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Sprockets
Think of our blog as a window where you can see what's new with us, our clients and the demand creation world we operate in. To close the loop between advertising and sales, we find ourselves in interesting places: cornfields, laboratories, retail stores, bank lobbies and more. Enjoy our tales. Be sure to share yours.

Monthly Archives: July 2010

July 23, 2010

Someone Is Trying To Hook Your Customers

A leading financial institution has been luring your customers.  Making them feel wanted.  Making them feel important.  Making them feel special.

Was it you?

Shouldn’t it have been?

Let’s face it.  The client-customer relationship is like any other.  In order for it to be successful, you have to work at it.  No one — spouse, significant other, child, employee — ever wants to be taken for granted.

That being said, it’s also true that the client-customer relationship is exactly unlike any other in that it is entirely one-sided.  Only one of the partners — you  – has to work at it.  There’s no give and take.  No push and pull.  The onus is entirely on you, as the relationship manager, to do 100% of the work.  Whether the relationship thrives to celebrate silver and golden anniversaries, or ends up being a one-nighter, depends largely on what you do to nurture and sustain it.

So why go through the trouble?

The first reason, of course, is money.  A rule of thumb is that it takes 10 times — 10 times — more money to acquire a business customer than to retain one.

And the second reason?  Well, that boils down to money, too, because if you’re not retaining those business customers, you’ll eventually have to pay to replace them with other ones.

If you aren’t making the effort now to nurture, secure and deepen your business customer relationships, you can be sure a competitor is.   However, unlike any other relationship, your customers won’t even let you know they are leaving.  There won’t be any argument. You won’t see the packed bags.  There won’t be any judgments or decrees. They will just quietly slip away.

Quick, related side story: we work with a client who was uncertain about investing in a customer-retention program.  It felt risky.  What would happen if we “woke the sleeping dog”?  Would the response be aggressive or unwelcome – and backfire on us?

We staged and executed a pilot with those “sleeping dogs” and discovered that 90% of the customers contacted were receptive and open to our contact.  Of those, a significant portion indicated that they were ready to take the next step and deepen the relationship.

Do you hear that?  Is someone talking to your customers?  Is it you?  If not, let’s talk.

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July 23, 2010

‘Nekes Healthcare Lead Featured on Forbes and More

Read all about it!  News is spreading about our new vice president and healthcare practice lead, Bobbie Montgomery.

Check out our latest press on Forbes. We were also picked up on CNBC, DM News, Charlotte Business Journal and many other online and traditional publications.

Altogether now – Welcome Bobbie!   We’re glad you’re here.

Author Scott
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July 20, 2010

A TOAST – To Our New Sales Training Program.

We’ve all heard them.  We’ve all been victim to them.  We all dread them.

You know — those dull, dry sales calls, where you can tell that the person on the other end of the line is reading a script.  (And often, not very well.)

Sure, he or she is only trying to make a living, but there’s got to be a better way.   In fact, maybe those calls are particularly annoying to us at Technekes because not only do we know there’s a better approach, we employ a better approach – every day at the MIC (Marketing Interaction Center).

We’ve rolled out an entirely new sales training program – TOAST – to help our sales support associates engage decision makers in conversations, not sales presentations.

TOAST (Technekes Outreach Associate Sales Training) was written and developed based on our own strategic use of the phone and best-in-class sales training.  The premise is simple:  engaging decision makers is an art, and with proper training, it’s an art that can be mastered.

With TOAST, traditional sales “spiels” are eliminated.  Our trained associates don’t use scripts.  Instead, striving to acquire the extra bit of valuable information, folks at the MIC tailor their approach to the client’s unique selling proposition, uncovering and then, discussing a customer’s “pain points.”

Once a Technekes associate has been “TOASTed,” he or she can be confident combining artful conversational skills with expert product knowledge, and instead of interrupted and annoyed, the person they’re calling will feel understood and appreciated.

So here’s a TOAST – to the end of dull, ineffective sales calls!

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July 13, 2010

Meet Our Healthcare Practice Lead, Bobbie Montgomery

Over the years, we’ve grown Technekes – and our reputation – by combining innovative thinking and unwavering execution with exceptional client service.

Naturally, when an opportunity opened up for a new lead of our growing healthcare practice, we knew we needed a single individual who could offer those exact same qualities.

An unreasonably high standard, perhaps.  But then came Bobbie Montgomery.

Bobbie’s got one impressive resume – including 25 years in the life science industry, including work with pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, long term care, surgical and drug distributorships, and managed care reimbursement marketing.  She’s had responsibility for a broad-based service portfolio including: patient assistance programs, data analytics, contract sales organizations, PDMA compliance, ROI, sample management, market research and eDetailing/eCME.

Plainly, she’s got the “thinking and execution” part down pat.  In fact, with the list of acronyms on her resumé, you might expect Bobbie to be pretty buttoned-up, but the truth is, she’s not “all business.”  Far from it.

That’s where the “exceptional client service” part comes in.  Bobbie sees her clients as extended family.  As she says, “For me, business is all about building relationships.  I like working with people.  I like advising them.  I like connecting with them.  I like solving problems.”

Plainly, Bobbie likes helping people.  When she’s not on the job here at Technekes, you might find her indulging her desire to help at Villanova University, where she advises over 100 students, or even, attending clients’ weddings. (We told you, she sees clients as family).

Innovative thinking, unwavering execution, and exceptional client service:  What a perfect fit for established and prospective healthcare clients alike.  Welcome to Technekes, Bobbie.  We can see that you’ll fit in just fine.

Author Steve
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July 2, 2010

A Measure Of Success

Here’s a question often asked of sales folks:  Are our marketing efforts really working?

And here’s the usual, albeit sometimes embarrassing, answer:  Who knows?  How would anyone know?

Fair enough.  With traditional marketing programs, those bottom line numbers – the very ones needed to justify a program or sometimes, a person’s job – have been elusive, unquantifiable, and just plain hard to measure.  After all, it’s not as if you can just pull out a ruler or a measuring cup.

Or is it?

At Technekes, for example, we know that one phone-based sales support associate can support 10 financial services producers.  We also know, from experience, that this additional sales support results in two times – twice – the facetime a producer spends with customers or prospects, allowing for more robust meetings.

That’s something you can measure.   And more robust sales conversations translate into new and retained relationships and deeper product penetration – resulting in significant incremental yield. Again, absolutely measurable.

Technekes’ clients also get to monitor this sales support activity in near real-time through innovative, customized web-based dashboards.  Our clients can see – measure – the number of calls attempted, the number of decision makers reached, and the number of appointments secured – every day, every hour.

It’s not rocket science.  It doesn’t require a million-dollar platform.  It doesn’t even require superhuman effort by our clients.

It just requires the resolve to engage a sales support team who knows how to take the hill for you, providing transparency to the good ground taken.

With this kind of partnership, when you’re asked, “Are your marketing efforts really working?” you can confidently respond, “Let me get my ruler.  I’ll show you.”

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