby he buy mud tire, and for everyday use he buy medium class radial tire. Other example is customer who buys an expensive candle for a special event, but just ordinary candle for everyday usage.
4. Profile each ‘natural’ segment for future improvement. When market is not segmented there is few variables significant as differentiators but after segmentation hopefully many will emerge.
5. Make sure the leads can be served competitively than competitors, in other word we truly have something compelling to the leads.

Customer insight is a must for creating value and developing relationship. Without an understanding of what customer want, firm will face difficulty to meet customer expectation that result in problematic selling. More understanding we have about what customer want, greater our chance directed to produce what customer expected.

So how we get customer insight?
We can understand what customer’s want, based on what they buy. This is the most reliable source of information, generated from data mining activities toward internal records (sales records, customer records, inventory records, etc.). If customer buys a pair of Nike, this means our customer is interested in sports, and style. But this does not means if customer is interested in sport and style they will always buy Nike, so transaction is the result but “why” is beyond this information.

The “Why”
To answer this question we must collect information about what customer need, value at, lifestyle and attitude. Customer who value sport and comfort actually can choose Reeboks, Nike, Adidas, or others. But if s/he also value style and professionalism they will more considering Reeboks and Nike rather than others. Next, what is his/ her lifestyle? Reeboks and Nike have different lifestyle. Customer who buys Nike, should be agreed to Nike’s position in lifestyle, that is intuitive and free (remember the tag line ‘Just Do It’). The last is attitude, how customer evaluates product and services. Based on the value within the product and lifestyle s/he has, customer determine positive or negative evaluation attached to products or services. Customer chooses Nike because s/he thinks and feels that Nike is better.

Although customer agreed to benefit offered by Nike, agreed to Nike’s value, agreed Nike’s to lifestyle, and put higher mark on Nike, customer can actually buy other than Nike because externalities such as budget, school policy, stock availability in store, friends influence and so on. So our “Why” does not match to our “What”, our customer need, value, lifestyle and attitude different to what actually customer buy. So transactional data is not the ultimate although it is the reality (customer really spend money on the stuff). Data mining is important to understand “WHAT” but actual picture of customer will be completed by customer survey – the “WHY”, althought externalities will influence the linkage of the two.

Dari semula, customer insight adalah mantra marketing. Semua aktivitas pemasaran bermula dari pemahan customer, dengan bersandar pada paradigma Positivism dalam research. Dalam perkembangannya, pemasaran semakin feminim dan semakin beralih kepada paradigma Interpretivism.

Positivism berasumsi bahwa customer adalah problem solver yang memecahkan masalah berdasarkan informasi yang dikumpulkannya secara rasional. Setiap event yang dialami customer dapat diisolasi, dan secara obyektif dapat diukur atau dinilai oleh customer. Positivism bersandar pada metode Quantitative yang dengan teknik-nya memungkinkan generalisasi terhadap populasi. Conventional marketing menggunakan metode ini untuk mengetahui kebutuhan customer dengan melakukan studi kualitative melalui Focus Group dan In-Depth Interview.

Dalam perkembangannya nyata bahwa pengalaman yang dialami customer yang bersifat subyektif (emotional), dan sulit dibandingkan (relative). Alih-alih bertanya kepada customer, customer menjadi binggung atau driven. Istilah yang sedang “in” adalah customer immersion dimana customer tidak ditanya namun di-observasi… Balik kepada Interpretivism, nampak bahwa marketer perlu makin berani mengevaluasi keseluruhan pengalan customer, meski dari pandangan conventional nampak tidak relevan. Interpretivism, kebalikan dari Positivism, sangat berfokus pada teknik Qualitative yang memang memandang setiap event yang dialami customer bersifat subyektif, tidak dapat diisolasi dengan fenomena, dan pengalaman lain, serta bahwa pola sebab-akibat perilaku customer hampir mustahil. Hal yang terakhir mungkin terasa ketika ternyata latar belakang geo-demographic, latar belakang psychographic, dan behavior semuanya saling tidak berhubungan dengan rapi.

So apa insight praktis bagi marketer? Jargon lama “Lebih mudah membiarkan customer mengutarakan isi hati dan pikirannya, daripada berusaha menyelami (get-in to) hati dan pikiran customer” telah berubah arah. Bila sebelumnya segmentasi dapat dilakukan berdasar variabel geo-demographic, atau psychographic, atau behavior – maka dewasa ini rasanya makin efektif kalau segment ditentukan berdasarkan need secara langsung. Dari sisi metode penelitian, research agency mulai meninggalkan FGD dan Interviewnya, dan beralih kepada observasi…. artinya perilaku customer tidak lagi dapat dicari cause-effectnya dengan mudah…. kita hanya bisa menginterpretasikan pola yang sudah terbentuk. So this is the new era of data mining I guest. Bagaimana bila datamining impossible dilakukan, seperti kasus pengembangan produk baru?

Jawaban conventional tentunya adalah comprehensive market test, mengarah pada evolutionary product development seperti yang dilakukan Jepang daripada melakukan pola big-bang alias inovasi seperti gaya Western.

Bagaimana bila product lifecycle-nya pendek sehingga evalutionary development malah beresiko tinggi? Jawabannya … goes to sociology and ethnicity study…. variabel-variabel besar dari customer, bukannya variabel family dan personal. Quite contradictive yeach….