Issues 13: It ain't what you know

IT AIN'T WHAT YOU KNOW

It's who you know, as the saying goes. The more the merrier. Safety in numbers, and all that. When it comes to making up (and keeping up) a list of your customers and potential customers, what you need is as many names as possible, right? If you have enough names, somebody's bound to be impressed and, if that gets you through another month without too much effort, maybe it's no bad thing. On the other hand, if a quarter of your names are no longer active customers, or if a third of the potential customers have gone out of business, the company isn't really very efficient, is it? Who's going to tell you? Nobody who's out on the road because it could be in their interests (and definitely not yours or the company's) to pretend all those names are calls to be made. In other words, you could be taken for a ride. Less is more. Maybe it's time to check that your lists are as good as you hope they are, because the odds are they aren't. Nobody wants to plonk a new list on the boss's desk, saying that you only have half the leads you thought you had. Bad news. That's why Windowbase doesn't sell quantity. It sells quality. Windowbase records come with dates of validation, showing you when the last call was made to them. British Telecom should be as good as any at showing who rents phone lines, so you'd expect their data to be accurate and good. It cost Windowbase a lot of time (and money) to discover that a so-called current BT list contained no less than ONE THIRD of numbers that were no longer in service.

A NIGHT IN A HOTEL

What does an overnight stop cost, these days? Bed and breakfast for £80? How do you fancy paying that every month for a year (a grand, in other words) for someone to turn up at half past nine at an industrial unit that's been closed for six months. £1,000 a year of your company's money could be going down the drain, and no doubt you can afford it. On the other hand, how do you fancy putting that grand to good use? Have you ever stopped to think what a grand would buy your company in terms of top quality data? Plenty of other companies have - and realised they're be better off investing it in something that's guaranteed to be of use. Do you want the details of, say, 2,748 PVC-U fabricators all of whom get regular phone calls to ensure that they're still trading, that they haven't moved, changed their names, or sacked your contact? Maybe you're more in the market for 3,442 installers who don't fabricate - same terms apply. Makes you think, dunnit? If you don't need details for the entire country, you could always choose the bit that suits you. Windowbase data allows you to target the people YOU want. You take aim, we fire. And just imagine: with the right data, somebody might get to spend one day talking to actual targets on the phone, instead of spending three quarters of it in a motorway snarl-up. How much is your company earning while sales staff sit in their cars, listening to Shania Twain at your expense? I bet you reckon there's far more installers than 3,442. So why not get someone to call all your numbers and see how many of your records are still current. Because that's usually the name of the game - everyone likes adding names but nobody likes removing them. If your database is getting smaller, it's good. If it's getting bigger . . . well, bad news actually because 15% of Windowbase records disappear every year for one reason or another. They don't all go out of business. Some get taken over and others stop dealing in windows. In other words, each year your customer list reduces by 15%. If your database says different, we reckon it's wrong. So, if your data shows more records than last year, maybe it's time to call in the professionals. You see, data on the window industry is all Windowbase does.

STANDING BACKWARDS

There's no such thing as standing still any more. If you aren't going forwards, you're definitely going backwards. That's because every day you don't snap up a new customer, someone else does. If the number of companies in the industry is contracting at the rate of 15% a year, that puts a lot more pressure on the people who sell to it. And it would be downright suicidal to entrust information about who's doing what into the hands of the sales force. If one of your sales team is good, he or she will be looking for more money and no prizes for guessing what the biggest asset is at the interview. That's YOUR data, that YOU'VE paid for, going to your competitor next week. (Brings sweat out on your forehead, doesn't it?) Data like that, your bread and butter, should be filed away safely and, these days, it doesn't go in a drawer. It goes into a computer so that someone can check it, analyse it, and come up with ideas of how to use it better next month. It would be an odd company in this day and age that didn't have at least one computer. Yet it's amazing how many senior managers think computers are just for production, word processing or sales records. Ask them what software they have and they say Windows 95. The likes of Access and Excel, two of the best packages on the market (even if they are made by Microsoft) don't get used anything like they deserve.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Would you buy a mobile phone the size (and weight) of a brick? Course not. Or a Renault Clio the size of a Bentley? So size isn't everything. Windowbase spends a lot of its time removing records from its data. That way you don't pay for 1,500 extra records that could, over the average year, cost you a few grand in lost/wasted time. Worth its weight in gold, good data. Not worth its weight in anything, poor data. Next time you think about the subject, make your mind up whether you want 2,000 reliable records or 5,000 dross. What's really annoying is how much time it takes to discover which is the bit worth having. Standing backwards, you see. If you buy records by quantity, rather than quality, ask Windowbase for 15,000 window company names. We can give you them but we wouldn't sell you them! Freebie lists (as many of our customers tell us) are a real pain because, when you finally discover they're rubbish, you can't even complain.

PICK AND CHOOSE

When a fairly big profile system supplier goes down, the first thing it's competitors want is a list of the fabricators who are going to be looking for a new profile supplier. You know how it goes . . . word on the streets that Urgency International has the receivers in. Never mind about who's going to be taking the Big Hits. What counts is who you need to talk to - RIGHT NOW. That's just the sort of information Windowbase data users take for granted. Open Lotus Approach or Access, click on the data and sort on System. "Give us a print-out, Trace." Ten minutes later, you're on the blower to Jim or John, making an appointment. Ten days later, you're knocking out tooling. Alternatively, you're working your way through your own records, and getting a bit annoyed at the number of unobtainables you dial. Your choice. Small is beautiful. Less is more. And there's all sorts of ways of shuffling your data to tell you what you need to know. How about medium-sized trade fabricators in Northamptonshire? Aluminium-only with an LS postcode - stuff like that.

CHEEP CHEEP

Wanna buy a canary going cheep? It's easy to imagine that, because Windowbase can offer the entire country's industry on disk, that's the only option. Far from it. You can have labels, follow-up lists, data by region, by activity, any option that suits you. And it costs from about two hundred quid. You'd be amazed how specialised it gets at that price. Take a look at our website, www.winbase.co.uk, and you'll see we offer fabricators, installers, softwood, aluminium, PVC-U, conservatories, trade only, commercial, retail, with less than ten employees and so on, and so on. Something to suit you, in other words. Because that's our job. Collecting, cleaning and refreshing data on the window industry is our speciality so we don't publish magazines or make conservatories or egress hinges on the side. So, for more information, do give Mike Davis a call on 01706 644308. Alternatively, if you want twice as much data for half the price, call somebody else. Anyone. See how much money you save by the end of the year - or, far more likely, face up to having wasted a few grand here and there, while your competitors are cracking on. That's the really annoying part about it - the amount of time lost discovering that you could have been doing things more efficiently, while your competitors . . . well, I'm sorry, but while your competitors probably ARE doing things more efficiently. Think about it. Save a few hundred quid a year, only to find that it cost you a few grand in wasted time, lost orders. It gets worse, doesn't it? Because not only have you lost that order, making your company just that little bit less profitable, just that little bit efficient, and THEY got it, making them just that little bit MORE profitable. There really is no such things as standing still any more. The industry's getting too tight for that. Either you're on the way up or on the way down. The only way is up. (Oh, and PS: they say direct mail doesn't work.)