Mission Critical: Sales/Marketing Range War Must Come to An End!

We all remember those old westerns about the range war between the farmers and the cowboys. The cowboys wanted to freely roam the range to graze and quickly move their herds of cattle, but the farmers wanted to fence the range to keep their sheep and small livestock safe from predators. The battle between the goals of sales and marketing staff is much the same, and it's been going on for just about as long. Sales wants free reign to say and do what they need to interest prospects and close deals, and marketing wants to control the corporate message for consistency, to adhere to tricky legal positions, leverage a corporate strategy and maintain a corporate "brand." (See, even the terms are similar!) Just as with the farmers and the cowboys, both goals are valid, but in conflict with one another, and it is mission critical that both goals be satisfied.

Early attempts to resolve this conflict gave rise to the brochure rack and a modular approach to printed corporate collateral. But the truth is, this approach really didn't work for either the sales or the marketing team. Marketing spent endless hours trying to divine the information needs of the company well into the future, such that expensive print pieces wouldn't be obsolete as the came off the press, then breaking down the corporate message into bite sized pieces that could fit onto "one sheets" so that they may be assembled according to the needs of a specific sales situation. Furthermore, the pocket folder meant to hold all this vital information together had to look good and have impact. Translation: it was expensive to produce and therefore couldn't contain any real information which would only shorten its document life. The result, it was usually a pricey bit of fluff that didn't really accomplish much and was as prohibitively costly to mail as to produce. From the perspective of the sales team, they at least had some way of honing the message they were sending, if they could only find the print pieces that had current data. Doing so meant standing for hours in front of nearly incomprehensible shelves filled with document sheets, remembering the contents in each, and pulling just the right ones for the job, then stuffing them into the pocket folder, hoping that each carefully tailored package would get to the intended prospect before the competitor's did.

Not a very workable solution, is it? Well, worry not, because the farmer and the cowman can be friends, thanks to technology. MarketSmart Technology's ReadyMailer™ makes the brochure rack digital and marries it to the power of e-mail.

Instead of costly, hard to manage and maintain paper collateral, ReadyMailer™ organizes a library of digital documents into an easy to use menu. The initial documents may be converted from your existing paper materials, or designed specifically to take advantage of digital distribution. The use of visually compelling elements such as color adds nothing to the cost of digital documents, so your designers, or ours, are free to create more engaging pages without concern for how it may adversely impact the budget. Furthermore, digital pages may be easily edited on a moments notice, so your documents may quickly change as the need and situation demands. Your documents are now compelling and current, your brand and strategies consistently leveraged. No more out of date pages to be used up or thrown out as waste, no more backbreaking stocking of paper brochure racks, and no more costly shipping of bulky documents.

As for the sales staff, all they need do now is browse through the menu of available collateral from their PC or laptop, wherever they may be, click through their selections, and add a personalized message to their prospect. A click, and collateral tailored to their specific situation is on its way to the prospect's e-mail box.

But the benefits don't stop there. Digital delivery of your message provides for advantages you could never before imagine. The real power comes from tracking and reporting. ReadyMailer™ can provide e-mail notifications each time your documents are opened and reports of each click through, making it possible to know exactly who expressed an interest in what. Your marketing team also learns exactly which documents, strategies and positioning are the most effective, allowing them to hone your collateral to razor-sharp precision. Additionally, sales management reports of who sent what to whom are a valuable tool for managing productivity, compliance and prospecting.

What are you waiting for? Find out more about ReadyMailer™ and what it can do for you by following this link. Lower costs and greater success are just a click away.