PROACTIVE MARKETING

The plant related information can be used in innovative new ways to increase sales effectiveness and efficiency. The supplier can choose among communication routes. The first is the unilateral approach as shown in Chart 2. The other 3 routes illustrated in the chart involve McIlvaine in one way or the other.  One option involves both McIlvaine and a 3rd party. For example McIlvaine teamed with Pennwell at Powergen to provide a unique all day debate type format which was combined with online discussions prior to and after the event. Participating suppliers had the opportunity for extended and meaningful interaction with key customers.

Chart 2: Marketing Approaches

Services provided by McIlvaine include a combination of free and subscription services which communicate with purchasers. Niche expertise involves large numbers of niche experts around the world. “Consultants by Phone” provides instant responses for as short as 20 minutes at a time.

Emails and Alerts: McIlvaine has made a significant discovery relative to emails. An email with the proper message delivered to the right person is very positively received. If a supplier sends valuable information on selecting ultrafiltration membranes to an individual who will soon be tasked with evaluating these membranes, then the message is likely to be very well received. However, if the supplier is also sending that individual emails about irrelevant products then the rapport will be lost.  Likewise emails sent by publishers which are not focused on the specific interests of the recipient also have a negative impact. The supplier can reach prospects unilaterally with email addresses provided by McIlvaine. Also, McIlvaine Alerts which contain information about supplier products provide an additional route. These Alerts are sent monthly to large numbers of decision makers in the power and wastewater industries as well as to OEMs and A/Es in 20 additional subject areas.

Customized websites: If an email, a direct mailing or other sales initiative inspires the recipient to click on the supplier’s website, then a very large opportunity is created.  Obviously there should be at least an easy way to request further information or a sales call. But ideally there should also be information which will make the prospect more enthusiastic about dealing with the supplier. The availability or promise of information which specifically relates to the solution of the prospects problem is what will generate that enthusiasm. Since the supplier could be offering hundreds of products each of which is applicable to hundreds of applications, it is no easy task to provide the specific information of value. Furthermore, even if the information is provided, the challenge of making it instantly accessible to an impatient searcher is more difficult.

The answer to this dilemma is the “customized web site”. It can simply be a customized gateway to the main supplier site. In this case it just lists the documents relevant to a particular prospect and provides hyperlinks to them. It can be expanded to include the sales arguments which should or are being made by the suppliers salesmen to individuals. If the customer is Dupont and one argument is that the plant in Texas should use the same product which is successful in Delaware, then that argument can be incorporated into the customized site.  McIlvaine has found it profitable to develop custom websites for both small and large potential clients. Where McIlvaine has provided customized websites for suppliers of equipment and services, it is recommending to those clients that they emulate the approach with their clients.

McIlvaine has also set up customized sites for end users. Many of the OEMs and A/Es for whom McIlvaine has set up sites are also major customers of other suppliers. McIlvaine sends Alerts monthly  to personnel at the company for whom a site has been prepared with the intent of inspiring them to click on the customized site and then in turn to the main site.  If McIlvaine sets up a customized site for a semiconductor manufacturer, then to the extent favorable information about a supplier appears either in the Alerts, on the customized site, or in the newsletters and abstracts hyperlinked through the main site, the supplier will potentially benefit.

So there are three ways McIlvaine can help the supplier:

  1. The customized website for the supplier assists in coordination internally.

  2. Assistance in helping the supplier set up customized websites for prospects is also available. Most importantly McIlvaine can furnish the email addresses so that the supplier can attract prospect personnel to the customized site.

  3. McIlvaine can address the subject of supplier products on the custom websites it sets up for other clients. This would be done with the approval of the client. For example, an FGD system provider may welcome concise information on pumps tailored to his needs.

Direct sales contact: The sales call is the most expensive and potentially the most powerful sales tool.  Maximum effectiveness is achieved by calling on the right person at the right time with the right insights.  McIlvaine databases provide the contact information. The right person can be determined from title, conference attended, and papers authored.  The right time is determined from the project databases which list startup dates. The right insights include process information which can be obtained from the knowledge systems (newsletters and abstracts). Information about OEM bidders and A/Es is obtained from the databases and certain alerts e.g. Utility Fax Alert. The latest debate about the competition or the regulations may be included in a McIlvaine on line discussion group.

McIlvaine market reports with market shares are also useful in setting sales visiting schedules. The largest OEMs should get more attention than the smaller ones.

Niche Expertise: The purchaser (as well as supplier) has four knowledge needs: Alerts, Answers, Analysis, and Advancement. Once he is alerted to a development, he can use the newsletters and abstracts to obtain answers. But these answers may be incomplete. He needs further analysis. In many such instances there is someone in the world who can immediately provide that answer from past experience. “Consultants by Phone” is radically different from other services in that the selected experts are niche specialists in very narrow areas. Typically there would only be a handful of people worldwide with the requisite knowledge in the niche need area. McIlvaine already has contracted with several hundred such people. They are willing to spend as little as 15 minutes on the phone with a client answering questions from memory.

Because of the thousands of niches in the fields of McIlvaine endeavor, there are still many more consultants needed to make this offering comprehensive. Furthermore this concept is powerful enough to change many of the basic established ways of doing business. Instead of selection of a project consultant at the earliest stage, this concept could lead to a multi-stage approach with “consultants by phone” assisting in many of the early and most important decisions. Furthermore the “Consultants by Phone” experts can also offer their knowledge and expertise for two other important functions. One is “Audited claims” for products and another is support for “Investment analysis”. Suppliers of innovative products could greatly benefit from independent but credible third party analysis of claims.  The failure of Wall Street to evaluate the worth of companies is in part due to lack of knowledge about the industry and the technology. The use of niche experts would greatly improve the investment evaluations.

Maximize the customer initiated contact: In Chart 2 some of the arrows point to the plant from the supplier, and others point from the plant to the supplier. It is advantageous to increase the ratio of contacts initiated by the plant in comparison to those initiated by the supplier. The worst case scenario is that the supplier sends mailings and makes sales calls, and never gets a response. The best case scenario is when the plant contacts the supplier requesting a quotation without much preliminary supplier initiated contact. The custom websites, the online discussion groups, and “Consultants by Phone” are additional ways to achieve this goal beyond the traditional advertising and exhibiting. The effectiveness of traditional promotional routes is decreasing. The internet is partially responsible for this decline. However the internet also is the reason alternatives are now available.

Utilizing the information in the four sales modes: Here is how the information described in “Integrating Plant, Project, and Contact Information” is used in Proactive Marketing.

Unilateral

McIlvaine/3rd Party

McIlvaine Alerts, newsletters, directories and other segments of knowledge systems

Niche Experts

Another use of niche experts is in “product claim audits”. In Step 2 the prospect is not only provided with the product claims from the corporation but a third party independent audit of those claims (similar to financial audits).